Making It Work

Making it work is the key to your health and fitness consistency

Hardly ever are you presented with a perfect set of circumstances to start or continue anything worthwhile, and exercise is definitely one of those things. There are obstacles real or perceived, seen, or unseen ready to derail or distract you from doing and being who you want to be.

My clients want to be seen as fit and healthy. Whether it’s losing fat or gaining muscle and strength, my clients have goals, and they want to meet them. But unfortunately, it’s not all smooth sailing because they either come in with pre-existing conditions or life comes and bites them on the bum.

Now, there is no use sitting around and complaining about problems. This doesn’t do any good and it doesn’t change the problem at hand. Finding some sort of solution to the problem is where it’s at. Taking your obstacles head-on and trying to make it work.

I’ll Let You In On A Secret Of Making It Work

To people who are NOT personal trainers/coaches, this job seems easy. Tell people what to do, wear tracksuit pants, drink coffee and count a few reps, rinse, and repeat. But most personal trainers are rarely presented with an easy path when it comes to meeting clients’ goals.

The main reason(s) most clients hire trainers is they cannot do it themselves; they have a problem and need help and expertise to get around it.

Most of the time the problem is immediately obvious (physical) and others are buried deep beneath the surface (mental). Either way, the trainer needs to come up with solutions, or they’ll find it difficult to make a living.

Being an experienced and knowledgeable trainer helps (I’ve been doing this a while) but there are a couple of traits that come in handy when you’re having to make it work.

One is the ability to think of your feet and be flexible. Some people are rigid in their thinking and once one way is closed off, there is no other way.

For instance, when someone needs an hour to workout but cannot because their schedule is full. Rather than do a 20 to 30-minute workout they skip it entirely.  

Second, following the first point,  switch your focus from the problem to a solution. When your focus is only on the problem, you lose sight of trying to find a solution. For example, when a potential client comes to see me with a clear physical problem. Does it help him or her for me to harp on about their problem? Or is it better to talk about solutions to their problem?

Example Of Making It Work

This is not a brag but to serve as an example of making it work, so you can make it work also.

Many years ago, I had this client, John whose problem was immediately obvious. He was an amputee confined to a wheelchair and was in a fair amount of pain because of this surgery. And his goal was to get his body ready to walk with a prosthetic leg.

He needed just about everything. Core strength, hip strength, upper body strength, balance, and this all had to be done sitting down. Plus, I had to be careful not to add to his already high pain level.

So, what do to?

Well, he did a lot of weight machine work working one arm or one leg at a time to improve his strength, unilateral strength, and core strength. To limit the amount of time he had to get in and out of his wheelchair, he did all his sets on one machine before moving to another.  Plus, he sat on a Bosu ball and performed a few simple exercises.  The unstable nature of the Bosu ball worked on his core strength and balance while he was sitting down.

Sadly, we never got to see the fruits of our labor because he picked up an infection and his body was too weak to fight it. But that’s not the point of this story because the point is we made it work under an extreme set of circumstances.

How You Can Make It Work

I’m not pretending to know the problems you’re facing when it comes to your health and fitness. But what I can do is make a few suggestions on making it work for a few common problems. Here are a few examples.

Lower body hurt or injured? Exercise your upper body or exercise the side that doesn’t hurt.

Upper body hurt or injured? Train the side not injured or train the lower body.

Find out here and here in more detail.

Is time an issue? Here’s how to make it work when you lack the time, and your do-to list is crushing you.

Stressed out of your mind? Here’s how to exercise when stress is getting the best of you.

Wrapping Up

Problems, you all have them, and sometimes these problems are overwhelming. Focusing on the problem only gets you so far but focusing on some sort of solution to your problem is where it is that. When you’re having issues making it work with your health and fitness, take heart in the story shared above.

If John can do it, you can too.   

Need help making it work? Contact me here.