Consistency & Building New Good Habits

If you’re a creature of habit like me, it can be the best thing ever, or your downfall. The key is to recognize your own habits and artificially create new positive ones.

Consistency is the main thing that’ll get you where you want to be. Anyone and everyone who has ever failed on a fitness plan or on a diet plan has failed because they haven’t been consistent. Without consistency, any gains will be much much slower, and most people will quit early because they’re not seeing gains and not seeing any payback from their work.

You probably need at least 3 weeks of a consistent habit before you’ll see any real difference. Most quit in that 3 weeks and convince themselves that it wasn’t working. It’s only the ones that get past that ‘quiet gains period’ that then suddenly rocket in motivation because they start to correlate the gains they can see with the work they are doing. They train harder, then eat better, and they reach their goals quicker. There’s nothing more motivational than knowing you were responsible for your own progress.

Getting through that 3-4 weeks is hard, especially if you’ve picked all the wrong things to do – ie things you don’t necessarily enjoy or like doing.

If you hate cardio, and a training programme or PT says “do more cardio”, you’ll give it a go for a while but your sub-conscious will do everything in it’s power to take you away from it. A few weeks or months down the line you won’t be doing more cardio and you won’t necessarily know why so you’ll mark it as a fail and you’ll feel crap. But it’ll simply be because you just don’t like cardio!

Equally, if you love cardio – make sure your routine has enough of it so you continue to get your buzz from it. Mix it up, don’t let it go stale. Do anything and everything to keep that love of cardio.

Same goes for weight training, stretching, bag work, etc etc. Try and do a bit of everything, and don’t be afraid to squeeze in a bit of something you don’t like – it’ll strengthen your mind to conquer things you don’t like. I used to hate burpees but forced myself to do them because I knew they’d feature in the blackbelt grading – oddly, I began to actually like them, and have continued to like them ever since! But as a rule, always steer more towards the stuff you actually do like – after all you’re doing this because you like it and because you want to, not because you’re an Olympic athlete whose livelihood depends on it or because someone else is telling you to do it. Training should be fun, and if it’s not, you’re simply doing it wrong.

Hopefully we do it right.... give us 3 or 4 weeks of your consistent attention and then decide. You won't look back, promise.

Below are some new habits to try and build on top of your current training routine. These are aimed at changing your mindset slightly, and pushing ‘training’ into your everyday life rather than just being a focus for a few solitary hours a week while you’re officially ‘working out’:

> If you have a staircase that you climb several times a day (like at home, or at work), do it in slow steps like lunges . Probably 2 or 3 steps at a time, with a full standup motion on each step. Doing it slow stops you using the momentum of throwing your body upwards and it becomes a strength exercise, one that only lasts about 10 seconds, but you’ll do it several times a day and it’ll engage one of the biggest muscle groups in your body. Yes, you might look a bit weird at work though – choose your moments wisely! Your family already know you’re weird so they won’t stop you at home ;)

> Take the stairs instead of a lift. And never stand still on an escalator – walk up it.

> Do some workouts early in the morning before anyone else is out of bed . It’s strangely satisfying once you get over the shock of getting up in the dark. Knowing everyone else is asleep gives you a sense that ‘you’re ahead of the pack’ and also means there’s no guilt like when you want to have a workout but your kids want you to play with them instead. You’ll get a massive sense of self-belief and self-appreciation by getting up for a reason that is totally for you, instead of getting up for work or to sort the kids or whatever. It’s the most un-selfish selfish thing you can do for yourself!

> Do 20 pushups and 20 squats every morning , or at lunchtime before you eat. It’ll take less than 2 minutes out of your day – but the kickstart it’ll do for your muscles and mobility is incredible after a few weeks. Stick with it, and think about increasing the habit to 20 in the morning and 20 in the afternoon. Then move it up slowly to 30.

> Keep 2 reps in the bank . When weight training, some PTs will say ‘go to exhaustion’ or you might feel like you’re cheating yourself if you don’t push to failure. But, those last failure reps could be the ones that give you those horrific DOMS or even cause injury which means you need extra days before your next workout. If you leave 2 reps in the bank, you’ll definitely hit the next session on time and you’ll be feeling good about it. Two consecutive sessions on the right days with 2 reps in the bank, are always going to be better than one session which took you to failure but then delayed or limited the second session. Remember you’re not punishing yourself, you’re progressing yourself.

> Don’t judge a calorie deficit by one day, judge it by the full week . Lots of people are in a deficit Monday to Friday and can’t work out why they aren’t losing weight. But they’re ignoring that the 2 weekend days are so far out of the deficit that they’re overshadowing the 5 good days. Look at the week in total and you’ll get a better view of reality. Habits will always be different on the weekend, that’s just life (doesn’t mean they need to be bad habits, but they’ll always be different). Judging from Saturday to Friday is often better than Monday to Sunday, because if you eat or drink like a lunatic at the weekend you’ve got the rest of the week to eat sensibly to recover. Whereas Monday to Sunday tracking means you’ll likely feel guilty for living a little at the weekend, and that’s not the goal right?

> Close your kitchen cupboard with slow-motion kicks . Yep, it’s another crazy one, but good fun and works on your control and accuracy.

Tim