Small Victories = Big Results

Fitness is a long and winding road full of twists, turns, bumps, and occasional roadblocks. It can be easy to look too far down the road at one's "end" point (no road truly ends, does it?) and lose sight of the immediate present and what it has to offer. Every now and again we need to take a moment and look at all of the small victories that we've accomplished along our individual fitness journeys, in order to keep motivated and on the straight and narrow. I have a few great examples of small successes to illustrate my point. My own training partner has been dropping a lot of weight in the past 8-10 weeks since beginning to lift weights and TRACK HIS DIET (wink, wink!). As we all know, weight loss is never linear, so one week he manged to drop about 10 lbs, and was then disappointed in only losing 2 or 3 the next. When he said he was disappointed by that, I couldn't help but point out the fact that 3 lbs is still 3 lbs DOWN. That's progress no matter how you look at it. His DB bench press had also gone up by 10 lbs/side in that week, not to mention hitting a PR in the squat. So, moral of the story, the guy is leaner, and stronger in the space of 7 days. Sure, the scale # might not be as impressive, but its PROGRESS. Similarly, another friend/client texted me one day and said she had successfully run for 20 minutes straight on the treadmill for the 1st time and was really proud. Then the next week, she was annoyed at not having lost weight any scale weight, but had run for 25 minutes straight. You know what I saw? PROGRESS. Think of that percentage-wise...a 25% performance improvement in a week. Sounds like a win in my book.

This doesn't always have to be performance or scale-based either. Last week, another client came into the gym and told me how she was proud that she had manged to avoid eating any candies at work, even though they are all over the office. That's a victory. Go 3 days without cheating on your diet, make it a point to get a walk in every single day, up the resistance on the elliptical, say no to a glass of wine...whatever you can do to keep yourself improving and making strides towards your goals will help you get there. Small, and frequent victories will add up to you reaching your goal over the long haul. We all need to keep an eye looking on the road to our dream destination, but don't lose sight of the little tings along the way. Stop and smell the roses now and again so that you continue to enjoy the ride down the road.

Speaking of the Ride....Ride For Roswell is Saturday, June 25th. Get Pedaling and/or donating!

Steve Decker