For those that aren’t aware I operate a Mobile Personal Training service, conducting most of my sessions outdoors - 12 months a year. Due to the fact that we live in the UK this means that there is a strong chance at some point me and my clients end up having to do our training sessions in wet weather. This came up in conversation recently when somebody said to me that training outdoors in January “didn’t sound like much fun” and that there was “no way they would be able to do it”.
Now there’s two issues with what this person said, but I’ll deal with the fun part first. Before I go into this more I want to make it clear that I’m not an advocate for making exercise as unpleasant as possible. In fact I always do my best to ensure that my training sessions are varied, interesting and of an appropriate intensity for each individual client - Despite what some fit pros suggest exercising to the point of vomiting isn’t a good philosophy for long term success. But here’s the caveat - my clients don’t train with me for fun, they train with me for results. In my experience the problem many people have with the whole “exercise should be fun” attitude is that if you rely on training being fun to motivate you, then what are you going to do when it isn’t? Perhaps you’re tired, you’ve had a stressful day, or just not feeling it? So you decide it’s not going to be much fun and bin it off, along with your consistency which is the single most important factor for success. Answer me this - would you consistently go to work everyday if you relied on it to be fun? Of course you wouldn’t, you go to work for an outcome i.e. to get paid. Now that doesn’t mean that neither exercise nor work can never be fun, but at the end of the day your priority is the outcome and so whether you have fun or not is irrelevant. Make sense?
The second issue with what the person said was that there was “no way they would be able” to exercise outdoors in bad weather. Now there is a big difference between not being able to and not wanting to, in truth the vast majority of the time when it comes to exercise it’s the latter. I never take an issue with people when they say that they don’t want to exercise, or eat healthily because at the end of the day they are being honest and I respect that. But when people start talking about not being able to get fit, or lose weight, now we have a problem because this dis-empowers others from achieving their goals if they start to believe this to be true. In reality the best thing about health and fitness is that anybody can do anything - you aren’t limited by your genetics, or your upbringing, but rather by your choices and your choices alone.
As I said before being consistent in your training and nutrition is the key to success. So if you’re lacking a structured exercise routine and need some help getting started on your health and fitness journey, then please feel free to get in touch anytime