Overcoming Your Fitness Issues

Have you ever set a big goal for yourself and tried your absolute hardest to achieve it….and failed? I speak to people all of the time about their goals and about their successes and failures. I have seen some correlations that may be helpful to you when you set out to achieve your next great life goal. I am going to keep this focused on fitness but many of these topics have strong ties to goals in all walks of your life. 

1.       Overtraining the wrong movements:  I see kids and adults come in and talk about wanting badly to improve one aspect of their fitness ability. A big one I hear is when somebody wants to improve their running speed. Most people believe that they need to run every day in order to get faster. Instead of running you more I would figure out where your run breaks down. Do you have tight hips? Perhaps you have tight hamstrings. Or, maybe you strike your foot on the ground in the wrong position. I take the time to help them understand exactly what is wrong and then we attack the exact issue. If your left hip is too tight and your right hip is too loose we will do a combination of stretching and loosening your left hip and strengthening your right. When that imbalance gets cleaned up I’ll retest your run and see if you are able to pick up your pace. At that point I’ll look for a new issue that is holding you back from reaching another improvement. Take the time to figure out what is actually wrong, from an acute point of view, and fix it instead of overtraining your body and likely injuring the muscles that are tight or loose.

2.       Setting the wrong types of goals:  Tt is important to set tangible, understandable goals. When you know exactly what it is that you need to achieve you can set your plan of how to achieve it. When you set a goal such as “I’m going to get in shape,” what does that mean? When are you in shape? It is too open ended, you will never know if or when you have achieved it. Instead, why not go for the goal “I’m going to run a 7 minute mile and be able to do 40 pushups from your feet without stopping.” There is no mistaking those goals. Either you achieve them or you don’t. Take the guess work out and get specific with your goals and you will remain on track.

3.       Not being serious about what you want to achieve:  It is obvious to me when somebody wants to make improvements and when somebody simply wants to feel better about themselves. I always encourage my athletes to sit down and think hard about if they are willing to earn the goals that they set. You are no less of a person if you aren’t willing to earn a major goal. I think that you would save yourself a great deal of hassle if you would set a smaller goal that you know you are willing to work for. Many times people have much better success when they begin with small goals and then work up to larger ones. Success breeds confidence to set new goals on top of the old ones that you have achieved. I want you to set your sites highly but do not do it without the desire and work ethic necessary to get there.

These three topics constantly nag many people that I work with. When you decide to make a change in your life make sure that you are keeping these thoughts in mind. If you are serious about wanting to achieve major changes in your life, if you set the proper types of goals, and if you work your body’s weaknesses from the ground up you will be far more likely to continue working hard for your goals and you will be far more likely to achieve them. Good luck!

Jim Crowell

Integrated Fitness www.if-fit.com

412-254-3488

jim@if-fit.com