5 Reasons You Aren’t Achieving Your Fitness Goals
Are you ready to get the rewards that your efforts deserve?
Achieving in fitness is pretty simple in theory but becomes much harder in application. Generally, once the decision has been made to go after the dream body or that goal PR, it’s mostly a case of efficiency that is making or breaking the end result.
This is where the downfall lies.
Most people lack the tools to get the job done and aren’t even aware of it. Leading to an endless cycle of questioning the outcome.
“I lose motivation so easily and I’m super inconsistent”
“Why is my friend achieving x while I’m still stuck on y?”
“I spend so many hours in the gym and feel like I’m never making progress”
Sounds familiar?
In this article, I’ll address the five main reasons you might not be currently achieving your fitness goals and what you can do immediately to jump on the right track
Reason #1: You rely on motivation and quick results in order to keep consistent
When life is going great and things are on track it’s super easy to get on with the job. But what happens when the results don’t come as quickly as we demand they do? What about on the days where we woke up on the wrong side of the bed, stress levels are higher, work has been draining or when the rain is pouring?
Solution #1: VISION
The constant need for motivation or progress will lead to falling off at the first hurdle once plateaus arise or expectations aren’t met. Expectations are often over the top and unrealistic to the individual’s experience levels and capabilities leading to decreased motivation and inconsistency.
Having vision allows us to understand where the destination is and where the journey will take us. The truth of the matter is that achieving in fitness is not just a one step process. Or even a five step process.
There are heaps of hurdles to overcome and milestones to achieve and more often than not, new steps will be created along the way. Having clear and concise goals allows us to keep our expectations in check, reverse engineer from the end result back to the beginning, giving us things to focus on and nail down in the short term while we work towards the long term.
Great short term goals to have include performance and habit based goals
Reason #2: You unsure of what is required to achieve your goals so you are forever experimenting
Ever feel like the way you’re training or eating isn’t working and you don’t understand why? Or that your friend is achieving progress at a faster rate using a particular method or diet and feel like maybe you should give that a go? Train abs all the time and still don’t have a flat stomach?
Most people never make it to the finish line because they don’t know how to get there in the first place
The reason fad diets and training methods work in the short term is due to calorie restriction or greater output resulting in a calorie deficit and a shift on the scales. But like all good things, they eventually come to an end. You’re left with a plateaued weight loss, minimal calories to consume and a multitude of calories to burn in order to get the change.
For most, it gets to a point where the training or diet isn’t conducive to their lifestyle and they fall off the wagon, put the scale weight back and jump to try the next hot fad. Sound familiar?
Solution #2: KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge is power. By developing our education around our goals, we can begin to understand the how’s and why’s behind the methods we take to secure them. The realities of fitness is that progress isn’t just one big happy linear graph of sunshines and rainbows, there are peaks and troughs as life plays kindly only to throw curveballs our way at the drop of a hat.
We need to understand why it’s necessary to eat from all the food groups. How the energy balance equation works. Why compound exercises should be the bread and butter of every training program. How you can achieve more in a 45 minute session than you can in a 3 hour session. Why ab workouts for most people are absolutely useless.
When we understand more and question less, consistency and patience improves. By understanding and sticking to the plan, it makes bursting through these plateaus more likely.
Reason #3: You aren’t training conducive to your goals
Feeling overwhelmed at the gym and not knowing what to do is a major hurdle needed to be overcome.
More often than not when I meet with new people for the first time they’re usually winging their training.
Their sessions are built upon what equipment is available at the time, the workout they saw their favourite instagram fitspo post earlier that day or in parts of the gym they feel comfortable in using. The sessions are random and erratic and there is no true way to measure progress
Solution #3: PURPOSE
In order to achieve our desired outcome, we need to make progress. This is made harder when our workouts are randomised. By following a goal specific training program reduces feeling overwhelmed and increase the simplicity of training.
A program that is specific to our goals will remove the guesswork from training so you know exactly what you need to do before you enter the gym which not only helps relieve training anxiety but will also facilitate progression as you’re not umm’ing and ahhh’ing about what your next session is going to look like.
However, it’s important to note that a group of exercises slapped together without reason won’t factor in the progressions, regressions and movement considerations of the individual. What this means is that googling “fat loss training program” and following a stock-standard 3 sets of 10 doesn’t constitute an effective training program. This gives individualisation more importance over the medium term as the necessary progressions, regressions and lifestyle constraints must be taken into account
Reason #4: You aren’t training hard enough to facilitate change
That’s not to say you’re not exerting yourself, because generally people that go to the gym are.
“I need to feel sore for three days after training” or “I need to drag my dead body out of the gym otherwise I feel like I haven’t done anything” are pretty commonly heard.
Such statements are generally followed up with “I’m training a lot and I’m not getting the results the hours deserve”
Solution #4: EFFORT
This might come as a shock to many and might bruise the ego a little bit but the truth is that you probably aren’t training as hard as you think you are and that you are capable of so much more. Just because you’re out of breath or the muscles are burning a little bit, it doesn’t mean it’s game over and it is highly likely that you’re leaving gains on the table every single training session.
So that begs the question; how hard should we be training?
In order to achieve a stimulus from each training set, we need to ensure we are pushing the limits within reason. Using the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) or Reps in Reserve (RIR) programming model allows us to take our body to these limits without pushing beyond them. It is often counterproductive to push each set to failure, so by keep reps in the tank it allows us to achieve an intensity to facilitate the outcomes we’re after while also keeping gas in the tank to maintain quality throughout the whole session rather than just at the beginning of it.
Most trainees will find that the amount of work they need to put into training isn’t as much as they think, it’s just that the quality set to set needs to be improved. Personally, I am now training less than I ever have and am achieving more at a much quicker rate. For my clients, since switching over to RPE training, they’re not only hitting PR’s on the regular but are also doing less work in the gym for a far greater return.
Reason #5: You don’t have the self-belief to do what is required to achieve your goals
Probably the biggest hurdle of all is the ability to execute what is required of us to achieve our goals. At this point in time, most people know that in order to build muscle, tone up and increase strength that we need to lift weights.
However the belief to put theory into practise is still a hurdle many face. There is a fear of doing the exercise incorrectly and hurting one’s self, having fear of judgment on the gym floor from other punters which are serious concerns holding people back from realising their potential
Solution #5: CONFIDENCE
All of the above becomes obsolete if the plan cannot be followed. You can have the best goals, but if you can’t follow the steps then they become useless. You can know that carbohydrates are the energy source of the body and that you need them, but if you’re still scared that eating them is going to make you fat then that’s going to hold you back.
You can have the best program ever created but if you aren’t showing up, don’t know how to do the exercises on it or are doing those exercises in a state of comfort, you won’t make progress.
As I get older, I begin to realise that confidence is the key to everything in life. If you have confidence and self-belief, you can literally take on the world and achieve anything you set your mind to
