SO lately my motivation to heave heavy things has somewhat dissipated. Don’t get me wrong, I still get out and give it my all with some good heavy deadlifts and bench press, but aside from trying to get my big lifts stronger and continue to get my back feeling dangerously sexified and bullet-proof, I sort of feel……..in limbo. You ever get that way? Where you don’t really have a goal eating away at your mind and trying to drive you forward? Yeah, I’m there right now. In the meantime, I’ve been biking to work every day when it’s not snowing or raining like arc-building weather, and running twice a week in my Boot Camp class, complete with stair repeats, and still hitting weights about 3 days a week.

That being said, today’s guest post is a timely one from Dan Grant, the Fitness Pez Dispenser, on motivation. Dan has a pretty cool writing style I think you’ll get a kick out of, so sit back and enjoy!!

I deal with health and fitness, but not necessarily from a how-to standpoint. I don’t tell people how to workout. I do tell people how to eat but all that usually boils down to are basic solutions if you choose to accept them and implement them. I talk a lot about our actions and mindset as a relation to the outcomes we get with our health. I mean, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

I used to be the fitness professional who stated on the top of my mythical pedestal that I believed that everybody should dead lift because it’s the greatest exercise in the history of mankind. I used to dictate until there was no tomorrow about how if you didn’t eat six meals a day then you were wasting both yours and my time because you were obviously not going to get the results. I believe (like a few fitness professionals) that learning your craft is the only way to evolve and actually help people the proper way when they hire you.

The interesting thing about it is that learning our crafts has all taken us on different evolutionary paths when it comes to our philosophy on health and fitness.

I still believe the dead lift is the greatest exercise but I now sure as hell understand that you don’t need it to be successful. Six meals a day is ‘hogwash’ and in the case of my own experience is all a mindset to how we approach food. I used to be a guy who started getting the shakes and VERY irritated if I didn’t eat every few hours. Now I incorporate intermittent fasting into my plan along with only eating 2-3 meals a day and I juice fruits and vegetables on a daily basis.

You see, I’ve never been a big fan of vegetables. Growing up they weren’t around all the time and too be honest I’m not exactly too savvy in the kitchen with a knife (due to a childhood experience with a knife and one of my fingers) so cutting up vegetables wasn’t on my priority list of things to do. So I generally decided to just avoid them, unless my fiance was cooking them up. I knew, of course, I wasn’t getting all the vitamins and minerals I should be and after noticing that my weight was slowly creeping up I decided that I needed a solution. Enter the juicer and enter my savior when it comes to health.

I’ve never felt so good and if for some reason I don’t get to a meal or am busy it rarely phases me one bit. The shakes and irritability I once experienced was all due to my relationship towards food. It had nothing to do with my blood sugar levels at all.

I’ve evolved through my education in health, fitness, and life. I’m not as hardcore as I used to be when it came to what needs to be done. I still hate long cardio, ellipticals, the BOSU ball, most exercise machines, and CrossFit, but I won’t start thinking less of you as a human being anymore if you do that type of exercise.

Motivation is Bunk

I’ve always wanted to write a book. I’ve tried many times to complete one; all attempts ended up in failure. I’d find periods of motivation and then I’d just write, blindly thinking that I was actually accomplishing something. Then after a few weeks the motivation would wear off and all I could see in front of me was a pile of words with no real strategy and no real prescribed outcome other then a physical product. I had no true vision of what I wanted or how to really get there.

I didn’t take the time to learn about the process or even work on my actual writing skills (some might say they are still very suspect 🙂 ). I just went off motivation and my desire to write a book. Consequently, no book ever got finished. This year I took the time to learn how to plan and organize the writing of a book. I sat down, figured out what I wanted to teach, and then outlined how I would teach it. Low and behold, I’m already very close to finishing my first draft. All because I didn’t bank on my motivation to write a book but because of the education I got out of researching and planning how to write my book.

I learned that same truth a while back with clients. They don’t need motivation all the time. Trying to keep clients going with superficial motivation will only burn you out (it sure burned me out when I was a young trainer). They need education and they need to be smart enough to come up with their own thoughts and opinions. The best clients I’ve ever had are the one’s that take time to research and not take what I say as an instant truth. From the first assessment on I tell them to not believe what I tell them and form their own opinions whether it will be good for them or not.

It keeps them focused and it educates them about their own health. I research a lot so I know I’m not making stuff up, but I want them to figure that out for themselves. My goal is to get them to treat their health like it’s their craft…if that makes sense?

I mean, it’s their body and their life and it’s your body and your life. You should never take information blindly when it’s dealing with YOUR life.

Education BEFORE Motivation

The issue I find is that people don’t treat their health and fitness as a craft. They typically use motivation to get them going and once that motivation dies down then you can put the nails in the coffin because their journey is over – until the next wave of motivation comes their way that is.

This is why I think motivation is one of the most overrated aspects of life. Motivation does nothing but to get people all fired up and start taking action.

“But, that’s a good thing Dan!”

NO IT’S NOT!

Listen to me, I’m all for people taking action and improving their lives but what if I motivated an idiot? Then we’d all have a motivated idiot running around.

I feel like this is what our industry has turned into. We can motivate the hell out of people by showing them inspirational videos and give them motivational speeches but if they don’t know what they are doing then we have just that – a bunch of motivated people who have no idea what they are doing running around the gym.

You’ve seen it and I’ve seen it. They are the people who look like their backs are about to snap on every rep while they dead lift. They are the people who read celebrity magazines while sitting on a recumbent bike as they maintain their heart rate level in the ‘fat-burning zone’. They are the people who think that absolutely murdering yourself every workout is actually a good thing for you. They shove ten different supplements down their throat believing that’s whats necessary for a sexy body. They are all jacked up to get healthy but they have no clue as to what that actually entails.

I understand that’s what a coach is for but many people can’t afford one and there are many coaches out there who are not even properly educated themselves.

Education has to happen before motivation.

Your health is the most important thing you possess. If you didn’t have your health then life probably wouldn’t be awesome. So why not put down the trashy magazines, the mystery novels, and turn off the reality shows and start learning about the most important aspect of your life – your health.

Learn what’s right for you. Learn the best way to eat for yourself. Learn what makes you feel good and gives you the results that you want.

Here’s a bonus tip: Just because someone is famous doesn’t mean they know what they are talking about. If they have a New York Times Bestseller, don’t automatically believe everything they are talking about. Same goes if they train celebrities. You are not a celebrity so why would you try to do what they do…they have a few different priorities then you and most of the women are starting to look like skeletons anyways.

 

 

You have to try things out on your own. I’ve tried plenty of exercise routines from some of the biggest names in the industry. Some I loved, some I hated. Doesn’t mean I think anything less of the professionals whose workouts I didn’t like, they just weren’t for me. Some people love my views on life and health, some think I’m too negative, some really dig how tell things in a very real manner, and some don’t hesitate to email me how I’ve somehow made personal attacks towards them (people I’ve never met in my life as a matter of fact).

It’s your education and experimentation, however, that gets you the longterm results that everybody needs. It’s not through motivation.

So don’t just search out motivation. Make the time to educate yourself and stop following advice blindly, that’s what the mediocre do…and you don’t want to be mediocre. If you did, you wouldn’t be here reading this.

Strive for perfection,

Dan is an internationally recognized and in demand fitness expert from Edmonton, AB who is certified through the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Dan graduated from the University of Northern Iowa with a Bachelors Degree in Physical Education, and writes a very popular blog at FitnessPezDispenser.com