I’m Training For Old Age
The Real Reason I Pay Attention to My Fitness…
I've been a Personal Trainer for more than 8 years now and I've managed to help scores of people complete a lot of satisfying physical goals in that time. A perk of my job is getting to observe the goal setting process for a variety of people on a repetitive basis; Something only a handful of other professionals typically get to experience and very rarely on the personal level that I do.
You’ve never wondered why it’s called ‘personal’ training?
I work with most people on a weekly basis, some a bi-weekly basis and for those who can afford it and are highly motivated, a tri-weekly basis or more. It’s actually a highly intimate profession and it gives me an incredible opportunity to look for insight into motivation. I’d consider a lot of clients good friends at this point. It might surprise you to know that I generally try to take as much of a hands off approach as possible, despite the modern day drill sergeant perspective most people tend to have about me and my day job; That, or they wonder when I’m going to get a ‘real job.’
I actually spend the majority of my time teaching, and I love it. I teach people about their own body, I teach them the basics of anatomy, I teach them how to train, how to stretch, how to move and how to eat just a little bit better each day. The rest of my time is spent coaching people on these teachings, or basic principles, tweaking it in a continually evolving process.
Nobody is perfect, and despite some of my client’s beliefs, not even me. I miss training sessions from time to time or have bad ones, I deal with injuries, I cheat on my meals every now and again, and there are small changes I can and strive to make on a daily basis to get better. Maybe if you get a birds-eye view of my lifestyle it looks a little better than most, but this isn't without a lot of practice and I can still do better.
The unfortunate reality is that this process is never ending. The complete opposite of what many of us expect, and yet the one thing I want to teach everyone else out there.
Goal setting is flawed in the same way that consumerism is flawed.
*At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut tells his friend, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history.
Heller said, “Yes, but I have something he will never have: Enough.”
Most of us know that buying one more thing won't make us happy, and yet we keep buying things. Likewise, many of us know that achieving one more goal won’t make us happy either, and yet most of us tend to live our lives moving from goal to goal.
Well I’m aiming to be to goal setting what Heller is to consumerism.
People ask me almost every day, “so what are you training for next?” Typically I shrug this off, but in reality it just took me awhile to figure it out. In light of my recent 30th Birthday (I know I'm so old right?) here’s what I'm going to say moving forward.
You see this is what famed goals researcher, Peter Gollwitzer, calls ‘a self-defining goal.’ It’s also a quote that a client shared with me from a conversation he had with a 60 year old colleague.
A self-defining goal, is a goal to guide all other goals, only in this case, it’s the goal that guides all my physical goals only, so we're going to call it the ‘physically defining goal.’
The Physically Defining Goal
You'll often find yourself feeling strangely unfulfilled with your physical goals the more you bounce back and forth from goal to goal. More and more of my clients seem to experience this itchy feeling when they're not training specifically for something. They have a hard time training for simple objectives when they could be out there trying to beat their race time.
Ignoring the fact that I'm not getting any younger, sooner or later the stark reality of getting old means your physical performance will tend to worsen.
At this point in my life I could care less about doing another triathlon, or running another half marathon, or participating in some other competition and it’s not because I'm bitter or I've lost my competitive spirit.
It’s because I care much more about waking up in the morning pain free.
I get more from my training knowing that I'm strong, mobile, at the ideal body weight. I’m trying to live into the image that I have of myself years from now.
It’s because I have other far more important goals to fulfill and I only want to use fitness as a support mechanism in achieving those goals.
I want to reverse the obesity trend.
I want to build a coaching method that is 99.9% effective for everyone who gets coached.
I want to create massive disruption within the fitness industry.
I want to build a fitness technology company to profitability and results with our clients.
I want to help everybody on earth improve their quality of life.
I’d like to see our education and medical systems transformed.
Of course a lot of this won't be easy, if not impossible, but it makes running a full marathon seem trivial by comparison and there is of course the minor setback of goal dilution (the more goals you actively pursue, the less likely you are to achieve any of them). You can't do everything at once.
What else do you have going on in your life?
What truly matters in the grand scheme of things you'd like to accomplish or achieve?
What else could you use your physical well-being to support?
Break the cycle of moving from goal to goal because you're missing the bigger picture.
The majority of people start working with me under the pretence of accomplishing a goal. Completely fine as a starting point. I work with a lot of clients who want to lose weight, the odd few who want to gain muscle mass and several others that are looking for performance improvements in some kind of activity or sport.
I say pretence, because the majority walk away (I hope — but also generally confirm via conversations) with a much deeper sense of accomplishment and purpose. The best part is they can still hit those objectives along the way.
It’s the little things really. The realization that maintaining a healthy weight is a lot easier than initially thought. The insight into being a better parent when you look after your own health. The huge amounts of work you get done when you're physically energized. The relationships you build through sweat. It’s the understanding that leapfrogging from one goal to the next, is frivolous and constantly leaving you unsatisfied. The notion that maybe, just maybe, there is a better way to look after yourself.
Hitting that next goal might feel good for a little while, but sooner or later you're out looking for your next hit of goal therapy. It makes it a lot harder for physical happiness to stick.
So start training for old age…
*Thanks to Derek Sivers for that remarkable quote (t.@sivers).
Email me when Darren Beattie publishes or recommends stories