Compounding Fitness and Why It’s So Important
Even a 1% improvement on where you are right now has a ripple effect that changes lives.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been talking a lot about the benefits of establishing good healthy habits and staying consistent with them to get the results you want.
I used a financial analogy to show that if you wanted to earn $1 million through saving each month, it would be far better and more practical to start saving $500/month over 30 years rather than $5000/month over 10 years. Though both would take some serious attention, the former is far more doable for most individuals than the latter.
With health and fitness, the same runs true. It is far better to start early and stay consistent and compound your fitness over time rather than attempt to crash diet your way to success, a process that never ends well.
This is where the action of Compounding Fitness becomes so valuable. It’s not just because of the end result, which don’t get me wrong, achieving your goal is always fantastic, but it’s what happens between the start and finish.
Let’s take two scenarios that are common in the weight loss spectrum, the one that most people do and the one that everyone SHOULD do.
For the first scenario we have a client that jumps into a diet fad. They are given a generic list of instructions to follow and told how much to eat, what to eat and what not to eat — sound familiar? Things go well for a while, they may even go great, but somewhere along the line the person can no longer sustain it for one or more of these many reasons — they didn’t get the results they wanted quick enough, they find it too hard to follow the “rules”, they can’t keep up with the lower calories, they had some success and feel like they can go back to “normal” or it may be costing them too much to keep buying the foods or the supplements. Again, sound familiar? One of the bigger concerns with this, besides not teaching the client how to eat, is that the focus for the client is ONLY on the end result.
In the second scenario, and the one that has a much higher rate of success and sustainability is where the clients eats foods they enjoy eating, but learn how to manage both the quality and quantity of their foods choices to achieve a gradual loss of weight over time and improve their health. And more importantly, understand what are manageable levels of intake to gain, maintain and lose weight as they move through the process. The advantage of this scenario is the individual eats closer to their lifestyle, but also understands how to manage their intake to achieve long term success.
We could also run the same scenarios when talking about going to the gym. You have individuals that start and quit the gym multiple times over a single year (look at Jan vs Feb), and then you have individuals that continue to go to the gym each week for the whole year.
In both of these examples, the consistency is bar far the most important aspect, and here lies where the secret of Compounding Fitness really takes shape.
As you begin your journey, whether it be in the gym or in the kitchen, you start to practice patterns, skills and behaviors that ultimately become habits. But what you are actually doing is unlocking your next level of performance. You have created a new baseline, a new person.
Let’s say your goal is to lose 20lbs in the next 6 months. You start by making a few small consistent changes to your eating plan, you begin to get to the gym regularly, and at the same time you work on improving your sleep and stress levels. After the first month you happen to lose 3lbs. Excellent. But what’s really special is what has happened in between.
You are a new person!
You are a person that is now 3lbs lighter, a person who is relatively stronger and can move their body with 3lbs less mass, a person who’s internal workings are improving by an increase in metabolic action, and more efficient use of nutrients. A person who is able to recover better through improved sleep quality (and possibly quantity). A person who has improvement in their stress management, which ultimately helps them with improved mental clarity, decision making, motivation, and mood.
Now take this new person and improve again! The best part about this is that as you improve, your success compounds. All the patterns, skills, behaviors and habits you have constructed now make it easier for you to improve further. Gaining a 1% increase in relative strength now allows you to move more easily and more efficiently. You have a new level of performance to work from.
Even a 1% improvement on where you are right now has a ripple effect that changes lives. Now compound that 1% over an over again and see where you end up in many areas of your life!
It’s not the end goal that really matters, it’s the person we become with each step toward it!
Dr. Dan Dodd is an Exercise Science professional and Coach for BSL Nutrition. Dan is an avid writer on nutrition, exercise, metabolism and body composition. If you’d like to receive more stories, subscribe to his weekly emails.
