As humans we are very habitual creatures and a lot of our habits are ingrained, unconscious behaviours – we don’t want to do them necessarily but we do, automatically.
Have you ever set your mind to a task that you will do at lunchtime, afternoon, evening or the next day only to completely forget it? Why does that happen? It happens because we are at the mercy of an ingrained behaviour. In neurolinguistic programming (NLP) terms we are simply following a strategy that we have followed, adapted and followed again over our lifetimes. So throwing in something different to our usual routine simply won’t usually happen!
How about this, “why does this keep happening to me?” Have you ever asked yourself that question? In this instance it’s another strategy, this one for a given part of your life and it is probably a malfunctioning one if you keep getting frustrated with results.
This could be anything from missing your favourite bus every morning to never agreeing or finding fault with a particular type of colleague no matter what company to always self-sabotaging in your love-life! In these instances you have a strategy for each situation and it either works or it doesn’t!
In the gym, in your training, your running, yoga, tennis or whatever it is you do, you will be deploying the same strategy time and again – trust me on this!
Once we adopt a strategy for anything we get into habitual behaviours that may work for us but generally do not. Do you run the same route every time (your “favourite” run)? Do you do the same yoga class with the same instructor (your favourite one) every time? The same routines in the gym (leg day, chest and bi’s day etc)? What about tennis or squash or whatever sport, do you play the same way each time and each time get frustrated at always missing a particular tennis shot or playing the same golf hole badly again, every time?
Our bodies are programmed time and again to repeat movements. In the same way a bad squat pattern or bench press is repeated time and again, your body will finally give up and you will injure yourself – (You): I was just doing a squat, the same way I always do them. (Physio). Yeah, that’s why! If you keep repeating the same stroke in golf or tennis and it’s not a good movement pattern it simply will not work and you will miss the shot again and again!
In the gym or out running if we don’t mix things around we will get into similarly bad patterns and results will stagnate.
I tell my clients they will NEVER plateau. They are shocked by me making such a claim. How can I coach someone to never-ending gains? Programming and always mindful of repetitive strategies that do not serve us, that is how.
You as an individual need to be even more mindful of bad training habits.
Run a different route, do intervals, run for a set period stop and do some bodyweight exercises and repeat this a few times. Get onto YouTube and look at reasons why your backhand is not working and make it better! Mix up your gym sessions rep-wise, use more free weights and less (self-defeating) machines, add in some cardio around your lifting, do some burpees, do more push ups and pull-ups/hanging rows.
For you to be able to do any of the suggested variations you first must understand your strategies around your fitness and sports activities. This can only be done by doing some due-diligence around what you are doing now. Record keeping, reviewing this information and implementing a different strategy to mix things up. Then testing the new strategy and making modifications where necessary and retesting. And even if you “don’t like exercising” there’s definitely strategies to implement to begin “liking” it!
The key is in putting yourself out and doing some record-keeping, you might surprise yourself how repetitive (and counter-productive) your exercise “routine” really is.
Initiate variability into your training because right now you’re probably unaware of the degree to which you are in highly habitual exercise routines and how much they’re sabotaging your potential gains!
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