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Are you just spinning your wheels and going no where?

I’ve seen it for years. When I worked at a big corporate gym (rhymes with 24 Hour Fitness) I would see members day in and day out that were absolutetly committed to spending time getting NO RESULTS. They would come in religiously, sweat and toil away (well…maybe thats a bit too much credit) and never make any progress. I don’t say this to be mean but rather to shed some light on what 90% of the gym going population has accepted as OK. “Doing something is better than nothing” they say. I say thats a load of crap.

Sorry to put it so simply but if I’m going to do a lot of work and convince myself of the “no pain, no gain” idea…I had better be making some change. Somewhere!

So here are a few questions to ask yourself to make sure you aren’t wasting your time and energy in the gym:

Are you improving?

This is the most basic question. Are you making any improvements? You see, many people follow this formula. Find a workout (either from a magazine or what they learned over the years) and then they do said workout. Over and over and over. They might change it up a bit by adding in an exercise here or there but by and large  it mainly goes unchanged. This was the case that I saw with the  bulk of the people at the big corporate gym. Like clockwork I would see the Cardio Queens hop on their treadmill or elliptical trainers, or the old gym rats that would do the workout they remember from high school. Never changing, never improving.

How do you know?

How do you know if you are improving? Quite simple, you measure it! Improvements and results are measurable, plain and simple. Just like food tracking/meal planning you can’t know how you are doing unless you know WHAT you are doing. If you can’t measurably see change, you are plateauing and thus not changing.

Here are some ways to check if you are improving…

Are you better, faster, stronger?

Can you run faster or farther? Jump rope longer? Have you improved on a particular skill? Are you lifting more weight? Doing more reps? If you are following along a workout from a magazine or what you have “always done” and you know you always lift 10 lbs or always do 12 reps…well you have plateaued LONG AGO!

You have to be able to observe or measure SOME sort of progress, otherwise you will stay comfortable and spend weeks, months, or even years…getting NO RESULTS.

Is your body changing?

Now it doesn’t always have to be about lifting more weight. If you have a goal of losing weight or toning up, a great way to see change is weight, body fat testing or even better…your clothes are getting too big! This is a RESULT! It means you are doing something right. Kudos to you.

Is “something better than nothing?”

No. Sorry…maybe its the trainer in me but I don’t think that just doing SOMETHING is a positive way of looking at things.   As a trainer you had better expect me to to have this attitude or I’d be wasting my client’s time by babysitting them rather than expecting more and more out of them. I expect measurable changes. That’s how I know I’m doing my job. So if you’re in the gym you have to remember…

Doing something with the goal of setting a new record for yourself is better than nothing.

This should be your new mantra. I would hate to see you waste years of working out and not see ANY results with all the effort you put in…or should I say the time you spent. I want you to have something to show for it. Something you can be proud of. A measurable change! We all want a return on our investment (of time) so you should expect MORE of yourself each and every time you break a sweat.

So here is what you should take away from all this…

Work out with a purpose. Push towards a goal. Strive for a few more reps, finishing your workout a little faster. Those are small changes you can make initially. Find exercises to better, stronger, faster at. I have certain benchmarks and “games” I play with my clients to give them some idea of their level of fitness. I call it our Long Beach Workout of the Week. We do this to measure improvement and push to new limits.

If you just start paying attention to how much you are staying in the “comfort zone” you will see when you start to stagnate and more importantly you’ll know WHY. Keep track of certain exercises, workouts etc and see if you are making changes in them.  It can be your own personal motivation tool and also an indicator that you are getting RESULTS from all this hard work.

So now you know what to look for and how to make some changes to your “routine.” (Your fitness should be anything BUT routine, by the way) Armed with this knowledge and renewed sense of purpose…go out there and make some measurable change and EXPECT RESULTS!

If ready to make some big progress and break through some plateaus, let me show you what One on One Personal Training in Long Beach can do for you! Feel free to email me today or call 562.225.2244 for a FREE Consultation.