GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME

You may have the best individually designed training plan. You may also have an amazing meal plan – one designed to sync perfectly with your current lifestyle. On top of this you could have all the critical health factors responsible for a successful body transformation (hormones, gut health, adrenal, cortisol levels) fully addressed and worked into your plans seamlessly. But if you don’t have your mindset right, no matter how fool-proof your plans are… you will fail. Statistically speaking, the majority of guys who have a plan professionally designed for them will, on average, last a little longer than 4 weeks before they find themselves sliding. They will generally battle on for another 2 weeks, ‘dipping their toes in and out’ of following their plans until they give up the ghost and unofficially retire completely, discarding their goals yet again. Those who are ‘going it alone’ (with no professional help) will generally drop off within the first 2 weeks. Both scenarios unfortunately usually comes down to just two things - 1. They’re honestly not sure if what they’re doing is even correct, therefore adherence is weak and this is totally understandable. How can you possibly give something your all if you’re not 100% confident you’re going about it right. Believe me, there’s no room for ‘blind faith’ when it comes to achieving a successful body transformation. 2.They became overwhelmed and lost in the process. Why? Because what they didn’t do, was give active thought to every aspect required when routines were in their infancy and being formed. When you are engaging in an activity that you are fresh and new to, something that you want to get really good at (let’s say snowboarding), you consciously and actively have to be thinking of every single little aspect - knowing how to suit up, finding your balance on the board, finding your centre of balance when moving, actively aware of every movement, each lean and weight distribution change. Over time, once you become better and better, with hours and hours spent practicing, your need to actively think about all these fundamentals becomes less and less. It eventually becomes instinctive by nature. But not so at the start. If you didn’t purposefully think about every aspect, you would never get more than a meter down the slope. The same can be said of a successful body transformation. In the early stages there are key factors that you must activity and consciously think of every single day - key elements that simply have to be one of the top priorities and in your conscious thoughts for a short period of time in order to succeed. As a rule, this thought process will occupy the prime real estate in your head for the first 4 weeks. Exactly what you need to be eating and when you need to be eating. What you’re training today, when you’re training today consciously scheduling life, work and family to fit around your workouts. What lifestyle practices you need to be following for the day and when are you going to perform them. And importantly, what practices, habits, events, social offers and former habits will it be necessary for you to consciously turn down or adjust as a result of you actively assessing everything to determine - “does it line up and support my transformation efforts, or does it work against them”? Initially, conscious thought about everything is required. Overwhelmed already? This is of course typically a major reason why people can’t keep this up for any longer than a couple of weeks at best. How then do we win this battle? The key is awareness. People who aren’t aware of the conscious priority that this initially needs to hold in your head, will fail. The need to be aware of this fact before you even start, knowing that it’s going to be a vital ‘make-or-break’ thing BUT also knowing its going to get easier and easier as time passes – it’s this awareness that’s going to pull you through the first 4 weeks. As new habits become more and more ingrained through consistency and conscious adherence, the less and less time and emotional energy you will gradually have to dedicate giving active thought to. Let’s go back to our snowboarding analogy. The first time you go down the slope on your board you are super conscious of every movement you make and exactly where you are boarding. Each time you go down the slope (following the same path as you did the run just before) the less and less you have to actively think about what you are doing. The track you are making in the snow is being dug deeper and deeper into the snow each time you successfully follow the same path. With enough times following the same run, you literally get to a point where the path is so ingrained, you can board down successfully without burning your brain. And that’s exactly the same with adopting the lifestyle required to be successful with your body transformation. The more and more you do it, the easier and easier it becomes. In the first 4 weeks be prepared to carry your meal plan around with you, referring to it multiple times a day. Be prepared to set alarms on your phone reminding you when to eat. Be prepared to block out time on your calendar for your week’s worth of workouts. Be prepared to be over-prepared. Just know that the first 4 weeks will require more than just effort with diet and training adherence. It will also demand a determined mental consciousness. Over those first 4 weeks life long habits will be formed, and once conquered you will find the space within your head returning along with an ease of adherence and a sense of excellence with the execution established.