Despite the tongue twister of a title, this article is not about Zen, Taoism, Karma or any other spiritual belief system. Instead, it’s about taking a long, hard look at yourself, your exercise habits, your training routine and your lifestyle and aligning them with your goals.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you look the way you want to look?
• Are you as fit as you want to be?
• Are you progressing towards your goals?

If the answer is a resounding yes then this article is not for you! If the answer is no, carry on down through the following questions:

• Has your weight loss hit a plateau?
• Do you lack energy?
• Do your energy and/or hunger levels fluctuate throughout the day?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, your diet is not working for you. There are no ifs of buts here…it’s as plain as the nose on your face that what you are currently eating is not conducive with your health or fitness. Remember the title of this article? If what you are eating is not working for you, either because of quantity or, just as likely nutrient ratio, it never will!

• Are you getting noticeably fitter?
• Are you getting noticeably stronger?
• Are you getting noticeably leaner?

If you answered no, your workout is not doing what it is supposed to do. Again—no ifs or buts; your workout should be a stimulus for positive physical change and not merely an exercise in energy expenditure. If you are not seeing progress in either how you look or how you perform you need to change your workout. Doing more of the same will just result in more of the same and, in this case, that’s a whole lot of nothing!

“Treading water” syndrome

Treading water syndrome is an expression I use to describe exercisers who go through the same workouts, follow the same nutritional approach and, as a result, make no fitness or weight loss progress. Water treaders seem to be waiting for their once-productive routines to suddenly start working again despite the fact their body’s adapted to their workouts months or even years ago. If you are going to make the effort to try and “do the right thing” by exercising and eating well, surely you want to see some results for your investment. Would you put all your hard-earned money in a savings account that didn’t pay any interest? No! So why spend valuable hours in the gym or eating a controlled diet if you aren’t seeing any noticeable results.

It’s time to take action and make some changes!

Lifestyle: There are 168 hours in a week and you may well spend three to five hours a week or more exercising. That leaves some 160+ hours a week where you can completely undo all of your good work in the gym! Sleep, stress, smoking, alcohol consumption, activities of daily living, posture, and seating habits all affect your progress towards your ultimate fitness goals. Not paying attention to your “out of gym” practices is like trying to run up a down escalator – you’ll make forward progress but nowhere near as quickly as you could. The take home message is “you can’t out train a poor lifestyle”. Get enough sleep, try to relax when you can, sit and stand up straight, move more and walk more and you’ll increase the effectiveness of your workouts dramatically.

Nutrition: “You are what you eat” or so the old saying goes. If you put junk in, that’s exactly what you’ll get back. Your energy and body fat levels are directly linked to what you eat. If you are trying to manage your weight, are exercising properly and you find you are still unable to control your weight effectively, there is something wrong with your diet. If what you are eating isn’t working for you, you need to change! If you are following a low fat, moderate protein, high carbohydrate and you aren’t making progress towards your body composition goals then try something else. Don’t just drop a few more fat calories though…make a dramatic change! More of what you are already doing will just result in more of what you are already getting – nothing! Try a lower carb diet like Green Faces or Paleo rather than sticking with the same conservative high-carb approach to nutrition that has so not delivered the results you are after. Maybe consider eliminating grains or sugar. Even small changes like cutting out all processed foods can make a huge difference to your health, fitness and appearance.

Exercise: Have you been performing the same workout for eight weeks or more? Are you still attending the same group exercise classes? Step on Monday, Spinning on Wednesdays and Circuits on Friday? If so, you are in a training rut. The only way to bust out of a rut is to change your routine and change it dramatically! More miles on the treadmill, more classes per week or more sets of the same exercises will not drive your fitness and physique levels onwards and upwards. If you are an aerobics king or queen try incorporating some resistance training into your routine. Add some interval training if you always do steady pace workouts. If you do mostly strength training, add some cardio. Try some new exercises, a different set/rep scheme or include some training systems like supersets or drop sets to spice up your workouts. If what you are doing is not working, what have you got to lose by trying something new? The worst case scenario is you don’t make any new progress but as you are only treading water anyway this is nothing new. Could be that a new workout kick starts your fitness into a previously unseen, higher gear and you leave your old fitness and strength levels in the dust!

 Summary

If your hard work in the gym and the kitchen are not giving you the results you want you must make some changes. Sort out your lifestyle and align your eating habits so that they support your exercise efforts rather than sabotage them. Consider giving your workout routine a complete overhaul to stimulate new levels of fitness. Live smart, eat smart and train smart to get the results you so truly deserve!

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Everyone has heard the expression “practice makes perfect”. The thing is, this isn’t strictly true – if we practice something incorrectly, all we get is very good at doing something wrong! For example, if you always perform (in other words practice) press ups with a sagging lower back; this is how you will always do them. It will become engrained and breaking this habit will be very difficult and time consuming – thus practice didn’t make perfect, it merely taught a bad habit. Really, the saying should be “perfect practice makes perfect” as it’s far better (and easier in the long run) to establish good habits in the first place, rather than have to unlearn bad habits before replacing them with better ones.

 

 

 

It’s sometimes quoted that (in terms of exercise performance) that it takes around 500 repetitions to learn a new technique and for it to become automatic but 5000 to unlearn an old one and that assumes that all 5000 are performed faultlessly! This is one of the reasons that at Solar Fitness Qualifications, we strive for good form in all our exercises from the very beginning of our courses. We know that, for every day we let our students perform exercises with poor form, there will be a whole lot of extra work required to prepare them for their assessment time both for the students, trainers and the assessors alike!

This leads nicely onto something called the “Learning Ladder” which describes the process we go through when learning a new habit or skill. The learning ladder can be applied to just about any behaviour but this article will focus on things health and fitness related…

Unconscious Incompetence
On this rung of the learning ladder, the individual doesn’t realise they have a negative habit. This could be a gym goer who always does lat pull downs behind the neck without realising the dangers to his or her shoulders or a dieter who skips meals to help them lose weight, not knowing that this behaviour could disrupt their metabolism and stall their fat loss. People who are Unconscious Incompetents would benefit from education and explanations to teach them why their behaviours are not the best way forward in achieving their goals. 

Conscious Incompetence
“If at first you don’t succeed, try try and try again!” goes the old saying.  This sums up the Conscious Incompetent. They know what they should be doing but often fall “off the wagon”. This could be the dieter who just can’t say no to cakes when it’s some ones birthday at work (and there are a lot of birthdays at their office!) despite the fact they know it will hinder their fat loss or the weight trainer who, more often than not, misses their Friday leg workout because the guys on the football team convince him to skip training and have a few beers down the pub instead, despite the fact he knows this will unbalance his weekly training programme. Conscious Incompetents need help with motivation and assurance that the new habits they are trying to develop will be of long term benefit. Tools such as goal setting and decision balance sheets can be very beneficial for this type of person.

Conscious Competence
To an outsider, those that have reached Conscious Competence may seem to have it easy but the reality is that, despite the fact they eat what they should and exercise regularly, it’s a struggle. They’d love to skip a workout or two or relax their diets and eat some junk food but they just won’t give in to temptation. Periodically the gravitational pull of the sofa, the lure of the pub or the thought of sugary foods can get to the point where they feel like it would be easier to just give up and indulge but they stay focused and stick with it – but it’s not always easy to do the right thing. For this person, positive affirmations can be very useful to help maintain focus and as a reminder that all the hard work is worth it.  

Unconscious Competence
At this level, exercise and eating well are a part of everyday life. No external stimuli are necessary as habits are now just a fact of life and it would be unthinkable to not exercise regularly or eat well. For this type of person, adherence to regular exercise and good nutrition are easy which, ironically, can make them less than ideal as mentors to those people who find sticking to their new healthy lifestyle choices a struggle. It’s possible they may lack empathy as it’s been so long since they found exercising frequently and eating well a struggle. Ideally, we should all strive to reach this level of self-mastery but the reality is that very few do which is probably just as well or personal trainers and nutritionists the world over would soon be out of a job!

Regardless of your current level on the learning ladder, keep at it, and keep striving for improvements. It IS worth it in the long run. It’s not always an easy process and there will be times where you’d rather stay in front of the TV or buy a take away instead of cooking a healthy meal at home BUT…they payoff every time you resist temptation you will be one step closer to your health and fitness goals. And remember, perfect practice makes perfect!

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