WED: Great Expectations

Ridiculously common if you coach people or own a gym, the “fitness rut” is one of the most mistreated ailments in all of fitness mentality. We far too often examine the solution, and ignore the cause. We prescribe a number of strategies in attempt to re-configure behavior that will lead to habit. We try to unplug the motivation, and plug it back it.

That’s a misfire.

We need to be examining the root cause of the symptoms.

First, we must understand the timeline of a rut. Usually, the rut with fitness occurs after the initial results spike and our progress begins to level out to normalcy.

Yes, normalcy.

We know that beginners make the biggest jumps in their progress the first three years (because the stimulus is all new), and typically after the initial peak is achieved, as the curve starts to flatten out and we no longer see “results” in the same jaw dropping fashion, the rut begins to set in and makes itself at home in your brain.

Where you previously PR’d every time you attempted a new weight, now, you realize your gains are slowing. Where you previously lost a pound per week, now, your weight is beginning to level out.

Your expectation of what to expect with fitness was so great based on your initial success, that you have forever set yourself up for failure in the following acts. Surely, there is a way we can void the rut altogether.

Solution: Reset expectations. Make fitness not about results, but about process.

Too many people have way, way too high of an expectation for what an hour in the gym three days a week is supposed to do for them. Our benchmark is scrolling Instagram and swipe after swipe of fitness model or competitor.

If you constantly chase results, opportunities for ruts will pop up daily. We are not always in a constant state of results. Sometimes, we exist in process.

Don’t make your fitness about achieving an other worldly result. Make it about bettering your life, health, energy, and confidence, and your expectations won’t be so overshot that fitness will turn into something you enjoy again.

-Dave

Wednesday, 8.22.18

First. For Structure
8 Sumo Deadlifts 65%
8 DB Strict Press
*Every 5’ for 15’ (x3)
—
Then. For Conditioning
AMRAP
10 BW Squats
10 Push Ups
10 Straight Leg Bicycles
(x10’)
—
Finish.
30” Easy Bike Ride
Rx’d Stretching