Think of one thing in your life that’s great and you have pride in.

-Your perfectly maintained lawn and landscape at your home.

-Your continual success in your career.

-Your children who turned out to be responsible and hard working.

-Your well-funded retirement account.

All things that are impressive in their own right and not a one of them easy by any stretch.

Anyone with a well-maintained home and yard has done so by treating it like a part time job. I might be able to think of 4 people who are at the premier level of up keep I am referring to.

How many people are truly grinding day in and day out to bring their career to the next level? Doing the Olympic sprint to the parking lot at 5:00 PM is not exactly one of the characteristics I am referring to. However, there is a tiny subset of people will do whatever it takes to always move forward and progress to the next step. It doesn’t matter what industry they are in be it janitorial work or hedge funds. They are very few and far between and will always succeed.

Children? With a sixteen-month old daughter I am impressed with anyone who has kids and is a good parent.

Retirement fund? No I don’t mean the money Uncle Chuck left you when he died. I am referring to the folks who month in and month out for 30 or 40 years, socked money away for retirement to make sure they actually CAN retire.

Before you freak out thinking I am insulting you if you aren’t following all these things to the letter, relax, I’m not. These are just examples of things a person may take pride in, although they all have strong value in my opinion.

But, that isn’t the point.

The point is that they all take hard work, consistency, and boat loads of patience.

Cliché or not, anything great in life isn’t easy.

However, in some magical and ludicrous way, being in shape continues to be one of the things people see as “I don’t have to work that hard” to achieve.

Every gym across our great country is packed with members who for some outlandish reason think that going through the motions in the gym and eating correctly part-time will yield success.

I am not referring just to the people who are training in a way I do not agree with. Far worse are the individuals who are actually following a decent training and nutrition program, but have awful intensity and dedication.

Since no one has time to read a 7-minute monologue I will simplify things.

What You Keep Missing

1. Hard Work

I get that you think you are working hard, but you probably aren’t. At least not often enough. Not every single set of strength training needs to be completely to failure, but most of them sure has heck should be. With good form, of course.

If failure is 15 reps on a given lift and you stop at 10, you are wasting your time as far as strength and growth are concerned. The last few painful, burning, and intense reps are what give the results that made you want to start strength training in the first place. That is where the magic happens. This is exactly why folks who just go through the motions never look any different or get any stronger. Their body is simply not getting taxed enough to force change.

If you can’t push yourself to that limit, find a workout partner, trainer, or some new music. WORK HARDER. If you aren’t seeing changes, I bet you don’t work as hard as you think you do.

2. Consistency

It seems simple enough to hit your workouts each week and eat on plan in order to see the results you are looking for. But, hardly anyone does it.

I can tell you until I am blue in the face that picking and choosing when you feel like eating on plan is going to yield terrible results. Yet you will STILL think you can pick and choose when it’s convenient for you all while trying to hide that you are doing it. It NEVER works.

Let me be clear. If you have a desire to make big changes to your health and fitness, your workouts and nutrition must be consistently on plan week in and week out.

3. Patience

Any significant change whether it’s fat loss, muscle gain, endurance, etc., all take time. Anywhere from a handful of months to years. If you only see a 30-day commitment in your future, changing your body isn’t in the cards for you. You aren’t there yet. Buckle in because this is a lifelong commitment and your summer fad diet isn’t going to cut it. There is no end. You either want this for your life or you don’t.

If you don’t have interest in making big changes with your body, then cruising along will work out just fine for you. However, if you have big goals and things you want to achieve, get ready, because there is nothing easy about it. If you don’t think what you are doing right now is hard, you have your answer as to why you never see change.

If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them at: JwaltersPT@gmail.com

Or to learn more visit my website at: www.JonWalters.CO