3 Common Fitness Struggles and Tips to Overcome Them

The fitness journey isn’t linear. 

There’s a constant flux between your “success” and your “failure.”

I put these terms in quotes because how you define each is up to you, your expectations, and the metrics you’re using.

But regardless, there’s always going to be a struggle somewhere along that path. 

Maybe it’s physical, maybe it’s mental, maybe it’s inside the gym, maybe it’s outside….

There’s so much variability in an individual’s journey. 

So I’ve taken 3 common fitness struggles and provided a bulleted list on how to overcome those obstacles. 

Staying consistent 

• Schedule your workouts ahead of time.

• Literally plan your week ahead for when you are going to workout. Having set times where it’s just ‘workout time’ is going to be crucial for staying on track. 

• Have a crew to hold you accountable.

• Accountability and support is so important for staying consistent. When you have people in your corner that want you to succeed as much as you want to, sky’s the limit. They can help you manage the ‘good” and the “bad.” So find that crew that can help you along. As always, the E26 Facebook Group is always here to support you along the journey.  

• Setup a routine. 

• Become a routine machine. From your eating habits – to your workouts – to your sleep schedule, make sure everything becomes second nature. Now, it can take a few weeks to make something stick, but once you get through that habit building phase it takes less brain energy for planning and processing. 

Expectations

• Analyze your goals. 

• Determine what it is that you truly desire. What do you want to accomplish from a fitness, performance, and/or health standpoint? Once you get clear on what you want, you can put a game plan into action and ensure your probability of success is much higher. The more specific and detailed, the better.

• Make your goals realistic and attainable.

• If your goal is to run a marathon in 2 months but you haven’t been able to run 5 miles without stopping to walk several times throughout, then you need to go back and figure out a better goal and/or timeline. A goal like that (that is clearly unrealistic) is setting you up for failure and making it difficult for you to stick to long term consistency. Make sure the goal is challenging but not too challenging where you’re only going to fail. 

• Analyze your entire life schedule. 

• In order to create really good fitness goals, they need to coincide with your entire life situation. Your stress, your job, your family, your commuting… everything needs to be considered and analyzed. If you want to train twice a day but you work 7am- 7pm then it’s going to be very hard to be consistent because you’ll literally burnout. You need to balance the dance between life and fitness so it’s sustainable and you can recover appropriately. 

• Be able to measure progress.

• If you can measure your progress, you can adjust and rework your expectations (and goals) in real time. Even if you set some pretty lofty goals to begin with, don’t worry, you can always go back and adjust as needed to ensure continual progress. Better to adjust than to proceed down a burning path. The speed of the goal doesn’t matter as much, focus on the smaller, incremental wins. That’s how you set yourself up for success long term. The opposite can also be said for goals not big enough. You can always go back and rework your expectations/goals to fit your increased level of progress.  

Fear of failing/setbacks

• Every failure is a learning opportunity. 

• Instead of looking at the situation as a “failure,” look at it as a learning experience. Take a step back and look at where things went astray and what you can do better next time. Failures and obstacles are inevitable, they’re bound to happen. Make sure you “fail fast” and analyze why it happened.

• Give yourself permission to fail.

• A lot of times what makes failing worse is the way you treat yourself after. You are your toughest critic. It’s not easy and certainly doesn’t happen overnight, but giving yourself permission to fail by paying mindful attention to how you respond to a failed situation will empower you and help you regain your confidence and plan of attack more quickly. 

• Ask yourself why you’re afraid.

• Why do you fear failure? Take some time to really get to the depth about why you feel a certain way about failing. This takes a lot of work, I won’t lie, but if you can really break down and get to the root of your fear of failing, that fear slowly shrinks over time. You got this!

 Written by: Phil Gauthier 

Phil is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist.

He is also an Owner and Co-Founder of the performance gear company, Element 26 (E26).

E26 prides itself on developing functional gear for the functional athlete to help you "Destroy Your PR's, Not Your Body." 

To reach Phil or any member of the Element 26 Staff, please email us at: support@element26.co and we will respond to you ASAP!