“Oh, The View is on again!” An accurate comment from a client’s witty husband. After 18 months of Zoom, he’s well aware of what our early morning small group sessions involve.
The most important thing about your progress isn’t the training program. Unless you have super specific sport or adventure goal, it doesn’t matter that much what you do in your strength workouts. As long as it’s balanced, suitable for your body, progressive, and challenging. At least most of the time.
The most important thing isn’t your willpower either. Willpower comes and goes. Most of us eventually run out of it. And use it as a lame excuse.
It’s not even the discipline to show up. I know, I know. Asking people to “just show up” is sort my thing. But having the discipline to show up isn’t the most important thing.
The piece with the most positive impact on your progress is finding people, or a person who’s company you enjoy. It can be a friend. Or a group of people whose vibe seems like they’re probably not dickheads. It could even be, gasp, a trainer. Holla at me!
Either way, enrol with someone who doesn’t make you want to order your flat white with a side of mercury. Training with someone you connect with is better than a cocktail of willpower, discipline, and the perfect training program.
In our morning sessions, everyone gets in a workout. But the commentary is 10% training and 90% movies, tv shows, music, food, and yes, politics. Ok, it’s more like 5% and 95%.
It just so happens that everyone gets along. Plus, my strict “no dickheads” – policy means that I only work with extremely pleasant people. Like I said, holla at me.
Yes, if your goal is to make strength training a twice a week habit, you need the discipline to show up. But showing up is a lot easier when you can look forward to delightful conversations. Ideally about topics that you enjoy.
Training hard doesn’t mean that you can’t spend 95% (Ok, 96%) of that session talking about something else than the actual training.