How To Become the 30%

About thirty percent of the people who join our gym will still make it to their one year mark. Why? Because most people are lazy, non-committal, and desperately want to find any excuse in order to not endure hard work and goal setting. Sorry. Truth stings.

I’d love to sit here and ra-ra you and tell you how you’ve got this, but the truth is, you might not. Not without an approach that sustains you, but I can say the odds are greatly in your favor. You’re here. Now. And you’re doing this, and that’s way more than most can say. So take what you’re doing now and apply what I’ve learned today.

Those who do make it past one year, down to the last man and woman, all achieve noticeable and remarkable results for themselves on some personal level of scale because they’ve hard wired habits that support it.

After ten years of running the gym, seeing quite literally thousands of people come and go, and coaching almost six thousand classes, here is what I know to yield success.

1. Be Shortsighted. Long to-do lists don’t get completed. Short ones do. It doesn’t make much sense to write down seven different goals that you want to achieve since you can’t work on seven different things at once. Write down one. Accomplish it. Move onto the next. Having more than one at a time is a great way to dilute your efforts, and you’ll likely achieve none of them. “Chase two rabbits, catch none” kind of stuff.

2. Filter Through the Law of Attraction. If you constantly yo-yo your progress towards your goal, start and lose momentum, it’s straight up not that important to you. You’re likely manufacturing it because you think that’s what you’re supposed to achieve, or you are creating a fictional version of your own aspirations. Be real. If you are not intrinsically drawn to your goal everyday, it probably isn’t a real goal of yours. I did this with strength goals for many years before finally accepting that I could care less what my lifting PRs are. Been happier in the gym ever since.

3. Be Committed to Commitment, Not Results. When you only care about a specific tangible result (i.e., lose 12 pounds), your focus is on an exit strategy as soon as you enter. Be committed to the process and find victory in adherence. Let great achievements be the side effect. When you only see success as binary based on win-loss outcome, you lose sight of the amazing hard work you’ve put into simply becoming better, healthier, and stronger. Have tangible goals, but never make it ultimately about them.

For example, what happens if you “only” lose six pounds but along the way you hit your first pull-up or break your first 8 minute mile? Is six pounds really a failure?

4. Whistleblow Your Excuses. We’ve all seen videos of athletes power cleaning with one arm, rowing with one leg, pregnant moms doing thrusters. It’s time you realized that your excuses are a convenient out to facilitate self-rationalization of quitting, not an actual relevant truth to your situation. There is no person alive on this Earth that doesn’t have three hours per week to dedicate to their health and fitness. You’re not busy, you’re just awful at time management.

5. Swerve From Your Lane. You always want to stay in your lane in the gym. If you are learning a movement, don’t apply it for time. If you are building your foundation strength, don’t test it. However, if you don’t slightly swerve and veer into another lane from time-to-time, you get too comfortable in your own and you’ll be the person that never progresses. Dip your toe into more challenge, and sooner or later it will become comfortable for you.

6. Start at and Return to Ground Zero Regularly. No one ever failed by always prioritizing movement. Move well. Always. Don’t let your movement ego get too big. It’s easy to get strong. It’s not easy to do so while always moving well.

7. Toss the Details Early. Your percentages, times, degree of knee flexion in your hinge, grams of carbohydrates post workout are completely and totally irrelevant. Your consistent attendance, overall food choices, and getting out from your chair are what matter early. Worry about the details when you start to understand them.

8. Respect Nutrition. Without it, you have a 100% chance of not changing. I really cannot stress this enough. You don’t need to be a hard core dieter but you do have to make some changes. I’m not gonna deep dive into that today.

9. More is Sometimes More, Sometimes Less. When you plateau, it’s time for a change. For those who go daily, that means going less with bigger effort when you do. For those going twice per week, it’s time to up  your frequency.

10. Understand What Will Never Change. If you’re 6’3″, you’re always going to be 6’3″. If you have big feet, you’re always going to have big feet. Improve everywhere that can be improved, but don’t consistently jam yourself into a round hole if you’re a square peg and expect to fit. If you’re a bigger guy or gal, tons of pull-ups likely aren’t in your future and that’s okay. There of lots of things that are.

11. Don’t Be a Sweater. It’s so easy to be the person who gets one little tangle or string undone and the whole thing unravels. We went on vacation. We had wedding season. Work was tough for a while. Great. Cut the string off and move on. Don’t let it unravel and destroy everything. No person is rigidly consistent year round. Seriously. Not one.

12. Embrace Being Terrible, No One Cares. When you start out you will not be good at many things, and that’s great. It means your slate is clean and ready to do nothing but build upwards. Being coachable and dropping your guard is the first step towards true understanding and acceptance of all that you can eventually do. Too many times folks come into the gym with crystallized guards up and false bravado born from insecurity. The reality is most of us who have been doing this for years suck right now at many things. It’s all good, man. Take it slow and enjoy the satisfaction of good ole fashioned getting better.

You don’t need to tackle this whole list on day one. Build upon little successes, slowly, and don’t be too hard on yourself along the way. Embrace process and before you know it, it’ll be a year later and you’ll have changed for the better.

-Dave