New Year; Same You 2021
Good morning and welcome to the road to 2021!
Here we sit at the tail end of an ‘interesting’ year; 2020. We have went through mental distress, a global pandemic, thoughts of uncertainty, financial worry & potential relationship struggles. Remember when we could all gather, without masks, venture out into public without concern and be ready for whatever the day brought us? Many of these things have brought positives and many of them will leave a lasting effect on us in the near future.
How we react to times of uncertainty is what will be the deciding factor if we improve or if we regress throughout our lives. Understand this will not be the only time in your life that you will be challenged. If you are a little older you know this to be true already.
Here is an oversimplification for achieving health, fitness & success goals; If you want the best chance at living a healthy, productive and successful life here is a starting point. Manage your stress, sleep 8-9 hours per night, eat healthy, lift weights 3 days per week, do cardiovascular activity daily, surround yourself with good people, do work you love & stretch 3 or more days per week. Do all of that and you have a great start.
The truth is most people don’t do any of those things let alone all of those things; 97% of people don’t get the lowest level of recommended amount of activity each week.
Every year there are “fast fat loss” and “supplement” gimmicks designed to pray on the inhibitions of those who feel like “this is the year” or “new year new me” and steal your hard earned money. Unfortunately many people don’t make it out of January before there throw in the towel on their health, fitness or nutrition programming. There was a meme on Facebook back in the day of the WWE Royal Rumble where they had dozens of people in the ring and it said (January in the gym) and then it showed February where there was no one in the ring. That meme always sticks with me. Remember chances are that if it took five to ten years to gain the weight; it will take at least two years to lose it and then there is the whole idea of maintaining which can be challenging if you don’t focus on staying motivated.
It is up to you if you actually want to change and statistics show that it will never be easy, but I’m here to tell you that it will be worth it & your future self will thank you for it in the long run. If it was easy everyone would be in great shape, good health & have high levels of success. If you just take a quick look around you know that is not the case!
Some basic recommendations would be to find a good coach, accountability partner, or friend who is going to motivate you to take the steps to reach your goals. Secondarily it is very important to take a good hard look at where you currently are and slowly increase to the point of where you want to be. The biggest mistake I see is from people who hardly move or workout jump into a workout program where they will be expected to perform at a high capacity five or six days per week. Be realistic in your goals and approach. This applies to all goals. If you want to save a million dollars and you focus on how far away you are the chances of you getting frustrated are extremely high.
An additional thing I hear being thrown around recently is “I can’t wait until 2020 is over”. Let’s be clear if you think that the year has anything to do with your results and that there are bad years, then you truly have some serious personal growth and development to do. I will say this: I believe there are bad days, bad weeks and maybe even bad months, but the only way you will have a bad year is if your mindset and frame of mind is terrible. Remember to see the bright side of things, you can find beauty in even the darkest spaces; you can find sunshine in the cold, you can find light in the dark and you can find beauty even in the people you think are cruel or mean.
Keep moving forward and if you have big goals for 2021 give it your all and don’t ever give up! We are hear if you need a good kick in the butt, a shoulder to lean on or someone to get you through a funk!
Onward and Upward Always
~Coach Mike
Michael Hartman
My mission is to give personal training participants a safe and effective workout designed specifically for their goals. Dealing with many sports injuries over the years taught me how to come back stronger every time. The competition is with yourself... Strive to bring out your best self and get better every day!
