A Love Affair with Exercise

The reason why I fell in love with exercise is I saw the life altering changes it made for me. The reason why I fell in love with coaching is I get to be a part of making life altering changes for others. One thing that I am able to offer my clients is joy. I love being able to be the part of someone’s day that makes them feel better and brings them happiness and joy.

I can relate to doing HIIT (high intensity interval training) or circuits 5 days of week. I can relate to thinking that I constantly needed to make my workouts harder, longer, with more suffering in order to be successful or reach my goals. Does that sound like joy or a loving relationship to you? Because it certainly doesn’t for me.

Instead I want you to think of exercise as a love affair that turns into a long-lasting relationship. I’m not sure if long-lasting and affair are two words that should necessarily go together but this is where we are going. Exercise, like any relationship, should make you feel good! There will be good days, hard days, and days in between but the overall trend should be positive.

Exercise can show up for you on your days when your really just having a shit day but on the other hand can push you on days when your feeling like your badass self. On days when your feeling tired, burnout, or stressed use your exercise relationship should be a reflection of that. These are the days when a walk, mobility movements, gentle yoga, lifting less weight, or even taking a rest day might be the best choice. On the flip side, the days where you have great energy, need to burn off some steam, and are feeling well rested are the days when maybe we can use our exercise relationship to challenge ourselves, to push a little harder.

I see my job as a coach to help you turn your exercise love affair into a long-lasting relationship. I teach you how to say goodbye to on again off again exercise relationships, exercise one night stands, and all or nothing exercise. I teach you how to add balance and consistency to your exercise relationship so that you can be successful.

After all, the key to being successful at anything is to be really consistent. That is where having a coach or a program is a game changer. So how do we add in consistency? Keep it SMART and make it SIMPLE. Now making it smart and simple is going to look a little different for each person depending on their home life, work schedule, exercise history, goals etc. Here are a few tips I to try for a smart and simple exercise routine that helps keep you consistent.

1. Don’t overcommit.

   • If you say your going to exercise 5 days a week but realistically can only commit to 2 or 3 than commit to 2 or 3 days! 2 or 3 consistent days is going to get you so much farther than aiming for 5 workout days, feeling stressed about it, missing a day, and then quitting. Pick a schedule that works FOR YOU.

2. Practice frequency.

   • To Reach most goals you need to do the same movements more than once a week. For example, if you want to be a better runner, running one day a week may not be enough. If you want to be able to do a push-up, working on push-up skills every now and again when you “feel like it” most likely won’t lead to much progress.

3. Do something that brings you joy.

   • If you hate it, you will never be consistent with it nor should you have to suffer through something that you hate. If you like what you’re doing you are more likely to stick with it.

4. Set a goal.

   • Having something to work towards can help motivate you to keep going. This goal could be anything from achieving your first pull-up, running 1 mile, a deadlift PR, the possibilities are endless.

5. Full body workouts.

   • This one is definitetly not a requirement but over the years I have found it is a game changer. There are many benefits of a full body workout but a big one is if you miss a day you don’t miss an entire muscle group! It also much easier to schedule because we don’t need 5 separate strength days (i.e. back and bicep day, leg day, chest and tricep day, shoulder and core day etc.). But at the end of the day you pick what feels best for you.

6. Hire a coach.

   • Sometimes we just need help building habits to stay consistent, thats where your coach can make a huge difference. A coach can not only do the thinking for you and design your program that helps you reach your goals but a coach also help with accountability. If you would like help with coaching click here.