06- How to Stick with Your Training Routine

In today's episode, we're discussing how to maintain a strength and conditioning routine for the long haul. Thank you for joining me today. I appreciate the time you've dedicated, and I hope you gain valuable takeaways for your routine.

Main Takeaways:

1. Allow for Messing Up
   • Action Step: Shift your mindset from perfection to progress. Recognize that it's okay to miss a workout or enjoy a treat without guilt. Embrace flexibility and be kind to yourself when plans change.
   • Research: Self-compassion improves resilience and adherence to health behaviors (Kristin Neff). Allowing for slip-ups can prevent the all-or-nothing mentality and reduce the risk of burnout (Journal of Clinical Psychology).
2. Ask for Support
   • Action Step: Seek support by hiring a coach, joining a fitness community, or leaning on friends and family. Engage with others who share your goals to stay motivated and accountable.
   • Research: Social support positively impacts exercise adherence (Journal of Behavioral Medicine). People are more likely to stick with exercise routines when they have a strong support system (American Journal of Health Promotion).
3. Understand That Motivation Will Wane
   • Action Step: Build discipline and habits to sustain you when motivation is low. Set realistic, achievable goals and focus on the long-term benefits of your routine.
   • Research: Intrinsic motivation is more sustainable than extrinsic motivation (Self-Determination Theory by Deci and Ryan). Developing consistent habits can bridge the gap during periods of low motivation (European Journal of Social Psychology).
4. Adjust and Adapt the Plan
   • Action Step: Flexibility in your training plan is key to accommodating life’s changes. Adapt workouts to your current energy levels, stress, and circumstances. Allow for modifications rather than skipping workouts entirely.
   • Research: Adaptability in exercise plans leads to better long-term adherence (International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity). Personalized adjustments to training can prevent injuries and improve overall outcomes (Sports Medicine Journal).

Conclusion:
Sticking with a strength and conditioning plan for life requires patience, self-compassion, support, and adaptability. Allow yourself to mess up, seek support, understand that motivation will wane, and adjust the plan as needed. These strategies will help you achieve long-term success.

Thank you for tuning into today's episode! If you found this information helpful, please subscribe and share it with other high-achieving women looking to prioritize their health and well-being. Ready to take the next step? Book a consultation call with me, Kat, and let’s create a personalized plan that fits your life and helps you achieve your fitness goals. Book: https://katfit.moxieapp.com/public/katfit/consultation-call

Visit www.kat.fit to discover more about KatFit Strength programs and how you can ignite your fitness journey.

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Transcript

Kat: 0:03

Welcome to miles from her view, the podcast, where we dive deep into the unfiltered reality of fitness, strength, training, and nutrition within womanhood and motherhood. I am your host, Kat founder of Kat Fit Strength. I'm a career strength and conditioning coach, entrepreneur, lifelong athlete, and a mom of two. In each episode, we explore the unique challenges and triumphs faced by women navigating the complexities of life from juggling family and career to prioritizing self care. We dissect the systems and the habits that shape our health and wellness. Join us for real stories, authentic advice, and genuine conversations, as we empower each other to embrace our journeys and find strength in vulnerability. Today we're going to discuss How does maintain strength and conditioning routine for the long haul? Thank you so much for joining me today, wherever you're at. I truly appreciate the time you've dedicated towards this. And I do hope you get some takeaways that you can employ in your strength and conditioning routine. So let's dive in. There are four key takeaways here. The first one is allowing for messing up. Life is life either always going to be things that are going to come up that are going to cause you to shorten workouts, maybe move workouts or needing to skip workout, allowing for this and understanding that a plan is not going to be executed 100 percent meaning you will never miss a workout. You'll always do the workout to completion and 100 percent how it's written. Allowing yourself to know that. It's okay. It's supposed to change. If a plan was supposed to be executed 100%, and if that was the only way to see results, probably nobody would have any results attained. It's impossible to execute a plan absolutely perfectly to the T without deviating. It's just not the way it works out. A plan is, if you will, black and white on a paper, two dimensional, and life is organic. It has a lot of unpredictable things that come up. You are human and it's normal for plans not to go the way they're supposed to. So that's where self compassion comes in. The understanding that it's okay if you need to move a workout. Um, it's okay if, you know, with your nutrition, that you do have times where you're not doing it. Thinking about oh, I need to get a ton of vegetables on my plate And if you allow for yourself to be human it goes a little bit further than that But like understanding that there is going to be certain times that you will not be able to work out due to vacations We are starting the summer season here in the Northeast You are going to have breaks There are going to be times where you're eating isn't going to be the way you would like it Um, But allow for that messing up, allow for yourself to learn as well. Even if it's not something scheduled, allow for yourself to learn. There is a learning curve where you have to understand that. I need to hold myself. to more discipline. I can't let myself get away with, Oh, I'm super tired all the time. So therefore I'll keep skipping my workouts. No, that's going to cause a lot of frustration. But if you understand that, okay, I'm still tired, but I can meet myself where I'm at. Maybe it's mobility. Maybe I'm going to do one set of every exercise. Maybe it's two sets of every exercise in a rep range. When I program for clients, I program for timing as well as rep ranges and set ranges so that clients can adjust. Yes, they use my guidance and understanding to help them articulate energy levels, um, stress levels where they're at so that they can become their own guides so that they can adhere to the plan better. Again, we are not looking for perfection. I don't want my clients to do every single workout. That may seem weird, but I want them to know if they need to move or if they need to take that extra rest day because they're a little tired, that's what they should do. Or maybe they're swapping out a workout because they have something else planned for an event that is also physically demanding. So that is where it comes down to knowing yourself and knowing how to allow for that messing up. I'm going to jump ahead to number three. We're going to go out of order. We're going to go to adjusting and adapting. Next is really when you adapt and adjust a plan, it is normal. Like I mentioned, plans are very two dimensional. They don't take into account life and the organicness of life. They, a plan is just black and white written on a paper, um, in an app. It's just, it's very static. You are an organic being who has feelings, energy levels, greater demand outside of your workouts. And I go back to when I was coaching athletes. I would know their routine more because they lived on campus. Things were more predictable. They didn't have, um, jobs. They didn't have, you know, kids. There was lower stress, but you could plan for a lot of things to help get them the results. And again, we would have to adapt or adjust because there would be energy level dips and, and those things. But in real life, we still need to plan for those things, burning yourself out or causing soft tissue injuries, muscle strains, tendon strains, all of these things. If you're not understanding how all of life stress happens and if you're not getting adequate sleep. So if your plan is written that it's very high intense, but you're also in a time period of your life where you're not getting a lot of sleep, you know, think back, or if you're currently in the time where you have toddlers or babies. You're not getting a lot of sleep. You're not getting that restorative time to let your body repair, let itself rebuild, let inflammation decrease, cortisol levels decrease, or in perimenopause to menopause where there are sleep disturbances because of hormone fluctuations. So it's, When you have a plan that adjusts and adapts to your current needs and aside from, you know, life seasons As it pertains to babies and toddlers and perimenopause and menopause, you know There's also work stress that can wreak havoc on sleep or you're maybe staying up later or getting up earlier There's you know stress plays a big impact so it's taking that into consideration that if we are not getting the rest and the recovery that we need and we're pushing ourselves super hard in workouts It's going to actually work against us. So the other aspect is if you have an injury that does crop up or you're coming back from an illness or, um, recovering from pregnancy there, you need to adapt the plan. It's not just go work out to lose weight or to lose fat. It's, we need to adjust and adapt to where you are at and meet yourself where you're at. And in that given, that is why it's really good. Um, This is why I kind of bumped three ahead of two, um, is. Asking for support, hiring a coach that is knowledgeable in these seasons of lives life that can help you train effectively and efficiently so you are moving forward. It's extremely frustrating to not be able to move your body the way you want to, or be doing all this work in the gym and it's kind of work for work and not seeing the results because it's not working with your body, working with your life at this current time. Hiring a coach who is well versed in the area of life that you're in will help. So take a look at personal trainers. credentials. Do they understand, you know, what it looks like for postpartum recovery? Do they understand prenatally how to train an individual in those series in those that season? What about perimenopause, menopause, um, PCOS, um, a myriad of things that do go into play With writing a training plan and helping, um, a coach is instrumental in helping you understand how to adapt and effectively train. The other thing is finding support beyond that, you know, having family and friends also bought in to helping you prioritize your Well being your health routine is very beneficial. I know in my household, it is one of our core family values of movement and strength. Um, and nutrition. It is. We all welcome and we all have our boundaries on our time to move our bodies, strengthen our bodies. Um, you know, by way of my business. We do have a gym in the house. So that is something that we all take advantage of. And we help our kids strength train appropriately to their age level and where they're at, as well as we carve out time. Both my husband and I carve out time for ourselves to access the gym to get our movement. Was it always that way? Absolutely not. When we were in the thick of things with kids and toddlers and babies, life looked a little bit different. That's where we're in a season now where our kids are both in grade school. We are more rested so we can push ourselves more. That does not mean it's like crazy intense workouts. It means we're able to dedicate more time. Our lives have. Per se calmed down. We are in the thick of all things sports and music and parent taxiing around to drop our kids off here or there, but we are a bit more rested where we can have that consistency with our routine. And I'll do a podcast on. training for the seasons of life and why it should look different, but having that support from family, friends, and hiring a coach who's going to be able to be supportive and not create that guilt or shame if you need to adapt, if you need to, um, change your workout, because that is, that, that just shouldn't be there. That's not going to set you up for success at all. Number four is the hardest, and I'm going to kind of start a little bit back. When I first started my business, it wasn't the best advice, and I totally disagreed with it. And I, disagree with it to this day is you should never talk about how hard it is to maintain a strength and conditioning routine, to maintain your health as a priority. You gotta tell clients, this is the advice, like you have to tell clients how easy it is. I strongly disagree with that. To be quite honest, it is hard. Even if you like working out, like for me, I enjoy it. But at the end of the day, I am human and I have feelings and there is a lot of things in life. It is hard to maintain a routine. So, and that's number four. I'm not going to sugarcoat this, but I also want to come at it as It shouldn't be a way to shy away from pushing yourself through a workout or showing up to a workout. I think if you explain to yourself, and it sounds weird, you know, you do have that internal dialogue, but if you tell yourself, Hey, you know what, this is going to be hard, but you know what, you're stronger, you can do this. Or knowing that there isn't going to be be a perfect time where your workout will seamlessly fit into your day. Sure. You're going to have some weeks, you're going to have some days, you're going to have some times where Oh my goodness. Everything's clicking. Your workout is just naturally falls into the day. The energy that levels there, the motivation is there, but for the most part, there's going to be that friction, that push pull tug of war effect with each. Prioritizing your well being and your health, that is a constant. So I think recognizing that and acknowledging the fact that that is a constant and normal for every person breaks down that stigma that one day this will be easy. One day this will just naturally fall into my schedule. There'll be no friction and it will just be easy for me to do this. No, It's hard. It's hard pushing your body. It's hard showing up. It's hard when you are being pulled in all directions and you still have to show up to yourself or you had great intentions to get up before your family or whoever you cohabitate with, your job or whatever your day looks like. You set that alarm. You even prep your clothes are laid out. You know exactly And something happens, maybe it's a poor night's sleep, maybe you check your email and you have to attend to that email because it's more pressing. And so that takes priority. And then, oh my goodness, where am I going to fit my workout into the rest of my day? That struggle will always be there. And I genuinely feel the more comfortable you can get with that and knowing, Hey, you know what? I'm going to push my workout needs to be pushed. I had planned to do the 40 minute workout that is on the schedule. However, today it needs to be 10 minutes because that's what my schedule allow. Awesome. I'm still showing up for myself. I'm still moving my body. I'm still prioritizing myself. Yes. Is this the 40 minute? Workout? No, but I'm still showing up. In that whole dialogue there, it recognizes the effort of showing up. You're still getting that placeholder, that repetition, that consistency there, and you're doing away with that guilt and shame. You're also employing that adaptability, the flexibility of understanding that life is going to happen. You're allowing yourself to be comfortable with that. Change. Okay. Is that failing? Did you not show up for the whole 40 minutes? Sure, but it's not necessarily failing because you showed up for the amount of time you had. You only had 10 minutes a day despite there being 40 minutes. If you are working with a coach or a trainer. Who is going to be like, well, you need to really prioritize and show up for that 40 minutes, but doesn't recognize that you showed up for 10 minutes. I would strongly encourage you to reevaluate that relationship because that's building guilt and shame. And if you are working with a coach and a trainer to allow for you to. Um, build those habits, build that consistency, build that momentum to keep showing up for yourself. Having someone I'm going to say, hold it over your head that you're not showing up or, um, you know, not recognize the ways that you are, is not going to help you in the long haul. You're going to be burnt out. It's going to perpetuate that all or nothing, that perfection seeking model that we, that Already hold ourselves to, and that we do see kind of perpetuated through social media, um, through fitness gurus, Fitspos, all the influencers out there that, you know, portray this. They show up consistently. There's no adaptation and it looks easy. All right, to recap, um, allow for messing up. It is vital. Shift that mindset from perfection seeking to embracing the progress. Really acknowledge when you show up and if those, that internal dialogue of I should have prioritized more pops up. Push it away and focus up, focus on the time that you are showing up because Your long-term success depends how you react in those moments and tolerate. Um, you know, let's goes to the next point. That adaptability and that flexibility there, okay? So it is okay to adapt. It will not affect the outcome. The more you adapt and meet yourself where you're at, the more consistent you are and the longer you're going to be able to maintain a routine ask for support. This is helpful. Help doesn't mean you're weak. Help actually means you're growing in that strength. It can help you understand your behaviors more, help you provide a plan that is right there in your pocket. So, or, you know, maybe going to see someone to learn how to strength train. It does provide that support system and find a community that is Very supportive and recognizes every effort that you do and then understand it's going to be hard I know that's not what you want to hear. We like to think it's going to just be magical and easy and very seamless There are gonna be weeks that feel like that, but the hardness doesn't go away. That's part of growing and getting stronger. Certain aspects are going to get easier. It doesn't mean don't do it. It just means, Hey, you know what? It's okay. Things can be hard, but we can still be thriving and growing in the process. Sticking with a strength and conditioning plan for life requires patience, self compassion, support, and adaptability. So allow yourself to mess up. Seek support and understand that motivation is going to wane and you're not always going to feel like doing it. So adjust the plan as needed to meet yourself where you're at so you can continue to see longterm success. Thank you for tuning into today's episode. If you found this information helpful, please subscribe and share it with other people. High achieving women looking to prioritize their health and wellbeing. And if you're ready to take the next step, book a consultation with me. I'd love to chat about your goals and to see if we'd be a good match to work together. Stay strong, stay committed, and remember you are worth it. Thank you for joining me on another episode of miles from her view. Your support means the world to me, and I truly appreciate you being a part of our community. If you found today's episode helpful and want to stay informed about all things CatFit Strength, make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter. You'll receive exclusive insights, tips, and updates straight to your inbox. To sign up, simply visit the show notes or the subscription link. To discover more about CatFit Strength programs and how you can ignite your fitness journey, head over to our website at www. catfit. com. There you'll find everything you need to invigorate your path to strength and results. Once again, thank you for tuning in and I can't wait to connect with you in our upcoming episodes. Take care and remember, act to take the next step.