The Importance of Strategies for Training

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Sports, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | (0) Comments

Cosgrove has a good post on his blog about the importance of strategies for training and weight loss. This is actually one of the most important elements of successful training. If you don’t have a strategy and plan, you are doomed to failure just like businesses and organizations are. You can get by for a little while on natural ability and good luck, but eventually those won’t be enough and other forces will exert themselves and bring you down. Most everyone has experienced this and yet they think that somehow they can just “willpower” themselves to success. It almost never happens- not for pro athletes and not for you. If you don’t have a strategy for getting to the gym every day by scheduling it as a part of your daily routine, you won’t last very long. If you don’t have a strategy for controlling your diet, you will find yourself eating all the wrong things because your willpower is simply not enough. That is why the military spends most of their time training and developing strategies. When the fight starts, you better have a strategy!

…

So the key thing is to develop strategies to handle this. The first step is recognizing that there is an issue that isn’t optimal for you. Step two is to develop strategies to improve that situation or issue…

I was mentioning this to my friend Valerie Waters (- superstar trainer and creator of the rapid results Red Carpet Ready physique transformation program) recently – and she agreed that strategies were the key — she agreed that strategies were a key part of her clients success and added:

“Strategy even trumps willpower. Studies show that willpower is actually in limited supply. Meaning, resist the cookie now, it might be hard to resist it later. Therefore, I believe it is more important to build in good strategies. For example, if you eat ice cream every night, rather than trying to “be good” and resist it, simply remove it from the house. If you consistently visit the vending machine because you don’t have time to go to lunch, your strategy would be to pack your lunch the night before and bring it with you. Anyway, you get the point.”

What situations cause you to miss meals, or make less than optimal choices? What situations cause you to miss workouts? Start recognizing these limitations and develop strategies to allow you to succeed.