I’ve been around fitness my entire life. Growing up a swimmer, I’ve been around greatness – competing alongside Olympic legends like Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte. I’ve also witnessed individuals with amazing potential fall short of their capacity and trained alongside less than genetic gifted athletes that surpass what any of their coaches thought they could do. I then entered a career of health and fitness and been part of amazing results, failures, and everything in between.

​As with most things, there is a common theme to succeed in fitness: achievement is directly proportional to the effort you put into it. You need to show up.

It all starts with showing up. James Clear states in his book Atomic Habits, that “every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.” To begin to make any changes in fitness, you need to begin casting votes for the individual you want to become. That means you’ve got to start being active every day. It needs to become engrained in your identity that activity is not a task you do every once in a while, rather it’s a task you do daily.

Creating the habit of being active daily doesn’t have to be extreme. As Clear states, even exercising for 2 minutes a day is a perfect start. It could be a 2-minute plank at home, a short walk around your block, a short run, or as intense as a CrossFit class.

Your focus also needs to be on the task at hand which is not obtaining a certain number on the scale, rather the process of beginning to be active daily.  Being far less concerned with the results and more concerned on your trajectory, as Atomic Habits suggests, is vital. Results don’t come overnight. They come with identity change and a creation of a new habit. They come with systems. They come in the long haul. Setting goals is important, but the path which leads us to those goals are so much more important in long term success.

Throughout my time as a competitive swimmer, I also noticed the most successful swimmers were not the ones who solely focused on winning, rather it was the love of training. “When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running,” Clear states. Over time, you will fall in love with your new habit of activity and your new identity. Be mindful that this process will not come overnight, but remember we are in this life for the long haul. Adjust your mindset and remember we don’t HAVE TO be active – we GET TO be active. Be grateful for your abilities to move and to lift – be it slow or fast, light or heavy. Cherish and love that fact.

Now that my swimming career is over, my desires to exercise have changed drastically. Rather than solely chasing performance-based results, I am chasing my identity to constantly improve myself and my community. Sometimes pushing to be the best me isn’t quite enough some days – but the love for my fitness community is. I show up for myself, but I also show up to support them. The statement, “One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior,” in Atomic Habits feels like it’s talking to my Aspire Community directly. I see, support, and sweat with my closest friends on a daily basis. People outside of this community might not get why I enjoy running a marathon, doing a heavy clean, or completing Murph. But my Aspire Community does. Yes, I enjoy pursuing the fittest individual I can be, but I more enjoy the community that supports each other in every aspect of life from fitness, to family, to overall wellbeing.

It all starts with one thing – showing up. Nothing can be accomplished by doing nothing. Too often we daydream of things yet fail to put them into action. Being 1% better daily compound yields incredible interest as we are constantly casting votes for the individual we want to be. By trusting the process and observing our trajectory, not just results, beginning to be active daily, and finding a community that supports these values, you can take your health and fitness into your own hands. You just need to start showing up.

What truly is fitness? Encompassing ten skills, fitness encompasses a combination these ten attributes. Focusing solely on one, or a combination of a few, creates specialization that is required for elite athletics. However, for those looking to simply improve their lives and be healthier, all ten should be included in your overall fitness program.
 

1. Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance – The ability of body systems to gather, process, and deliver oxygen.
2. Stamina – The ability of body systems to process, deliver, store, and utilize energy.
3. Strength – The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force.
4. Flexibility – the ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint.
5. Power – The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time.
6. Speed – The ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement.
7. Coordination – The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement.
8. Agility – The ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another.
9. Balance – The ability to control the placement of the bodies center of gravity in relation to its support base.
10. Accuracy – The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity.

 
(Thanks to Jim Crawley and Bruce Evans of Dynamax and The CrossFit Journal)

HIIT, an acronymic for High Intensity Interval Training, has been around for decades, it is at an all-time peak of popularity. And for good reason, it’s the best way for the vast majority of people to exercise. It’s time efficient and works. Boutique fitness facilities, globo gyms, and everything in between have popped up on every corner, each with “their” own style of HIIT. In CrossFit, we typically call this portion of our training “conditioning.”
You might feel like you are getting an incredible workout as you are drenched with sweat and tired. For most, this will yield initial results. Unfortunately, some problems can arise in these workouts that can lead to a plateau because of lack of variety in duration, light loads, and doing too many movements in one class.

Lack of Variety in Duration
When you are only training in one energy system, such as a consistent pace for 30 minutes to an hour, you are only training the body metabolically one way. Your energy systems and body easily adapt to this time frame and intensity, thus becoming super-efficient. If we are looking for changes in our fitness or body composition, this isn’t a good – it means less calories burned, adapted muscles, and fewer results.

The Solution: ensure your workouts vary in duration and intensity. Some workouts should be at a moderate heart rate (50-70%) for long durations (30 minutes to an hour). Other workouts however should be short and extremely intense (working at 90%+ for 3-8 minutes) and others with moderate duration and intensity (70-90% effort and 8-25 minutes in length).

The Catch: A three-minute workout should completely suck. If you aren’t giving an all-out effort, your results are going to be extremely subpar.

Not enough load to make muscular change
Muscles need to be loaded to make change. Light weight for huge volumes don’t always cut it. The body needs to be challenged via relatively high loads. Muscles should be tired after a workout and need recovery in order to make change. Strength specific days are also vital to get stronger and improve muscular definition. This will enable you to burn more calories daily, prevent muscle land bone density loss over time, and improve physique.

The Solution: Challenge yourself not only via repetitions, but also through load. Sore muscles aren’t necessary after every workout, but if you are never sore, the muscles probably aren’t making any change.

The Catch: Gradually increase the load over time and don’t always stick to the same weights. If you’ve been swinging a 25-lb KB for 6 months now, it might be time to step it up to the next weight.

Too little purposeful movements, too many fillers
In order to make change, we need quality over quantity. Too often we see HIIT classes with tons of movements and lack of emphasis on a certain lift, muscle group, or metabolic demand. You can’t do everything in an hour workout, results come through the process of exercising, not one workout. Focus needs to be achieved on particular movements, muscular recruitment, and energy systems. Moving from station to station often forces the coach to throw exercises in there, trying to do too much in one workout to be able to see long term results. Full body workouts are great, but shouldn’t be happening daily.

The Solution: Most workouts should be focusing on 1-3 movements/body parts and one energy system.

The Catch: One hard workout a week doesn’t get you results. You need to be consistent with your exercise.

Hormonal Stress on the Body
As with any exercise program, how our body responds to the increase in physical stress is vital. We need to be considerate of the load the endocrine system is taking. The body responds to mental and physical stress in the same way – an increase in the catabolic hormone cortisol. This fight or flight hormone elevates when we are stressed and tells the body to preserve fat and not build muscle. Ancestrally, it helped us conserve as we ran from predators. Currently, it blocks out ability to burn fat and build lean muscle.
Your exercise program needs to ensure that you are recovering properly to keep cortisol levels low. Too many 60-minute interval classes per week put a huge level of unwanted stress on the body.

The Solution: Have variety in your workouts, especially in length, intensity, and load. Some days should be long while others quick. Some will focus on high heart rate and others on low heart rate. And some days should be hard and others easy.

The Catch: For most individual’s goals, 2-4 strength biased (weightlifting low heart rate and rest) workouts and 2-4 conditioning biased (HIIT) workouts per week are all they need.

Below is a typical 5 Day (Monday-Friday) Schedule at Aspire, featuring two strength bias days and 3 conditioning biased days, in addition to an array of physical and metabolic demands.

Monday – Strength + 12-minute conditioning
Tuesday – 20-minute conditioning
Wednesday – Strength + 16-minute conditioning
Thursday – 8-minute conditioning
Friday – 25-minute conditioning
 
In closing, don’t get fooled by the “more is vital” approach when it comes to your HIIT training. It often leads to quick results, then the body plateaus as it adjusts to the duration, light loads, and filler movements as it creates a huge hormonal load on the body. Fix these issues, pay attention to your body and its progress, and you’ll be on your road to results once again.