Changing Your Fitness Mindset

When you go to the gym, do you need to change your fitness mindset to be more successful? How badly do you want to achieve your goal? What are you willing to do? For some, a strong fitness mindset is more geared towards performance and an athlete's perspective. But what about the rest of us?

[caption id="attachment_3106" align="aligncenter" width="275"] The proper fitness mindset leads to great results.

Do our goals matter any less? Is our health any less important?

Don’t Let Yourself Off the Hook

Sometimes we let ourselves off the hook by approaching our fitness mindset with a casual attitude. We compare ourselves to the general population and know that we are doing more than our co-workers, a particular relative, or a friend.

Unfortunately these people aren't the epitome of health and fitness. So when we use this as the measuring stick we feel good about ourselves and satisfied that our efforts our adequate.

Approach Your Fitness Mindset Differently

I'd like you to suspend reality and imagine you could achieve great things with your health, fitness and performance training. You could deadlift 500+ lbs. You could run a sub 3:45 kilometer. You could lose 45 lbs. You could rid yourselves of your nagging joint pain. If these could all be true, would you approach your training differently? Would you approach your nutrition differently? Who you approach your rest and recovery differently? Of course you would!

Any high level athlete has to have a certain level of confidence that they can win, achieve great things, and are capable of being the best in their sport. Once they have this level of confidence then we see the extra attention to their training, nutrition, rest, recovery and overall focus. There will always be some exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, serious athletes recognize that all of these details matter.

Average Broz Fitness Mindset

This brings me to a blog post a colleague posted recently. The post is an interview of John Broz by Jen Sinkler [LINK was MISSING] who’s quick bio describes herself as a’ fitness writer and editor, workout connoisseur, meditator, proponent of spandex, former rugby player; never, ever without lip gloss’.

** Warning, there will be the occasional f-bomb and other expletive!

If you don’t read it, then I will summarize.

John Broz runs a gym in Las Vegas called Average Broz. But this place is anything but average. His clients are putting up incredible numbers that would beat gym records anywhere else. John has instilled in them that they are not great. Some of them are good. But unless you set a world record you are average.

Don’t think John is simply a mouth-piece sitting on the sidelines chirping everyone else. He is an extremely accomplished and knowledgeable lifter himself. He simply feels that most of us (in North America) have terrible fitness mindsets. We have low levels of motivation and over celebrate our successes. For example, he compares someone training in a Communist country to one in comfortable North America. The importance and implications of success are vastly different for each and thus, the motivation to train are vastly different. Fear of pain or loss is a greater motivator than reward.

What Does This Mean For Us?

We need to set higher standards. We need to believe we can do all these great things. And we have to adopt the mindset that we are here to win.

What do you think?

Chris [fb-like]