If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you

Got out in the hills with Lyz this weekend, and after ascending the first one (legs burning, gasping for breath) we got chatting about what it really takes for a person to see improvements in their body, health or fitness.

The conclusion; The willingness to repeatedly work outside the comfort zone.

What’s your comfort zone?

Staying in your comfort zone is doing what you do day in day out. It’s sticking to the stuff you can do on auto pilot. Stuff you can do with your eyes shut.

1. Lifting the weights you’ve always lifted.
2. Running the distance you’ve always run.
3. Exercising and associating with people at the same level of fitness as you or just below.

Staying in the comfort zone feels pretty good… in the short term. But here’s the problem;

If you’re looking to improve (especially to see changes in how you look, or how fit you feel) we need to be working at the edges of our comfort zone.

Working at the edges feels horrible

And our mind keeps telling us to quit. Giving all kinds of reasons why it’s not worth it.

But the thing that determines how successful you’ll be with your health and fitness:

The degree to which you can acknowledge the voices telling you to quit… and continue on through the discomfort.

Why persist?

The good news is once you’ve stepped outside the comfort zone you’ve upped your baseline; You’ve increase the amount that’s within your comfort zone.

Perhaps when you started out…

1. 5 push ups used to be all you could do. Now you can do 10
2. You could only run for 2 mins before needing to stop. Now it’s 2 miles without a rest
3. You used to struggle to say no to sweets being passed round the office. Now you’re ‘the healthy one’ and people admire you for your willpower to say no

Practice doing the uncomfortable things

Get in the habit of spotting the things you’ve been avoiding. The things your mind is telling you NOT to do. Because these are exactly the things that’ll help you see progress towards your health, fitness and generally being more awesome goals.

So next time you’re in the gym lifting weights, out running or exercising your willpower by saying no to a pastry Remember this;

“If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you”