You can’t hope to make a huge change with a click of your fingers (although wouldn’t that be handy?).
In 2003, Sir Dave Brailsford took over the British Cycling Team. He wasn’t a professional coach, and he’d only ever made it as an amateur cyclist himself.
Instead of trying to rebuild the cycling team from scratch, Brailsford implemented a business strategy called the aggregation of marginal gains. He simply tried to improve every aspect of the cyclists’ lives—training, nutrition, sleep, and equipment—by 1%.
He didn’t go out looking for new sponsors; some bike companies even refused to sell to the team because they were so bad. Instead, he first improved their seats to make them more comfortable. And he didn’t implement a radical diet change or workout regime; he simply improved each by 1% at a time. When a new tiny gain had been realized, he asked himself, “How do I improve this feature by 1% NOW?”
In 2008, the British Cycling team won 8 gold medals, 4 silver, and 2 bronze: More medals than in its entire history combined. Then Sir Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, two members of the team, won the Tour de France four times combined over the next decade.
Aggregating small wins WORKS.
A client once came to me barely able to walk. I said “wow, what have you been doing that has resulted in you being stiff as a rock?”
They told me “I’ve been for my first run in over 10 years!” I asked how far did they go and they answered “Oh, I only ran 3 miles.”
“So let me get this straight, you haven’t run for 10 years and you thought it was a good idea to run essentially 3000% above your ability as your first run?”
As soon as I put it like that, my client realised that this wasn’t the best idea. That day they couldn’t train in the gym because they were too sore. They didn’t move forward with their fitness goals because they simply bit off more than they could chew. This is also why elite sportsmen and women have coaches. And if they need them, you most certainly need one too.
My training has been very up and down since I opened a business 5 years ago. I went from training twice a day, 6 times a week to no training for 3 months whilst I built the gym to sporadic and unfocused training with periods of intensity and periods of total inactivity. My food also funnily enough took a hit. I went from prepping food everyday insuring I ate around 5 times a day to maybe I’d have breakfast at 1pm and dinner not until 8pm using coffee to get me through the day allowing me to mask my hunger.
I knew that if I wanted to change this I wouldn’t be able to simply switch back to the zone diet or start preparing every meal for the day, why? Because I’m not even close to preparing one meal let alone 3 every day. So instead I just tried to start noticing my behaviours.
I took the time to notice that if I didn’t eat something before 8am I wouldn’t eat anything until 1-2pm and that would put my whole day of eating at risk of failure as I wasn’t even able to get the most basic meal sorted; Breakfast. So every morning decided to boil some eggs whilst I had my morning shower. I coached the 6am and 7am classes and immediately would eat at 8am. I would coach the 9.30am class feeling full and satisfied and by 10:30 I had enough energy to try and get some training in. By 12pm I was hungry! Suddenly things started falling into place. By trying to tackle one thing, I ended up fixing several things over time.
If your diet is already solid but you’re not working out as much as you want to you can start by just doing 10 squats. Call it a day. Try for 11–or 10 push-ups the next day. But don’t think about that yet: just move. If you’re currently doing 0 then 1 is an improvement. If you’re currently doing 10 then 11 is an improvement…
My coaching team and I help busy adults with their health and fitness goals all of the time. We use practices like the one described above for many of our clients. A lot of our clients simply have to show up, the coach tells them what to do. Maybe that’s your first small step: Sign up for a free No-Sweat Intro and let Joe tell you what you should do first. Or just do one squat and start tracking your food. After 365 days, if you improve by 1% each day, you’ll be over 30 TIMES fitter than you are now!
Inspiration provided by Chris Cooper at Catalystgym.com.
You must link the website above to this URL: https://catalystgym.com/how-to-make-huge-changes-in-your-life/
