Becoming Fit for Life #034: Getting Unstuck, Personalized Fitness, 1:1 Coaching
💡How to come up with breakthroughs, how the health and fitness landscape is change, and why it is worth it to spend money on a coach
This week in building health
Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most
90% of the people I coach feel stuck.
They come to me because they don’t know they need to get healthier, but they have no idea how to do it.
Any time they try something, they end up feeling like nothing is happening.
They just feel— well— Stuck.
What do you do when nothing is working?
Tell me if this sounds familiar.
You want to get more exercise, so you decide to walk every day. You go for 3 days, then the weather gets too hot. So you stop.
Then you end up feeling guilty and you try something else. Yoga this time. You follow some YouTube videos. Then about a week later, it stops working too.
It feels like no matter what you do, you can’t get un-stuck.
Adam Alter suggest the 3 ‘H’s - Heart, Head, and Habits
If you feel like nothing you’re doing is working, it helps to take a step back.
Instead of banging your head against the wall, practice being smart and strategic about it.
The book suggests 3 easy-to-remember areas that you can work with to help you breakthrough and make progress
(1) Check in with the HEART: How does it feel?
It sucks to be stuck.
Your energy to show up disappears.
It feels like nothing you do is working.
There’s no more fun in doing the work.
The pressure, guilt, or anxiety that comes from trying so hard to get unstuck can make it even worse.
For the heart, can you recognize your emotions, let go, and take your foot off the gas a bit?
That way there is less pressure to get unstuck right away.
Use your HEAD: What mindsets help?
Once you’re feeling less pressure, your mind is in a better state to think and come up with strategies.
Maybe you feel stuck in your health because you’re trying to do too much at once.
Maybe you’re stuck because it feels like a chore and nothing is fun.
This gives rise to questions that can help:
How can I make it EASIER to work on my health?
How can I CHANGE my understanding of health?
How can I make my health FUN?
Use your HEAD to think your way into some clever (and out of the box) ideas about getting your health unstuck.
Build a HABIT: What are you systems?
Habit is all about taking action.
Most people get stuck on HEART and HEAD. Feeling bad, thinking about it all the time but never putting it into practice.
Let HABIT remind you that you want to be doing something, ANYTHING. It doesn’t really matter- as long as you’re doing something.
Set up a system that lets you keep practicing.
→ Listen to a 30-minute podcast
My favorite health things for the week
// one
Don’t worry about over-optimzing
5 minutes | Greg Isenberg
This one is more of reminder to myself
Sometimes I feel like I’m always trying to perfect my routine, when in reality it’s okay for things to be a bit messy and imperfect.
Here’s a quick excerpt
The philosophy of “Slow Living” is emerging as a vital counterpoint to our fast-paced, hyper-connected lives. It's a choice to consciously shift the rhythm of life, embracing a more balanced and deeply meaningful existence by slowing things down and savoring the world around us, as well as the wealth of what we already possess.
// two
The New Fitness Is Holistic, Inclusive, and Highly Personal
7 minutes | General Catalyst
It feels like we’re on the cusp of a fitness revolution.
There are so many apps, gadgets, and tools to get healthy, but it still feels like health and fitness are for 5-10% of the gym loving population.
But there’s so much more to health than the gym
From the article:
For Gen Z, the definition of physical health contains multitudes of factors—stress, mindset, nutrition, and sleep are as important to our bodies as movement.
Studies have shown that getting proper rest is just as important to our overall health as getting exercise—an area our portfolio company, EightSleep, has explored. The rise of companies like Noom and Sweetgreen is a testament to consumers’ increasing spend in the nutrition category.
I personally love that more people are expanding their understanding of health.
// three
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of 1:1 Learning
12 minutes | Dan Shipper
This is an idea I’m coming around to as time passes.
I used to be the type of person that wanted to do everything by myself. I had that DIY, bootstrap, “I’ll figure everything out” approach.
But now I’m realizing that it’s WAY more efficient to find an expert I trust and just ask for help.
Like recently, I wanted to brush up on my Mandarin. But instead of trying to figure it all out on my own, I just got a language coach for 1 month.
It costs a bit more, but I’m getting so much back from the coaching.
From the article:
A few years ago I decided I wanted to write a novel. So I had the author of one of my favorite books tutor me on fiction writing. I made more progress during those tutoring sessions than I had in workshops, classes, and solo learning combined. And I spent far less money on it than I would have spent on an MFA.
And that’s not an accident. One of the most famous studies in educational psychology found that students who learned through 1-1 tutoring performed two sigma—98%—better than students who learned through a traditional classroom environment.
If you want to 10x your progress, and learn something quickly and efficiently, it’s actually worth it to get a tutor or a coach to help you out
Thanks for reading!
If you like “Becoming Fit for Life” please share it with someone who can learn from it. You can also “like” this newsletter by clicking the ❤️ just below, which helps me get visibility on Substack.
Until next week,
Javier Gomez