The 3 most common barriers to training AND how to solve

Being open as a boutique gym in Brisbane for close to 8 years now, and myself personally having coached hundreds of people over the past 18 years there are a few common themes I have seen that stop people from starting training.

The first barrier is time.   ‘I don’t have enough time to train’.   Most of us have said this before.   We have also heard the analogy ‘ we all have the same 24 hours in a day’.   Why is it that some ‘busy’ people still ‘find’ time to train and others don’t?

From my experience (not necessarily gospel) a big part to this is the mindset we have.   If we are by default someone that has a perfectionist streak or an ‘all or nothing’ mindset we may rationalise that unless the training can be x, y, z (insert your expectation) what is the point?   There is so much information these days that its easy to see that in order to get x we need to do ‘this ‘exact’ formula.   It sells.   What sells does not always take into the reality of peoples lives.   Here at The Wild Movement we have ‘Wild Commandments’ up in our reception area.  One of the rules is ‘something is always better than nothing’.

What this means when it comes to training is that the consistency of doing the thing will always beat doing the thing less often, but ‘perfectly’.   What this may look like practically could be a number of things.  Perhaps you have an upper body session scheduled with a main exercise and then 4 different other accessory exercises.   If it normally takes you 50 minutes to get through and you know you only have 20 minutes is it worth doing?   Context is important, but if you are prone to skipping a session altogther in this instance I can almost say with certainty that you are 100% best to Not skip the session altogether.   Some modifications I would make in this scenario (and have probably hundreds of times):

  • Do the main exercise still.  Make the first warm up set a hard working set.  Instead of taking 5-10 minutes to build up to your weight just start light but do lots of reps so you are still close to failure (even from the first set).   Add load each set and just drop the reps.  Your body doesn’t really care about how many reps you are doing at what weight.  The more important thing (at least for holding on or building muscle) is how close you are to failure on the set.   Instead of the main exercise potentially taking 15 minutes you can be done in 8 from start to finish.  Optimised? No, but better than nothing? Yes!!
  • Choose the 2 exercises out of 4 that you like the most (or for more points – that you need the most) and do them back to back.   Wrap it up with some maximum reps on your last sets and you will be finished in under 20 minutes including a warm up, no worries.  You will also have a healthy ‘pump’ which will give you some endorphins, some stimulis to grow or maintain muscle and be great for your mental health.  You were busy, you could have easily rationalised not doing the session, but you found a way forward.  This sets an important precedent for yourself.

Sometimes we have clients that train at 430am and they don’t have time to do a whole session still.   We don’t tell them not to come, we tell them ‘come and do what you can, until you need to go!’.

Another common barrier we see especially with working professionals and young parents is poor sleep.   I have been there myself (from kids and from my own demons!).  I totally get this one, but it also can be solved by getting out of the same ‘perfectionist’ mindset.   I am someone that likes to train pretty hard most of the time as many of us do.   If you are going through a long bout of poor sleep though it is not sustainable to keep this approach however.   During these times, especially if it’s a chronic period it is all about the goldilocks effect.  Go too hard and you will just run yourself into the ground.   You don’t have infinite resources to use for recovery and sleep is the biggest part to the equation.   It’s not uncommon for injuries to occur or niggles to start shining through at these times.   Do too little though (including not training altogether) and it is likely that your mental health will take a dive if exercise has been part of your life.  This goldilocks amount is going to be different for everyone.   For me when I was in an 8 week period of very poor to little sleep I made sure I still did something every day.   Some days it was sitting on my air dyne bike out in the sun for 15 minutes, other days it was doing a shorter than usual strength session (but still pushing hard on my sets).   This approach for me personally made me feel like I was doing enough to ‘maintain’ my fitness and body composition.  This made me feel good, resilient and not as worried about the effect that the poor sleep was having on me.   If it it just one night of poor sleep you could do a couple of things:   Push through and complete the session as usual.  Know this okay and you will probably still perform well, but it will feel harder and will take a little more out of your recovery ‘tank’.  Another suggestion is to cut down the volume of the session by doing less sets per exercise.  If there are three work sets on the program, do 2 and either have more rest, or get it done quicker.   This will work into the mindset that ‘Something is better than nothing’ and will not add quite as much systemic fatigue.

 

The last barrier I want to mention that comes up some times talking to prospective clients, or just people around us is money.  ‘I don’t have the money to train’.   I see this one as the least legitimate excuse of all.  If there is some will to train it’s not hard to see ways you can do it for free. Yes having a coach is nice.  It may fast forward your results vastly But a big part of training is the health we get from just doing the movement practice.

Some of my personal favourite ways to train without access to a gym include:

  • An outdoor kettle bell workout.   Invest in even one kettle bell and you could do a whole 30 minute full body strength workout, no worries.   Look up Pavel Tsatsouline for some inspiration on this one.
  • Hill Sprints.  Find a hill and sprint up it, walk back.   For more strength and power adaptations focus on short and fast.  For more of an aerobic effect choose a longer distance.
  • Bodyweight park session.   Almost any kids playground can be turned into equipment to do things such as step ups, chin up progressions, push up progressions and core movements. 

    Using the park whilst the kids playground

    One Kettlebell, one workout.

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you have found this to be helpful in some small way today.   If you would like more ideas on how to remove one of these barriers for YOU please feel free to book in for a no obligations chat with us Here. 

 

Yours in movement, Luke

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When intensity and volume just DON’T matter

As coaches we know that progressive overload matters if you want to get stronger or fitter.   We build this into your programming at The Wild Movement so that in the long term you get the results you are after.

However – There is a time when the variables that largely make up progressive overload really don’t matter!

When you find yourself thinking that conditions aren’t ideal for training and you should ‘probably just skip it’ is when intensity and volume don’t matter.

Let’s say you have been sick and you know you won’t be able to train as you would be able to when you were rested well and healthy.    In this instance it’s easy to think there is no point because the intensity (amount of weight on the bar as a % to your heaviest for 1 rep) will be too heavy or the volume (sets and reps) will be too taxing.    That may just be the correct thinking – its not always wise to try and push yourself so hard when the recovery metrics aren’t there. 

When it’s ‘go hard or miss a session’ there is a sweet spot in between that produces long term success

 

What we do suggest though is to simply disregard the numbers, put on your training clothes and tick a box for the day.

So many of our positive habits and behaviours are anchored by our training and these don’t know the difference how ‘hard’ we push – they just need it to happen for us to keep the momentum going.   

So next time you want to skip the workout or go the extreme other end of the habit that you want to do because conditions aren’t perfect ask yourself can you simply turn up, complete your work with perfect form and tick a box you can be a little better overall come tomorrow?   

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Why food shouldn’t be your prime concern to lose weight

Being in the fitness industry now for over a decade I can confidently say that the large majority of people that I talk to would like to be at least a little leaner.

 

This is the result of so many different things including (but not limited to): how we are educated around health and wellness, the medical  system (not health) we have, the conflicting interests of ‘health’ and supplement companies, the time pressures we face in the 21st century and mainstream media to name a few.  

 

This epidemic of our populations being overweight may be contributed to by the above but then on an individual level it seems to always come back to the notion that what we are eating is the problem and is making us overweight and unhappy.   

 

Although I am not here to say that what we eat does not in fact have a physical and psychological effect on our bodies – I am here more to say that there’s a deeper rooted problem than just eating too much.  

 

Our problem isn’t food..

 

What we need to understand is that our beliefs affect our thoughts, which affect our emotions, which affect our actions.   

 

You can think of eating as the end of the chain – our actions.  This means our eating is affected by our emotions, which are affected by our thoughts, which are affected by our beliefs.

 

So if we go back one level to our emotions it becomes clear that what we eat (the actions we take) is affected by how we feel.  I’m sure you can connect to this notion.  Perhaps when you are feeling down you reach for something that makes you feel happy (quick serotonin hit).    On this level we should be looking at all the parts of who we are.  

 

We all spend a large amount of time working so it makes sense that if we are not happy with our work our emotions will lead us to eating not aligned with how we would like.   

 

This is the same with our relationships – intimate and not.  If these aren’t in order and making your life better than it is likely you won’t be eating well.  

It’s not just about food..

This also brings me to the point that although everything that affects our emotions are going to affect our actions, I believe that this lack – be it connection, fulfilment, alignment or any other disconnect with your life is actually going to play just as big a role in your overall health as the food itself anyway.   

 

If we want to go right back to the root problem (always a good idea) instead of just dealing with the superficial band aid of ‘eating better’ we come up against our beliefs.  Who am I? What am I worthy of? What is my place in the world?  

 

These existential questions that place us in the world are largely answered by our child selves.   The problem is they are often not updated to help us as adults.  

 

 A good place to start is to bring awareness to how you are feeling when you reach for the food.   Is it a void that you are trying to fill? Is it boredom? Sadness? Even happiness we celebrate with food and drink in our culture.   

 

Once you start getting some awareness then look for some patterns and look at the areas of your life that you could be more satisfied with and start taking some small steps to head towards a more positive place in these areas.  

 

We all know that the salad is probably better for us than the burger and chips so let’s work towards understanding ourselves on a deeper level.   

 

If this article resonates with you please share it to anyone that you think it may help.   We want to help more people feel their best in a sustainable manner.

 

Written by Luke Sharp, Owner of The Wild Movement.

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Does variety lead to greater results for you?

Most gyms will advertise how their sessions are ‘always different’ or  have ‘variety every day’. The rationalisation is to ‘keep the body guessing’. This concept can work in the short term, especially if your training level is very low, but what will work better for everyone in the long term is following a system.   The system in strength training is called periodization. This really just means organising and planning your training ahead of time.

 

This system will allow us to be systematic in nature to ensure we are forcing the body to adapt to more work over time. The only way to do this is to keep many of the variables the same (such as exercise selection) and increase one prescription variable such as load, volume, range of movement or density.   If we change everything to call it ‘keeping the body guessing’ we lose the approach of building one layer upon the next.   The biggest key element to you being in the best shape of your life is being the strongest you have been relative to your body weight. If you increase your 5 rep max squat or your 5 rep max dip to the highest it’s been at a consistent body weight you can almost guarantee you are in the best shape of your life. There is no chance to do this without some level of progressive overload.

If you are training by yourself – a training journal should be a staple

Following some planning to get ongoing results doesn’t mean you have to do the same thing for months on end.   Psychological factors are also important to take into account.   We use 4 week blocks which we find is a happy medium for those that are less comfortable with change and those that tend to get bored.   Four weeks allows us to learn the movement and feel it out in week 1 and then build upon it for three more weeks. The next block will then change all the assistant exercises and often change the main exercise slightly – say from a back squat to a front squat.   Each 2 blocks (8 weeks) we retest all our main movements to get objective feedback on what we are doing. 90% of the time our members see themselves get stronger. The outcome? More empowerment and more buy in.   This just breeds long term success.

 

If you want to know more about our system of training (not just exercising) then please send us a message or email.   You may think ‘I’m not ready for this training’ but I guarantee we can scale it to you so you can progress safely over time.

 

Happy lifting,

 

Luke

 

 

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The Unsexy truth about losing weight long term

Although we don’t market ourselves as a gym that’s about aesthetics – the large proportion of clientele that come to us (and any gym) still would like to lose body fat and possibly gain some muscle.  A big problem in today’s society, that is being played out by the fitness industry so well is that people have been told that they need to exercise more and eat less to lose weight.   It is true and there is indisputable evidence to show that energy in versus energy out needs to be swinging the right way to lose weight (or gain weight).    However this truth has also led us astray in how we go about it which is affecting our ability to be lean the way we would like long term.

The problem stems from the fact that we already live in a society that most of us feel is pushing us to do more and be more.   More time at work.  More deadlines.  More pushing through the day with back to back meetings and having no time to eat, let alone take a deep breath or get outside.   More pressure to meet the big mortgage repayments to live in the big house that we need.  To drive the nice car that we need.    So what happens when we believe that we need to start pushing ourselves more by ‘smashing ourselves’ at the gym?

What happens is that we join a gym and have this association that the more we sweat, the higher our heart rate, the more we are sore, the better our weight loss will be.   This may get us some short term wins (great!) but in the long term all we are really doing at this point is:

  • Adding more stress and more feeling of pressure to our already long list of pressures
  • We are putting band aids on the root problem
  • We are trying to make up for lost time (not possible)

The main problem with the above approach is simply we don’t have the foundation to support this type of training where the goal is to ‘flog’ yourself.   The foundation of consistent quality sleep (7-9 hours), of stress management and of sound nutrition.  When we don’t have the above foundation solid and we add in regular intense training to lose weight the result is normally one that doesn’t stay for long.

So what is the solution?  Moving and training is obviously a good thing.   Living in extremes is not (long term).  The approach we encourage our new clients to take:

  • Start with 2-3 Strength sessions per week.  We do a thorough initial consultation and then ensure they start conservative on their strength numbers so we can progress over time.
  • Know that most of our adaptations happen from the strength training and not from how much you were out of breath the whole session.
  • Focus on 1-2 habits with nutrition or sleep or stress management to start building the foundation whilst introducing training without the training overtaking your life.
  • Once the above habits are who you are then the next steps can be looked at.
  • Setting some clear expectations of where they would like to be in 2 months and one year from now.
  • Knowing that small consistent steps daily are much more powerful than big jumps away from who you are weekly or monthly.

By turning around the focus from having to do more and ‘smash one self’ to actually only encouraging a couple of sessions per week to start and then putting in extra effort into building the foundation allows the client to change their environment and make sustainable changes.

We have used this method from when we opened our doors almost three years ago and is why many of our clients who “weren’t gym people” are still with us three years later and have completely changed their beliefs and feelings around who they are and what they are capable of doing.

If you would like to know more or start changing your life and health you can book in for an initial consultation and 2 trial sessions on us.   You can do this by clicking HERE. 

 

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