EXECUTIVE HEALTH & FITNESS PT#2

So how are we going with the journey towards your goals?

In the first part of this series (twas a very long time ago?), we touched on how to begin to correctly formulate your goals. You may have already devisee a great plan. Here are some helpful tips then, to firmly launch you upon your trajectory path towards your ambitions.

Sports psychologists have traditionally helped athletes reach top levels by setting three types of goals which are similar to the following;

1. Big dreams or long term goals
2. Process goals towards these dreams eg mid term goals
3. Performance goals (aka short term goals)

Rome wasn't built in a day-so please don't expect that you will achieve your big wins in a day either.

Lots of little steps will be more acceptable for your brain and body to surpass.

What do the experts say? Michael Johnson, discussed his successes to journalists, you would expect that he would say things came pretty easily with him, yet this would be an incorrect assumption. He said that to achieve his big dreams, he mainly focussed on taking each day at a time. He worked on his process and performance goals during each & every training session(eg-> baby steps AKA short term goals) and believe it not, pushing towards his success even as one of the worlds top athletes , was a struggle

MOTIVATION - THE KEY TO SUCCESS.

Primarily athletes use the sports psychology principles of motivation as the stepping stone to achieving their goals. Motivation is to be moved to do something (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Motivation is what will form the back bone, it will essentially give you the key to unlock your potential, whilst helping to drive you strongly forthward towards your goal achievement. This is why it is very important to choose your goals carefully, they HAVE to come from the heart, because if they don't, you run the risk of abandoning ship very quickly, due to a lack of motivation.

Recognise also that attaining the big dreams or the small ones aint necessarily going to be easy, be prepared to go through the tough stuff, knowing that you will probably come out of it feeling like you can take on the world.

So it's OK to struggle? It is absolutely ok to struggle we humans, were all born to struggle, and we were also born to overcome obstacles out of acts of survival. What is important here, is that studies have shown that top athletes, are really good at breaking their big goals down into smaller pieces to allow them to maintain focus, motivation and success!
One of the major comparatives between human life now and back in our primal days, is the amount of choices we have these days. Back in the day, our primal ancestors didn't really have the choice of a chicken sandwich or chicken salad or giving up on their goals (e.g catching thier prey) altogether! They had to eat to survive, when they failed to catch their prey they just has to get right back up and keep at it...otherwise starve?

Whilst I do not advocate the starvation method, can we learn a lesson from our ancestors? Of course we can! Maybe we can just assume the people of the world have gone soft because of the changes in life? We could also adopt a 3D approach to our understanding, realising that in some ways because of the variety of choices we have these days, we are potentially challenged in different ways nowadays, compared to that of our ancestors. Hence we must work hard to overcome these differing struggles.

Just quickly, reminiscing on the first part to this series (yes... I know, clearly this was a long time ago) ***please note that it is important to know yourself and be honest with yourself so that you can apply the principles which are most relevant for yourself.***

Once you have established those exact ambitions of yours, the ones which put a really big fire in your belly, you can apply a specific action plan to launch you off the blocks, on to the race track so you can be assured that you hit the ground running.

ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION

Achievement Motivation is the notion of the need to achieve whilst avoiding failure. Top athletes have been found to possess high levels of achievement motivation. So how can we make ouselves even more motivated to achieve?
Most of us fall into the category of requiring tasks that are challenging yet attainable, they must have at least a 50% chance of success. Rememeber this when setting your all important smart goal plan.My fellow group fitness instructors and personal trainers please note the following: Research shows that we are likely to be more motivated by a task that pleases us out of enjoyment of doing the task itself, rather than doing a task out of external rewards such as praise, results etc (Ryan & Deci 2000, Gegne & Deci, 2005). Yet another reason why a well devised achievement plan is invaluble, and to the fit-pro's how can you use this powerful fact this to refine your coaching skills during your classes and/or PT sessions?

FIRST AND FOREMOST .......TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE

Locus of Control (LOC)

Rotter (1966, 1971) believed that the reasons (or attributions) one provides us on past successes and failures of situations or tasks reveals whether a person possesses more of an internal or external LOC. Two factors we might attribute to success or failure are;

INTERNAL LOC; such as the effort one places on a task. For Eg- one might attribute the hard work they placed on a task as a factor which influenced their success.

EXTERNAL LOC; luck or destiny. Eg one might attribute their success because they were lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

LOC influences our behaviours during future situations In very general terms, it is usually more favourable to possess a more internal LOC, because then we take ownership of mistakes and can learn from the mistakes, allowing us to become more successful the next time we participate within tasks. According to the research within this area, some of the characteristics of an individual who possesses an internal LOC dominance are the following

•Persists in the face of failure
•Welcomes new challenges
•Is proactive wants to overcome shortcomings
•Takes ownership within their lives
•Copes will with stress as less susceptible to anxiety
•Experiences success often

External LOC dominant person may possess the following characteristics

•Tends to give up in the face of failure & is less persistent at tasks
•More susceptible to anxiety and as a result does not cope well with stress
• Avoidance of new challenges
•Feels like they don't need to be proactive and doesn't take ownership of life's shortfalls (fate might lead the way...)
•Feels experience of success is rare

Can you be really honest & identify which of the above lists sounds more like you? The good news is & important to point out is that a dominance in either internal or external LOC can be interchangeable and often changes according to situations during the lifespan. Possessing either of these locus of controls will effect you emotional responses to situations. And it is these emotions which may be causing a hindrance to your success. If we can identify our emotional responses it will help us to pin point our weaknesses and ultimately then provide us with the knowledge of how to move forward.

For example, when Individuals with an internal locus of control experience success their emotional response to this success may render pride, confidence competence & self satisfaction. Whilst individuals with an external locus of control might feel gratitude, thankfulness or blame their success on luck.

When those with an internal locus of control experience failure they tend to feel guilt, shame, incompetence and/or depression, whilst their external counterparts experience anger surprise & astonishment in the same circumstances.

All is not lost you can change your dominant LOC with practice. Some basic recommendations are to take ownership of tasks in your life, try some new tasks which you would not normally undertake and assess the areas in your life (eg friends work hobbies) which are reinforcing your external LOC and try to change these situations to activities which allow you to be abundant within your internal LOC. In relation to goal achievement, you must commit to assessing yourself so that you can see where you are sitting during different situations. For example assess yourself on your short term and mid term goals-what are the reasons you are giving for your successes and failures? and what are your emotional responses to your successes and failures? It is imperitive as it will allow awareness of your current state so you can adjust where neccasary...easier said than done right? RIGHT! Practice makes perfect.Also, by applying specific principles as suggested within this article can help you to irradiate some of the stress and or anxiety you might currently be experiencing. The exercises shown will help to power you up allowing you to achieve greater wins in your life:

CONFIDENCE & PMA (Positive Mental Attitude).

Simulating the attitudes of top athletes seems to be a winning approach!

Athletes possess high levels of self confidence, this has been shown to lead to reduced anxiety during stressful situations, allowing for first class performances. Confidence is a real positive trait, & will ultimately draw other positive confident successful people around you. When confident positive people are around you, your body and mind can't help but to absorb this energy which helps you to power up your being to an even greater you. So now we know why possessing confidence, in your ability to flourish is of paramount importance. Positiveness & Confidence is not always innate. Even if we are blessed by being born with confidence, this trait will still need to be nourished & trained. Confidence can be trained by using positive self talk, imagery techniques and relaxation. If these techniques sound a little sissy to you, then stop & think again! Athletes use these all the time to help them produce elite performances. If they use them they gotta be good. Right?

During my 3rd part to this series I will discuss applied sports psychology in a little more detail so that you have a few tools up your sleeve just incase you need them....so stay tuned and keep working hard!

EXECUTIVE HEALTH AND FITNESS

How can we manipulate a busy life to achieve better quality fitness and health? Look at my 3 part series to get the results you want, even with a busy life!

Let me guess- you have set your h&f goals, you set off strongly and within two weeks you feel like you have fallen flat on your face because your work has got in the way in some shape or form? If you’re a work-a-holic, this is all very well for your financial fitness, however without being physically and therefore mentally fit, how will you sustain your keen work ethic and thus bank balance? Quite simply you will burn out much quicker than your fitter counterparts, not what you want? Then keep reading…….

THE ‘POWER OF HOW’.

Let’s face it, most of us face the simple summation of working far too hard. The sum of long hours divided over very long hours = a very tired and worn out you! This is NO good because we often tend to look at life in the short term.

In this day and age, our work/life balance is completely out of whack, we work ultra long hours to rake the cash in, whilst forgetting about ourselves, our health, fitness and quality of life in the long run. We run ourselves into the floor and feel utterly exhausted by the end of the day, leaving no YOU time. I’ve worked with many clients, whereby work is first and looking after themselves comes second- as a PT I know the more you try to preach to these little devils (you- the client) the more they’re (YOU’RE) less-likely to change. If you are a client of a PT does this sound like YOU? You’d better keep reading, if that’s a yes….

In all seriousness, if the latter does sounds like you – don’t worry, it can be rectified but you must act sooner rather than later. For sure! You probably have set your goals properly, but what you probably haven’t done is been smart about exactly how you will go about accomplishing your goals. Whatever you do during your plan of attack DO-NOT underestimate the power of ‘how I will achieve this’, as it forms fundamental part of the equation to success.

Most busy people fail to see the bigger picture, when going about making the effort to make those all important changes to health and fitness. As a result, they don’t think about the power of how &; forget to refer back to their set game plan. WARNING! During stressful times this can lead fatal errors, which can means that unfortunately the efforts made just don’t crack the nut, and the best option seems to be to give up all together?! Shame on you! (only joking!).

If you ever feel like giving up –remind yourself of how happy you are in your current situation, and how much you want to change it. Remember that your health and fitness essentially forms the backbone of our productivity. Whether you’re a full-time mum or high city roller, to be productive, is in essence to become more successful at whatever you do. The stronger your body is, the stronger your mind is, and visa versa. You know that you gotta get back up when you fall, and you gotta make it better next time…..but how?

As a busy person, it is likely that you are also a competitive person to some degree? Right? Well, in terms of your health and fitness it’s time to get off your desk and take a look at what the competitive people (athletes) do within this field and …..copy them! Let’s face it, It makes sense adopt similar protocols as athletes since they tend to be the most successful beings at this game.

Now I’m talking about using techniques used by sports psychologists (no judgment yet!), Adopting the basic principles used by sports psychologists on top athletes leads us forwards in making the equation of health and fitness, plus of course work balance swing in our favour, ultimately allowing us to gain remarkable results. This is what I call the ‘Win –Win’ game plan. We simply use the basic principles which top athletes acquire to gain a win, yet we adapt them for us (the executive) making our fitness bank look much more lucrative in the short & long of it (the other win). This equals success, and we can’t argue with that.

YOUR STARTING BLOCKS

Before we begin to think about the journey toward each goal we must first have a really good think about exactly what it is we want to achieve; NOW PLEASE VISUALISE- this is you in your starting blocks before the gunshot in your 100m sprint. What position would you like to finish? What do you want out of your race? When do you want to cross the line? Notice this is your race, not your friends/family member etc etc, this is about what you want to achieve for YOU! If you can apply this imperative recommendation you will go about your task with much more purpose and you are less likely to trip over/allow the hurdles to hinder you along the way.

My top recommendation is to make goal setting real visual priority for yourself, if that is- you are serious about making those winning changes to your health and fitness. What I imply by this is to write your goals onto something permanent and place it in a common area to you. Somewhere, where you have no choice but to refer back to your ambitions. Did you guess that means pen and paper just won’t cut it? Well………you were right! Throw that paper idea into a ball and out of the window. It won’t work! Write down three of your major goals on a canvas for example, using big bold staring you in the face writing. Hook your master piece on to a blatant area of your office/home – the more you are reminded of it, the more you are likely you will act, inching you further towards your desired outcome. Make sense? Then what are you waiting for? (oh, and if you have any better ideas where you write your goals I would love to here them email me on bodywizeaustralia@gmail.com)

Be really honest with yourself, write how important is it to reach your goals on a scale of 1 to 10?. If you are listing anything less than a score of 9 then maybe you need to consider changing the goals you have written to increase your motivation to achieve your goal. Be specific and know where you are starting on your map. For example ,If your goals concern shape improvement/strength you will need to be assessed to see where exactly you are sitting now on your map, in order to see where you want to stand later.

Thanks for reading so far. Stay tuned for the second in my 3 part series where I will be discussing the specific principles underpinning the ‘power of how’ - you will go about achieving your goals