Here’s something that always bothers me. Most of the time, people i train will do really well, then some will do quite good but could do a little bit better, then the odd person will really struggle with results and should really do better, and this REALLY, REALLY bothers me!
There must always be something going wrong not to achieve some sort of success and i have broken it down to the following things.
First of all, when you read a newspaper article, or if you’re a kid at school sitting through a lesson, or if you’re watching an TV programme, you will take in all of things a certain percentage of your capacity. The shocking number is just 10% if you just passively sit down and watch what’s going on!! Just 10% of your brain will really take in what you were interested in just a few hours before, or definitely the day after.
Isn’t it like that sometimes when you workout, and then make plans to exercise through the rest of the week, but it never happens? How many weeks do you have when you achieve just 10% of your potential because you didn’t follow through on your plan?
What would happen if you gave just 10% more every week, wouldn’t the results be a lot more impressive?
Another study for you, when those same kids in the class, or anyone studying just about anything, and they actually WROTE down what they were studying, and understood truly what they were doing, their understanding and lasting knowledge what they were doing went up to 45%! This can be transferred to writing down your workouts, writing down your eating over the week and writing down your goals, probably most important of all! Writing down things makes your brain absorb 45% of what you need to do, much better than 10%!
Writing down everything and creating logs not only improve you, but they create sort of a “success map”, so should slip back for any reason, you will know how you got success before, so you have a “route” to follow and you can get there again in a very direct manner!
Now here’s the most mind blowing fact, when the kids, the students, the workers of all kinds actually followed through on their plans, their written down plans and goals, and day to day, week to week, they DID what they actually said that they were going to do, their understanding and potential was realised to a magical 85-90%!!
There have been some massive studies into this, and its been proven that those who have a record of what they are doing, and what they have in front of them to do, are massively more successful than those who never plan, never acknowledge their successes.
If you read biographies of champions in all fields, all of them are fanatical about charting progress and success, and whether they are meeting their goals, they are creating their own “success maps”. Most of you have had successful times in your lives but never really wrote about them in detail. Many of you seem now that you determined to reach your true potential again, do me a favour and write your own “success map” down in detail.
Aim for progress, aim to improve each week, and pretty soon you should have something to be proud of again.
Keri
Hi Keri, have read the above, I have a ton of training books going back to 1999. I do look at them now and then and wonder how I got down to 9st 3lbs, I really do think it was the fact that I had a training buddy, that I wouldnt let down or disappoint even when I didnt feel like training. I made a commitment to that person, and that was that. mind I was ten years younger then as well, know what ur going to say age doesnt come into it. Still enjoy doing a bit but not as much as I used to do, no where near, I used to cycle and run in all weathers, now I am mainly fine weather trainer.
But I do think that it is worth keeping a journal for diet and training, it does help to keep track and u cant kid urself when its down in black and white. I used to mark every workout on a scale of 1 to 10, just 4 my own reference, I found that if I marked myself at say 6, the next time I went to the Gym I’d make sure it was 8. Just something I found helped. And if you can get someone close to the same level as you r to train with you, well then that just a bonus. Good luck and happy training to u all out there.
Jean
Your best post so far, and always high quality! Not much more i can add to that really, so first-class info that is much appreciated!
Can’t beat experience and how success is achieved, and pitfalls to be avoided.