“There is nothing more motivating than knowing you are progressing” writes John Lark, owner of Sphere Fitness , a personal training gym in Maynooth.
How many times have you been derailed? Or hit a speed bump only to find yourself absconding yourself for lack of progress.
You may be progressing without knowing about it.
For some of us being dialed into this process is easy. We see, feel and hear progress.
We may have a deadline that is pressing. An event that is pending and requires all your focus and attention to elicit action. A higher sense of purpose that involves you doing what is necessary, often on a daily habitual basis, to line yourself with this. Motivation comes from ‘being’ or your ‘identity’. It is easier to head out for a jog when you are ‘active’ or an ‘athlete’.
Not so easy when you are labeling yourself as ‘fat’, ‘out-of-shape’ or ‘too big’.
You may note and observe tangible markers. As Dan Cleather writes in his brilliant book The Little Black Book of Training Secrets anything that maintains consistency will ensure your success. Realising progress will maintain the consistency long enough for you to release a result from your efforts.
What I love about this approach is that a simple approach will trump anything that promises super quick results in half the time.
A recent study performed with world class athletes demonstrated that 80% of the time they were hitting workouts that contributed to their success. The other 20% didn’t.
In conclusion, most of the time they did the job. Some of the time they didn’t. I think that it is time you weren’t so hard on yourself. Perfection just isn’t necessary.
The Tangible vs Intangible
Moreover, a simple division into markers that are tangible and intangible allows us to both ‘feel’ our progress and ‘measure’ our progress.
Those intangible markers are things like, your husband tells you look better, you hit the gym and things feel easier, you are conscious that 6 weeks ago you weren’t sleeping very well. You are now.
Mary has commented that you are looking great. Deep down you are feeling and moving better. At the start of your journey, you were feeling tired, run down and low on self-esteem. Now, you aren’t.
Things must be progressing. That label and identity as someone who is ‘fat’ is now shifting to someone ‘active’ and ‘healthy’.
The trouble with this is that sometimes we are not as tuned into this as we think.
Sometimes the negative self-speak is just too noisy. That feeling of improvement is drowned out by talk of ‘yeah but I should be doing more’ or ‘You are not there yet’. A relapse, something which is a normal stage of change, really throws you off and heightens a sense of failure, for some something that they never recover from.
My formula for spotting this is proceeding everything with ‘yes, but’.
Intangible progress is awesome. Yet it comes with drawbacks.
Tangible markers remove any intuition, feeling or emotion. They are dialed into the process of where you are heading.
You either made progress or you didn’t. You keep ‘score’.
Keeping score can give you a dashboard of how you are getting on if and when you need it. For beginners this may be more than you think. Daily, weekly, monthly and annual reviews are all important steps towards success.
If you hit a speed bump one day you simply move out your focus and look at a weekly or monthly overview. How are you progressing there?
It is my observation that over time we need to keep score less and focus on more intangible benefits of diet and exercise. Keeping score allows to gradually silence the barking dog of negativity that may sway us off course. A healthier client is far more in tune with what they need to do to bring back their health and fitness into focus.
So here are ways you can keep score to ensure you have that highly motivating and deeply rewarded sense of tangible progress.
With each one we have highlighted how you can tie it into the 3 pillars of success, namely diet, training and lifestyle :
Track your calories (Diet)
You can track your calories a number of ways, but here is a way of ensuring that you are eating the right amount of food for you. Apps such as MyFitnessPal can be used a number of ways and yes, it does have its inaccuracies but using your calorie targets based on your goals you can start to place a more objective look at your food habits.
You can use it to create streaks of logging in, planning your days worth of food in advance, analysing if you are short on calories or macro nutrients.
Either way if you are looking to improve your diet, this may be one way of seeing progress in a tangible way.
Use the Plus 1 Principle (Training)
This is a simple way of ensuring that you adhere to the principle of progressive overload. This works for all levels of trainees and gives an immediate sense of achievement and success. This will ultimately keep the fire lit when it comes to your training!
For those of you familiar with training terminology sets and reps, this is a simple way of ensuring you are making continuous progress.
Very simply if, on the last set of your exercise you hit 1 extra repetition, make a note. Then on the next session add an appropriate level of resistance. For upper body, multi joint movements this may be 1-2.5kg. For lower body multi joint movements this may be 5-10kg.
Only add load if you are in good technical command of the exercise and you can get that plus 1 repetition without that technique looking like you need medical assistance.
Record Your Sessions (Training)
How many sessions did you do this week? This month? This year?
Remember consistency is the name of the game. What did your average week look like month on month? Did it tick the boxes and hit your regular steps each day, training sessions per week?
In Sphere we have 100, 200 and 300 workout heroes. There is a reason for this. It all adds up and demonstrates consistency. After all you don’t get to 300 good quality workouts in 1 year. It takes time. It takes consistency.
Track Your Steps (Activity)
Tracking your steps is an essential part of the process and something that I have written about here
How much activity are you getting into your days outside of your normal routine? It is more than likely you have adjusted to ‘this routine. What are you doing in addition to this?
We ask folks to keep a track of their activity levels outside of the gym. Keeping score, on a macro level, allows you to see how you are getting on in forging an active identity. One that ensures you can apply an active lifestyle outside of a gym environment. This requires intrinsic motivation. After all we are not there to ensure it’s s done – it requires your own source of drive to get it done!
Have a Fitness Test (Training)
There are several tests you a can use to monitor progress. The best ones are relevant to your current fitness levels and present an appropriate challenge.
I wouldn’t ask you to climb Everest if you struggle with a flight of stairs.
Some of the common ones we use are Gambetta Leg Circuits for time (5 rounds back to back), Strength Tests, Bleep Tests, a park run 5K, Dumbbell Complexes.
Keep score!
Keep a Habit Score (Diet/Training/Lifestyle)
This one has gained a lot of traction over the past while and one that we have used in Sphere Fitness.
A particular activity is presented each day. Did you do it? Yes or No. The aim here is to create streaks. The benefits of Habits can be found in our transformation guides.
We have found them to be crucial in developing and nurturing a process focus towards behavioural change. This removes feeling, emotion and subjectivity around change.
Did you do the work? Yes or No. Yes – great. Carry on.
No? No worries. Try harder tomorrow or even better try and understand how you can come up with a Plan B to get it nailed!
Progress comes in many forms. Create a process and stick to it. Keeping score ensures you see and feel the progress which as we know is the greatest source of motivation you can wish for.
