You set yourself that goal you always wanted to get to or do. You are halfway there and everything stops!
Why?
Mainly because you’re lacking one of the 3 secrets I’m about to share with you!
Whether you’re training for a marathon, striving to shed weight, or aiming for more substantial arm muscles, there are three crucial elements you need to remain on track consistently. These elements are your guiding lights to draw nearer to your goal before accomplishing it and setting a new one.
In this article, I will unveil these three secrets to achieving your goal and demonstrate how you can apply them to the three distinct cases: Marathon Running, Muscle Building, and Weight Loss.
The Secret Pyramid
Okay, it’s not a Pyramid, it’s a triangle! Secret Pyramid just sounded like a better subtitle for this.
So here’s the pyramid (Triangle) that you have been waiting to see. We want to be as close to the middle as possible. Without 1 of the 3 secrets, the other pair will not work by themselves, for example. If you lack consistency your training & nutritional program will not matter! Neither will the accountability because you’re not consistently sticking to it! And vice versa.
Training & Nutrition
Now you need to have some sort of training and nutritional program to help you to get to that objective, but it needs to be relevant. There’s no point in training arms if you want to run a marathon, it just wouldn’t make sense. So get yourself a relevant plan which includes progressive overload or can be adapted to progress each time rather than doing the same 40kg squat for 3 sets of 10 reps every time you enter a gym and staying exactly the same strength. The more uncomfortable your body the better within reason if everything is a walk in the park we wouldn’t progress so a progress-able program is essential!
Nutrition
Similar to the above, nutrition is also a key 70% of your overall health and fitness goals. You wouldn’t have a keto diet to run a marathon or a calorie surplus to lose fat now, would you? so again we need a relevant diet plan or even a simple calorie count to stick to whilst you’re going forward towards this goal! Again, you need to revise this every now and then if your goal is something like fat loss as your BMR changes your deficit may need revising as well. Most of these plans training or nutritional wise can be done by myself, another PT, or by simply looking for a relevant program online to copy.
Accountability
Now this can be up for debate but personally, this is a big one for most people! Our minds work on different motivations whether it be intrinsic or extrinsic and I’m going to talk a little bit about both of these and different examples to overcome these depending on which motivates you personally, If you don’t know which motivates you then just try one or two of the things I have suggested and whichever category they filter into more than likely will be your motivation. Note that also your motivation can be both intrinsic and extrinsic, but this is just an indication of which one suits you better if you don’t already know.
Intrinsic
Intrinsic motivations can be defined as doing an activity for the satisfaction rather than the reward. Or, in simpler terms, you’re not doing an activity for the external rewards your doing it for the journey whether it be for social aspects, enjoyment or just to simply feel good about yourself. If you find that you’re a person who goes to the gym or keeps fit because you want to feel good or have enjoyment in doing so you will find that most of the time you are intrinsically motivated. In this case, you probably won’t be reading this article because you have to, your motivation is that you enjoy reading and learning about different things.
Extrinsic
Extrinsic motivation, yes you guessed it, is the opposite of intrinsic your motivated by the external rewards of doing something, hence you sign up to do a marathon for charity because you will feel good after you have done it that you have helped towards a charity donation. If you find you like to train for the reward of looking good in a few months for a holiday then chances are your motivation is extrinsic.
How can this help me?
Finding out what motivates you is vital. As a personal trainer and online coach, I find that most of my clients will rely on me as an extrinsic motivation. If they don’t work hard outside of the gym or in it they let me down and they don’t want to upset me. Work on the one which shines for you whether your goal is to run a marathon, or sign up for a charity event if you are extrinsically motivated so you reward a good cause for your goal. Likewise, if you enjoy football, sign up for a 5-a-side team because you enjoy it!
Use this little tool to help you identify a possible reward either intrinsic or extrinsic that is based upon your goal to been you motivated to stay on track with it. Without a reward and a clear training and nutritional program relevant to the goal the less likely you will be to achieve it.
Consistency
Perhaps the part I preach about a lot, the top two are nothing without consistency. If you stick to your diet 50% of the week and the other 50% you don’t, do you realistically expect to achieve your goal? No! I like to tie consistency in a lot with motivation they seem to go hand in hand a lot of the time. Without a clear set reward to look towards your consistency can tend to veer off from the target which we don’t want. When thinking about skipping that workout or eating that dessert on the menu, focus on the reward, and you are more likely to not skip that workout or not order than dessert.
Without a specific program or motivation, consistency is useless. What are you consistent for? running 5k every day consistently and your goal is to win a powerlifting competition won’t particularly bring you closer to that goal even training once a week still won’t bring you closer to it either.
All the above
Now you know the secret 3 steps, make sure to implement them to your goals accordingly and properly. Without ticking these 3 boxes (Relevant program, Consistency, Motivation) you are more than likely to not get to your goal anytime soon, by crossing them off you can get to your goal quicker.
Got a goal in mind? Don’t know where to start? Then start with me!
