Consistency is what gets results. If you've been following me for a while you'll have heard me say that over and over again. But people do struggle to be consistent, if it was easy we'd have nailed the fitness years ago. People stop being consistent with their fitness goals for a few reasons, time, enjoyment and cost are all factors that play into it. So an area that can help is having something to keep us accountable. Now if you pick something you dislike and do everything in your power to be accountable, you're probably still going to quit. But life's a process, sometimes you need to wade through the bad to discover what you enjoy. With that being said these are some of the things that have kept me accountable with my fitness goals:
Fitness Tracker - You'll have seen from a previous blog post about how fitness trackers can be beneficial so I'll reiterate a few of those points. I think the main benefit is that I can keep a track of my NEAT. I can quickly see how many steps I've done for the day and how far off my goal I am. Having a visual reminder on my wrist as well as notifications set to remind me to move makes sure I have everything set to hit my step goal. It's like you create a competition with yourself to make sure you hit your goal or carry on your streak if you've been able to meet the goal for a while. Fitness Trackers aren't just for tracking NEAT, that's just my main purpose of having one. They also track workouts and their intensity so if you want to be accountable to make sure you're smashing your workouts this is a good little one to have.
Training Tracking - There are 101 different apps you can use to track your progression in the gym but I use a simple Numbers spreadsheet to track my reps, weights and sets. This means I can clearly make sure I’m keeping up with my progressive overload. Even a notepad and pen would suffice. For me personally I can get used to a weight, and tracking workouts I can see I've been stuck on the same weight for a while and should really look to progress. Remember it doesn't have to be an increase in weight, there's lots of different ways you could increase the difficulty. You can do more reps, increase range of motion, include a pause rep etc.
People - I have to give credit where credits due, there's some amazing people that I've connected with through my Instagram account. Part of the reason I've been able to keep up with the blog & photography is to put content out for you all. It kept me in a regular routine during lockdown when I was on furlough and you have no idea how important that was for my mental health. Literally when I got injured for two weeks I was so miserable and my mood dropped so much. It also pushes me to create informative and meaningful content not just posting for the sake of it or writing a lot of crap. I want to spend time with my information to make sure I'm putting the best I can out there.
Also surround yourself with people who want the best for you, that love you. These people will make sure you're always moving forward and striving to better yourself. It'll help push you when you need a push and help congratulate you when you've accomplished something.
Investing into new equipment - Always something that give's me a kick up the backside, because I don't have an unlimited amount of funds. Unfortunately. So when I invest in some new trainers, protein powder, weights, training equipment you damn well know I'm going to make the best out of them. I'm not going out and saying you have to spend a fortune to be accountable far from it, you bet when I bought some new gym socks my productivity and time spent in the gym went up!
We're never always firing on all cylinders, sometimes we need a little pick up or something to hold us accountable. That's why I think it's such a good topic to talk about and have things in our life to make sure we're always holding ourselves accountable. End of the day if we don't have these things then we become lazy and complacent.
Bit of motivation for you all, if you enjoyed it please subscribe to the blog. It gives you notifications everytime I post.
Thanks
Cameron
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