“Wiping the floor while the water’s still running.”
The above is a term I heard while listening to a podcast recently.
The presenters were talking about how a pharma company’s stock price was rising based on a weight loss product being bulk bought by the British Government to test in an attempt to get a handle on their worsening obesity situation.
They made the observation that while it’s great for shareholders of the company, maybe the government in question would be better investing into more holistic health initiatives.
We don’t want to start speculating on the macro of what governments should or shouldn’t be doing.
But a good question is to ask is if the micro of individuals really taking solid responsibility for their own health happening enough?
Here’s some cases that you might just be wiping your own health floor while the waters still running:
1. Stopping and Starting: This is a great way to demoralise yourself and ensure that you don’t make any real long term progress. You’d be far better off starting a bit more slowly and building momentum than taking this route. Just stopping over the Christmas period also falls into this category! Alter your training routine if you need to, but don’t just stop leaving yourself with more work than necessary in January.
2. Lack of intensity: You don’t need to be training like a lunatic 7 days a week. But you do need to push yourself outside your comfort zone. Get a structured training routine going (including active recovery days), and push hard when you’re in the gym.
3. Not realising how much of the week is taken up by the weekend:
You hit the gym 3 or 4 times from Monday to Friday. And your food is on point – but you’re making little to no progress. Problem is, you’re hitting the bar/take always/excessive amounts of junk food even harder at the weekend. Remember, the weekend is 47% if your week, if you’re dropping your solid habits for all of it, you’re definitely leaving considerable progress behind.
4. Sleep: It’s something we mention regularly, because it is something that is so important. For everything from your immune system to your recovery/energy/metabolism etc.
Do your best to get a solid bedtime routine, and look for tips to improve sleep. It’s important enough that numerous books/courses have been written with advice around the topic.
5. Nutrition: You don’t need to be 100% on point 100% of the time. However to really progress, you need to make sure you’re eating as many whole foods as possible and if looking for weight loss, to manage your overall calorie intake at the same time.
6. No outside movement: If you train 3 hours a week in the gym but for the rest of the week your steps and movement is minimal then you’re working against yourself. Even getting up off the couch and out into the fresh air/sunshine a bit more can have a significant positive impact.
7. Just stopping if injured: While we definitely don’t recommend that you train an injured muscle/joint, too many people will just stop training altogether when they have an injury. Often leading to regression, when if they continue to train (in a smart manner) around the injury they can continue to progress and often help their recovery in the process.
8. Not warming up: Taking the time to get your body and head ready to train is so important – especially as you get that bit older. Taking 10 minutes to do an effective warm up will not only help you train and recovery better, it will also help minimise the chance of injury.
9. No Enjoyment: If you don’t enjoy the process and celebrate your wins along the way, you’ll end up jumping on and off the wagon. Getting more and more disheartened with a lack of real progress and gradually spending more and more time off the wagon than on it.