By Michael Krueger
I can be amazingly lazy. There, I said it. This is a remarkably satisfying statement to say out loud–not particularly flattering, but satisfying nonetheless. I don’t mean this in a negative, self-deprecating sort of way either. It’s just a part of me that I have to consider when I’m figuring out how to get through life.
Just like you, I have hopes and dreams. I also have plans and goals and excuses for ignoring the first and not reaching the second. You know what I mean: too many distractions, too busy, too tired … too lazy.
Honesty
I’ve talked more than once about being honest when assessing your goals, motivation, and ambition. It’s so easy to rationalize what you’re doing compared to what you claim you want to be doing that you probably don’t even realize when you’re doing it. We’ll do it to get through a day, a week, a month and, in the worst-case scenario, our entire life.
It’s time to stop. Just don’t do it anymore. Be honest about what you want and what you are willing to do to get it. This isn’t as hard as it might seem either. Look at your life, your goals, and your abilities. Mix them all together and what you have is “you.” You may not like what you find, but that’s beside the point. What you see is what you get but not necessarily where you must stay.
I look at and review my life (particularly my fitness/training life) on a regular basis. I have friends who suggest that I may be a little crazy for doing so and that I’m just making my life more difficult than it needs to be, but that’s the way I’m wired. I subscribe to the “… an unexamined life isn’t worth living” school of thought. No, it’s not the easiest way to live, but for me it’s the best way.
When applied to fitness training, it’s wonderfully straightforward. This may be the reason it’s so appealing to me. Fitness training is nothing if not quantifiable. I work out, I record that workout, and I compare it to previous workouts and determine if it’s taking me closer to or farther from my goals. Was the workout better, worse, or about the same? Then I look at why I got the results I did. This can be the harder part, since it requires me to assess not only the efficacy of my program but my effort; my motivation; and, in general, my state of mind.
Sometimes I have no choice but to accept the fact that I didn’t perform up to my potential. Occasionally, it’s because I overreached or even overtrained, and that can be (mostly) forgivable. Other times, I have to admit that due to my lack of discipline I just gave into fatigue or fear or, worst of all, I simply bailed on my workout. I was lazy; there’s no other word that applies.
Facing the Truth
Like everyone who trains regularly, I will occasionally plateau. Because of my personality, I fight it and find it to be more than a little bit frustrating. I know that it can happen for good reasons, but if I look back at my previous workouts and see that the reason is because I wasn’t pushing, I wasn’t rising to the challenge of progression, I get very cranky. I look at my log comments and can see when I’ve just been making excuses. I can see when I haven’t been putting forth the necessary effort and it makes me angry … with myself.
Why would I do this? I’m willing to put in the time, but I don’t put forth the effort; what’s with that? I’m just wasting my time! I deny myself the very progress that I claim to want! I fall short of my goals and then put myself in the position of finding reasons (really it’s making lame excuses) just so I can stand to look at myself in the mirror.
Recently I came to the realization that I was plateaued with my rowing simply because I wasn’t willing to work as hard as I needed to progress. I was really upset with myself, since I thought I’d been “working hard”–and I was, but not hard enough to progress. I had fallen into a doable pace that was comfortably “OK.” I’d see a little improvement and then fall back a bit. I ignored my short-term goals and justified it by “looking at the big picture”; I was improving, sort of. In other words, I was being undisciplined and lazy. Apparently, despite my mission statement, I was no longer willing to put forth the extra effort to take me closer to my goals. Why am I doing this; what’s that all about?
Here comes what I figured out, and I’m none too proud of it. First, I’m old … well, age is relative, but it’s an easy label to apply to myself as I come sliding up on my 60th year. Most of the time I don’t feel particularly old, but I will admit it’s a convenient excuse when I feel tired and don’t want to train hard. Rather than be honest and admit my lack of motivation (i.e., laziness), I just chalk it up to age. I think of my parents’ generation and where they were fitness-wise at my age and I can easily kick back and say that I’m better. This is convenient, self-serving thinking that has no useful purpose other than to justify my lack of effort and my refusal to admit that I’m being undisciplined and lazy.
So, in an effort to get past this rather unpleasant situation, I first decided to lose a few pounds, five to be precise. I find dietary restrictions to be most unpleasant; therefore, they are the best way for me to get my head back in the training game. That might sound odd to some people, but I find that it focuses my thoughts and forces me to pay closer attention not only to what I eat but to how I think and feel and to what I do.
After four weeks of this, I had dropped those five pounds. Then I had some turmoil in my emotional life and then Thanksgiving rolled into town and then right on its heels came the holiday season. As hostile as this chain of events could’ve been to my dietary and training plans, I actually kept (mostly) on track. I maintained the basics of my diet, didn’t slack on my training, and kept off the five pounds that I had lost early on.
The best part of it though was that during the month of December, the focus and discipline I had gained enabled me to move past my rowing plateau and record my ten best 5K times ever and break my old personal best that I had set way back in April by 16.2 seconds! I was finally energized and excited about all aspects of my training and I no longer felt lazy, and that felt very good indeed.
Making the Change
If you review your training and find that you haven’t been living up to the promises you made to yourself simply because they are difficult, then it’s time to make some changes. Exactly what those changes might entail will be specific to you, and if you look deeply enough, you will find what’s needed. Admitting that you’ve become mentally, physically, or emotionally lazy will almost certainly be part of the mix. These are hard to admit but easy to remedy.
So, tighten up your workouts, clean up your diet, and focus your mind. Soon you’ll find your energy growing; no longer will you be satisfied with just “OK” when it comes to your training or your life. Set some new short-term goals and crush them, then set some more and crush them too; repeat until you need to set some new long-term goals…
…and crush them too!
Michael Krueger is an NSCA-certified personal trainer. He got his start in fitness training while serving in the United States Coast Guard. He works with firefighters and others in and around Madison, Wisconsin. He is available to fire departments, civic organizations, and athletic teams for training, consulting, and speaking engagements. He has published numerous articles on fitness, health, and the mind-body connection and was a featured speaker at the IAFC’s FRI 2009 Health Day in Dallas, Texas. E-mail him at MKPTLLC@gmail.
