TRAINING IN THE COLD SUCKS – HERE’S HOW TO MAKE IT SUCK LESS.
It’s about this time of year when our training starts to fall off the radar – the call of Netflix, food, and friends start to drown our new year’s resolutions. It’s normal for our motivation to dip during this period, our bodies are transitioning for harvesting and movement to a period of hibernation – winter is coming!
Unfortunately while our monkey brain is wanting to snuggle up in a cave, we need to appeal to the logical side of the brain – the side that set goals at the start of the year. Is this going to be another year where we let our resolutions slide, or can we implement habits and strategies that will help us work against our instincts and towards our goals?
WRITE DOWN YOUR GOALS – And put them somewhere where you will see ALL THE TIME (the background of your phone, the rearview mirror of your car, your bathroom mirror). It’s only going to get colder at Hi Reps Fitness Rouse Hill, and if summer was anything to go by, there would probably be a plague of locusts, tennis balls sized hail stones, and meteor showers. All of which will be reinforcing reasons NOT to train – so you better have a good reason why you’re training. Before you read on – get out a piece of paper, and write down some goals!
CREATE A ROUTINE – A routine is a set of actions, that don’t require an enormous amount of brain power. The truth is your primitive brain does not want you to achieve your goals; rather it wants you to curl in your cave, conserve energy so that you can survive the winter. Here are some routines to incorporate into making it through winter and fighting your primal instincts.
Create an evening routine – Set an alarm on your phone that reminds you it’s time to go to bed. Turn off all electronics 30 minutes before bed, and have at least 8-hour sleep (yes 8 hours!). You can survive on less, but you will make terrible decisions, and crave sweet foods.
Create a healthy shopping routine – Shop for fresh and healthy foods on Sunday, and Wednesday, and chop your veggies as soon as you get home. This added effort would make healthy eating the convenient and fast option. Remember that everything you put in your shopping trolley will eventually go into your body.
As with your goals, write down your routine in steps – so that it is impossible to fail.
GET ACCOUNTABLE – Training in the cold is hard, it’s even more difficult when you’re doing it by yourself. Lucky for ALL of you, this isn’t the case – you have a supportive community around you. Letting down yourself is easy, letting down someone else is a little bit harder. Even think about Personal training sessions!
Bonus – If you want to make sure you train through winter throw in some negative reinforcement. Put in a friendly wager on with a Hi Reps Fitness Rouse Hill, Member that goes something along the lines of – if you fail to train 3x week, you will donate $200 to XX charity.
PREPARATION IS KEY – Are your health and fitness goals important to you? If they are, go and buy some epic winter training clothes – you might as well be comfortable (and look good while you’re training). My suggestion would be a pair of super comfortable sweat pants, and the best winters sock you can afford…. Don’t let cold toes be the reason you fail to achieve your 2016 goals.
Remember it’s human to lose motivation and drive as soon as it gets colder. The trick is to recognize that our instincts aren’t going to get us closer to our goals. While it’s going to be hard to train through the next few months, implement the above strategies to make it easier, and set yourself up for success at Hi Reps Fitness Training sessions.
Coach D