Fit for Life: My Mistake, Another Lesson Learned

Fit for Life: My Mistake, Another Lesson Learned

In life, there are lessons to be learned around every corner, and if you look, listen, and observe, you could essentially learn something new every day.

 

You could learn lessons from everything from watching a movie to reading a book; however, the best lessons learned, in my opinion, are from the mistakes we make.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

 

Now it’s important to understand that you won’t learn from your mistakes unless you are driven to improve and want to grow and develop yourself to higher levels.

 

It takes a LOT of self-awareness and the ability to check your ego to realize that you did something wrong and admit that you need to improve in a certain area, or you will continue to repeat the same mistakes all over again.

 

At Providence Fit Body Boot Camp, we just learned a lesson on what NOT to do and how NOT to run a challenge.

 

First, understand that we are not a competition-based gym.

 

Our members are not attempting to lift their one rep max, and we don’t have whiteboards with how much someone lifts nor how fast we can do something.

 

Everyone has their own set of goals, and we focus on helping each individual achieve their own personal goal, as opposed to comparing themselves to others.

 

However, with that being said, we do have methods to create a little friendly competition for those that choose to participate in certain challenges we promote.

 

Let me explain.

 

We use a system called My Zone, which is a heart rate monitor that you wear while working out, and it calculates how hard you are working based on your heart rate.

 

It displays over the 65” tv in the gym and indicates if someone is pushing too hard or not working hard enough.

It is a great tool to measure your output, and it uses MEPs or (My Zone exertion points) as a benchmark to measure exercise intensity. It’s a great tool to work out by for numerous reasons, including safety.

 

It also encourages users to work out more because it records their data, and psychologically we feel like we are winning when we accomplish more workouts…..to an extent.

 

Here’s where we made a mistake.

 

We have run many My Zone challenges in the past. We have competed against other gyms across the country & Canada, and we regularly have internal competitions amongst our members for bragging rights in the gym.

 

I recently came up with the idea to run a March Madness-style, double-elimination team challenge where members could create their own teams and have some friendly competition.

 

However, our members went crazy, people took it too far, and by the end of the challenge, folks burnt themselves out.

 

We had folks working out until midnight, just to get extra MEPS and win their round to avoid elimination. I even succumbed to this madness and got off the sofa at 11pm to run around my neighborhood.

 

Now you don’t need to be a coach with 30 years of experience to know this isn’t the way to promote fitness, but I wanted to win, and so did everyone else. I am a big advocate of doing what it takes to win, however, my intention wasn’t to create monsters and burn people out.

 

Lesson learned, so when we do this again, we will take this feedback and data and improve how we run the next one, so everyone has fun & we don’t kill ourselves in the meantime.

 

Some lessons learned beyond the challenge that everyone can apply to their everyday lives are as follows:

 

    1.    Don’t burn yourself out trying to win in the first round. In other words, try to get on base as opposed to swinging for the fences.  Set long-term goals and plan ahead. This goes for fitness as well as finances. Focus on playing the long game, as you will be more successful by stacking small wins over time. We tend to overestimate what we can do in a month, yet underestimate what we can accomplish in a year. Patience isn’t one of my strong points, and I want everything yesterday, yet we live and learn to be more realistic as time goes by.

    2.    Rely on teamwork & communication. This challenge had teams of 4 and yet some people took the weight of the team on their backs and tried to single-handedly win without communicating with other team members. I am at a point in my business that I rely heavily on my team. We have 300+ members and it would be impossible to give each one a world-class experience by myself. The same goes for your fitness goals. Many struggle and can’t do it alone; therefore, it is essential that you lean on a coach to guide you. When you are part of a team, you need to learn to let go, and lean on them. Realize that there is strength in numbers, and when a team works together, it multiplies the outcome.

    3.    Never give up, regardless of how hard the competition looks or appears to be. One team in this challenge was so dominant that no one wanted to face them. The entire team put up a lot of points, and they all worked together and communicated with each other as a team. When the final round came up, their opponent basically waived the white flag and surrendered, only to find out that the dominant team had a member that got sick. With a little more effort, they could have won. The same holds true for gyms during covid. It seemed we were all doomed to fail, however, the ones that stayed the course, and now thriving and busier than ever. This applies to whenever things get difficult in life. If we just keep putting in the effort, we are more likely to succeed and win, regardless of the obstacles in front of us.

 

So now my team and I are thinking of ways we can improve and make these challenges fun, yet encourage folks to be sensible and not overdo it. I realized that I made a mistake, and now I need to find a solution, so we can be better the next time around.

 

The moral of the story, or the points I am trying to make are as follows:

 

    ⁃    Admit your mistakes, learn from them, then take steps to improve.

    ⁃    Look at every day as an opportunity to learn something new.

    ⁃    Have lofty goals, yet be realistic and take the necessary steps to achieve them as opposed to trying to accomplish them in one day.

    ⁃    Never give up. When you do, you have 100% chance at losing.

    ⁃    Don’t go it alone, as there is strength in numbers.

 

Have a great week,

Coach Matt