Give Me Your Best Excuse

I’ve come to really enjoy hearing the sheer amount of excuses that keep a person from working out over the years.

Seriously, come at me with your best excuse. I bet I’ve heard it before.

Don’t get me, I’m not referring to excuses as the valid reasons as to why you can’t do something. Those valid reasons are usually medically related and due to injury. Even those valid reasons are things we can work around. 

Back to the excuses…

This is actually a legit internal monologue I have all the time. It’s really hard for me to understand why someone would let their workouts fall on the back burner when they know the benefit they get from working out. Conversely, they also know how poorly they feel when they don’t work out and how frustrated they get when they stop working out and have to do all this work to get back to where they were before.

I understand that the fitness industry puts emphasis on crazy results that happen in a quick amount of time, and that’s what we want. I also understand that most of us, generally speaking, don’t want to or don’t like to workout, so it’s easy for our workouts to fall low on the priority list.

We want to look good naked with the lights on to ourselves, with minimal amount of work, without understanding that the work we put into our bodies now insures our health over time. We just want to look good. I’m here for that, because duh I do too. There’s something to be said about the confidence you get when you’re feeling yourself.

Today’s Workout

Tabata

10 rounds

Kettlebell swings

I was lucky though because when I got hurt, I had a group of people around me advocating for my health and encouraging me to think about the longevity of my health. To be proactive about taking care of myself so I don’t end up back in a place where I needed to lose a ton of weight or get over a debilitating injury.

Because I know being in that place is more frustrating and more demoralizing than figuring out how to schedule in a quick workout.

The focus for me became how I could workout safely to continue seeing results, so I could not only look good naked with the lights on to myself, but also FEEL good

Knowing that about myself, it kills me even more to know that most of the time the workouts aren’t happening because you’re getting stuck wasting your time on BS like refreshing your email or getting stuck in the scroll hole on social media.

If you have 20 minutes to spend on IG or scrolling through TikTok, you have 20 minutes to workout. You have the time, it’s just a matter of how you’re spending it. Trust me, you can scroll TikTok again after the kids go to bed.

I know we use those outlets as a means to let go, decompress and not think, and I’m here for that, it has it’s time and place, but it needs to be after you’ve taken care of your health. After you’ve given to yourself, go for it, lose yourself in the scroll hole. But get the workout done first.

Will You Be Successful?

I can tell right off the bat if someone will be successful in their fitness journey. Crazy huh? But really I can tell. Want to know how I can tell?

“Maybe you don’t know how to get there, maybe you’re intimidated to take the first step, maybe the prospect of change is scary but you know it’s needed.”

You want it so badly you can TASTE it. You want it so badly that nothing else in the world matters. You want it more than anything else.

At the end of the day, that’s what makes the biggest difference. I can’t want this for you. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I do want this for you, but you have to want it more. You have to want it arguably more than you want air. 

Here’s the thing: I also know that by the time you actually stop lurking on my IG, stop clicking the coaching link, STOP FREAKING TOE DIPPING and do the damn thing, you do want it more than air. By that point, you’re so sick and tired (ready for my cliche?) of being sick and tired, that you don’t give af about anything else. You’re in it to win it because you know how much the alternative SUCKS and you’re over the alternative. You’ve lived the alternative long enough and it’s past time for a change.

Maybe you don’t know how to get there, maybe you’re intimidated to take the first step, maybe the prospect of change is scary but you know it’s needed. Change goes from being a pipe dream to a necessity and when you hit that point, that’s when you find me.

Once you reach that point, anything I tell you need to do, any change I suggest you make, won’t feel like a sacrifice. You won’t feel like I’m inconveniencing you to incorporate healthy habits into your life. The excuses you once gave without a second thought will fall away.

Then all of those healthy habits won’t seem so extreme, they’ll be easy and you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

What Do You Do When Your Workouts SUCK?

Girl I have some workouts that S U C K. Still.

Just because I’m in the fitness industry and train people daily doesn’t mean I don’t have times in my own workouts where I want to LITERALLY throw my towel across the room. Maybe I slept shitty, maybe I didn’t eat properly before, shoot maybe I’m near my cycle, or maybe a certain small human keeps interrupting me. 

I know I could let those days totally get me down, I could even stop the workout early if I wasn’t feeling it. Or just half ass my effort…

Those solutions don’t work for me though. 

Prior to my injury, I worked out on a regular basis. It was out of necessity. My role in the military dictated that I maintain a certain physical standard so working out and nutrition were priorities of mine. It created habits in me that have stayed with me even until today.

Working out after I recovered from my injury as well as after I had Grace SUCKED. I knew I had to do it to have the kind of quality of life I was seeking, and I had the habits as well as skill set in place to work out efficiently, but it was horrible. I didn’t feel strong, it took a lot of frustrating time to understand the capabilities of my body post all the surgeries, and it HURT. My body was in pain, it was inflamed, and while I listened to my limitations and did workouts that were appropriate for me, it still hurt.

I started doing two things when I worked out and I wasn’t feeling it to get myself through:

1. I used visualization. It helped clear my mind, it gave me something to focus on besides what I was doing, and it distracted me enough to get through the workout. What I visualize differs depending on my mood, and I usually go to whatever my mind naturally wanders towards. It’s either my end goal, like my ultimate goal for myself in my own fitness journey OR it’s the visualization of how far I’ve come. I see myself in a bed at my parents’ house unable to walk and I visualize the journey I’ve already gone through that’s gotten me to today.

2. I think of something positive and I put that shit on repeat. We tend to get so negative and critical when we’re working out. It’s the “we’re not enough” syndrome kicking in. Fuck that. I think about how I’ve made it through 100% of my bad days, so I got this or I think “you can do this” and I put that on replay in my mind until my workout is done.

It works for me, it doesn’t make the workout magically become easier but it gives me a clearer focus so I can get through what I’m doing. 

Then, and this is key, at the end of the workout, even if it’s the worst workout of all time and I’m so happy it’s over I’m not even enjoying the endorphin rush, I celebrate the workout. I celebrate the fact that I woke up, that my body can move and give me this gift, and that I GET to give this time to myself.

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