Three Principles to Guide Your Long-Term Fitness Results

Too often fitness is overthought. Elaborate periodization, conjugate strength methods, and high-volume/high-intensity are a few of the many common techniques. While all are effective and necessary for specific goals, the average person is seeking to “Workout More Often,” which is to say, more than not at all.

I have learned over 20 years in this industry that there are three simple steps to the long game of your best health in self through fitness. If you will apply them, regardless of the seasons in life, fitness will never escape you.

+Principle 1: Remove the emotions. Often the decision to “get fit” or lose weight is attached to emotion. The New Year’s resolution is a national declaration of “Let’s do this!” until February when it’s a mere mumble of “maybe next year.” The decision to get fit must be larger than emotion and attached to a specific tangible purpose.

Be it fit for life as a spouse or parent, a role model of discipline, or a model as a steward of health, fitness as a lifestyle only works when it’s established for a purpose greater than mere emotion. There will be times you don’t “feel like it” and it’s those moments you need the big picture to carry you forward.

+Principle 2: Consistent is better than specific. Focus on doing “anything” daily. Structure isn’t about the program itself, rather it’s the discipline of movement daily. This combats complacency, keeps the blood pumping, settles the stress, and provides the mindset that fitness is a part of your daily life and is therefore a lifestyle. The simple mantra is: “do less, better” consistently.

+Principle 3: Sweat the small stuff. Fitness has developed over the years to become a sport itself. It’s awesome to see the variations of fitness passions and the communities that it creates, however, if the focus is always on “what’s next” and simple competition you’ll eventually quit… the journey will be forsaken for the destination.

You have to “sweat the small stuff” and celebrate your victories along the way. If you lost 10 pounds, dropped a pant size, PR’d a lift, time, or distance, take a moment to recognize your work and celebrate. After all, the journey is the lifestyle.