The internet is making you think fitness is ALL about Hybrid Racing right now. A while ago it made you think fitness was all about gains. Even further back it made you think fitness was about WOD’s. That’s the problem with the internet. You don’t realize it’s giving you the short story of EVERY one of those things. Shiny and new, even YOU aren’t immune to. It’s what EVERYONE is doing, so it’s what we want to do.
But you are smarter than that. Or are you? If you were, you wouldn’t be on social media at all. You can’t tell me it is inherently good for you. It’s a “guilty pleasure” that doesn’t serve you. Sure, you’ll get some chuckles, and MAYBE a good idea here or there, but the reality of it is it’s just a way to virtually “keep up with the Joneses”. This is a whole other conversation that goes much deeper than this post, and maybe some other day we’ll get into it. But not today!
Is This The Fitness You Speak Of?
Those good ideas you see, only seem good in short form media. They aren’t there to truly tell you a “how” or a “what” does this entail. Only that you should be doing this. Because the pretty people are doing it. Don’t mind that those pretty people aren’t telling you EVERYTHING they are doing. It’s the curated version of it all. It’s not the go to bed at 9pm, wake up at 4am, eat 210 grams of protein through whole foods, maybe take a little extra performance enhancement for some of them, work out 12-20 hours a week, copy paste programming for their clients, and on and on and on.
Fitness isn’t necessarily always fun, either. We WANT it to be fun. We see the story online that it’s fun, but to truly change your life, some of it is uncomfortable, not FUN. If it was fun, everyone would be into fitness, right? It’s doing what we SHOULD be doing, not what we WANT to be doing that gets us what we want FROM the action over time. But online, everything is fun and cool and trendy and hot. And we believe it and then when it comes to the nitty gritty, we have no grit.
We want silver bullet solutions and the internet gives us MILLIONS of them. Why don’t we just get the one that works and call it a day? Why have there been SO MANY solutions to our problems that come and go. Right now, there’s another “lose weight quick” scenario that people are contemplating, or a quick “get in shape with these 3 workouts in under 30 minutes each” plan. And then in a couple years there will be a few different versions of another drawn up piece of garbage.
Bottom line. You are gonna have to do some work if you want to change your fitness. It’s not just going to be a bunch of stuff you want to do, when you want to do it. The internet has educated you to the point where you think that IS what it’s gonna be like. That’s called marketing. We love being told what we want is EASY. That’s why people sign up for gym memberships and then never go. They signed up, they did their part. Now what? When it isn’t working for them, they blame the gym or time. Not the fact that they don’t go. It’s suddenly “the gym is too far” or “i just really didn’t like the environment/energy there”. You’ve been conditioned to rationalize this way. That’s not your fault.
If you can acknowledge these things, there is hope for you yet! You have to do some work. Find out what your options are. Look for educated and educational resources to get you to your goals. And most importantly, understand that your first decisions to change are ONLY the beginning. YOUR job isn’t done and it WON’T be, the whole journey.