Happy December Warriors! I know most of us are in full end-of-the-year chaos mode. Holiday shopping, parties, juggling kid care and schedule interruptions. That doesn’t usually result in us making the choices we’d like. But since it won’t be long until New Year’s resolutions take center stage, let’s take a minute to chat about long term planning.
See the issue I take with most New Year’s resolutions is that they are short term plans. I worked in gyms for years and fitness and personal training staff always knew to gear up for the crush in January. We also knew that we were likely to be operating at a much more sane client load come March.
I’ve addressed New Year’s attrition on the blog before, at least as it relates to motivation and re-evaluating goals. We as humans are conditioned to want results quickly. When we don’t see those results in the time frame we want, motivation flags and we tend to throw in the towel.
But the problem, as I alluded to, is that our goals focus on the short term. Weight loss, the most common of New Year’s resolutions, is a short term goal. I define short term as anything that is intended to take fewer than six months. The key word in that sentence is intended. I never had a single client walk into my office and suggest that they wanted to take more than six months on a weight loss goal. Even when it was clear that thermodynamics would not obey anything shorter.
In practice, the individuals who have the most success with any Physical Health Dimension goal are those who play the long game. These individuals know that motivation will lag at times, progress may be slower than they anticipate, and life will throw them challenges. Playing the long game means accepting that progress is rarely linear or quick and that discomfort is part of the process.
Which brings me to story time! I had just started personal training at a new facility and a woman purchased a 20 session package in early November. We completed the intake appointment and scheduled for the following week. She proceeded to ghost me. I finally heard from her in April. We started the intake process over. She wanted to lose 30 pounds for her daughter’s wedding in August. She cancelled or no-showed for half of her sessions and complained about how hard it was when she did show up. She used 14 of the 20 session package and stopped sessions after the wedding because she hadn’t lost any weight.
On the flip side, I had a client walk in as a physical therapy referral. She had been in a car accident and had completed as much PT as her insurance would cover. She was honest and told me she couldn’t afford more sessions than this one, but could I help her get started? She wanted to be able to walk without her cane. I took her PT exercises and translated them for the different equipment and got her set up. She showed up consistently, politely asked me to help her re-evaluate her progress periodically and was willing to try things out of her comfort zone. Eighteen months later I watched her walk from the parking lot to my office (a non-trivial distance) under her own power.
Every trainer has at least a dozen stories like the first one. A client who wanted them to wave a magic wand and make their short term dreams come true. And those stories all have remarkably similar endings. The clients like the second woman are fewer and further between, but these are the ones that still choke us up years later.
The difference is mindset. Looking to a long term goal forces us to realize that we are going to need to endure some trials. We are going to have to re-evaluate, re-plan, re-direct. We are going to have to make smaller, incremental changes and be willing to do things that cause discomfort. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally, too.
The buy-in when you play the long game is bigger. But the potential pay out is, too. Not only will you be able to check a goal off your list, but you’ll have developed the skills to persevere and the confidence to tackle other challenges.
Whatever your goal, find the buy-in to play the long game. Figure out why it is important. To you. In doing so, you’ll set yourself up to succeed and you’ll manage your own expectations.
Until next time, be well friends.
