Having the right mindset is key to achieving your fitness goals and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
In many respects, you can get away with having an imperfect diet, or an inefficient exercise plan, as long as you are thinking about exercise in the right way, you are persistent and committed.
There are lots of tried and tested tips to help instil this mindset in you and keep you motivated, such as having a favourite song you can play that gets you pumped in the morning, blocking out time in your diary specifically for exercise and having a goal clearly written down that can you re-read each day to keep it in the front of your mind.
Many people initially overlook this, but working with a personal trainer is also an excellent way to prepare mentally.
Ollie has written more broadly about the benefits of having a personal trainer in the past, but one of the key benefits is that they can help you make the vital mindset shift that is absolutely necessary to achieve your fitness goals.
There are several reasons for this:
- Success breeds success – Being around a personal trainer, and exercising in an environment with other fit and healthy people shows you what you can aspire to and makes you feel good about the company you are in. Overweight people go to weight loss group, people serious about living a healthy lifestyle workout with a personal trainer.
- Blocking out the time – As mentioned previously, blocking timeout in your diary is a great way to help prevent you finding excuses. Working with a personal trainer gives you the added psychological pressure of knowing that you are letting someone else down if you cancel the session.
- Financial commitment – Similarly, if you have invested money in getting fit, you’ll be far more likely to see it through, as you won’t want the money to go to waste!
- Get over your fears – When many people start working out for the first time, or they add new exercises to their workout, they worry about their form and technique. They hold back for fear of pushing it too hard and injuring themselves. A personal trainer can help you get past this fear, as you can trust in their expertise to push as hard as you can without getting hurt.
- See results quickly – When working out on their own, many people give up their exercise routine prematurely because they don’t see results quick enough, and worry that they are not doing the right things. A personal trainer will help to build a routine that will provide results fast, and they will educate you on the things important things to look at to track your progress.
- Motivation – A personal trainer will push you harder than you push yourself. When you reach the difficult part of the workout and you’re ready to stop, they will tell you that you can go even further. This is really key, as the greatest benefits from working out come right at the boundaries of physical exertion.
These points really demonstrate the important psychological benefits that a personal trainer can have. While it is possible to achieve your fitness goals on your own, having a personal trainer will greatly accelerate your progress.
Ollie has written previously that “the most successful people are the ones who don’t make excuses”, and initially having the right mindset is about putting support mechanisms around you that make it difficult to find stupid excuses.
Over time however, you’ll be able to make a full mindset shift, and exercise stops becoming something that you do as a chore, you’ll look forward to it, and as you start to see the benefits in your everyday life, it’ll become something that you could never imagine yourself giving up.
by Rob Smith, 500 Calorie Fitness
As founder and editor of 500 Calorie Fitness, Rob helps people find simple and sustainable ways to lose weight and to keep it off. This starts right at your motivation and mindset, and carries through to your diet, nutrition and exercise.
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