Author: Ester

Introduction

You will feel like crap during the first few attempts to get back into your routine, no doubt about it. You will become aware of the gap between you when you were at your optimal and your present day. And that is normal. Three major things helped me overcome this experience:

• One, The Awareness of My Learning Journey: The learning journey, better known as the ‘Conscious Competence Learning Model’, helps us understand the journey of learning new skills and abilities:

I encourage you to learn more about it in your own time, but the key learning point is remembering the seesaw relationship between unconscious incompetence and conscious competence. The reason for this seesaw relationship is that you can discover that you are further in 1 skill or ability but then test something new and realise you aren’t that great in a different skill or ability. This can mess up the way that you see yourself. Applying this to fitness, I will give you a personal example, when restarting, I continued with the last weight I had for a leg press machine (this was a year ago, when I visited the gym sporadically) and I was able to push the weight comfortably. However, for glutes my personal best was 100kg for hip thrust 2 years ago, and last week I was only capable of 60Kg; heartbreaking to feel in the moment, but grateful to know it can only go up from there I often take increments of around 2.5kg each session.

Assuming I show up for myself once a week at the gym for glutes, knowing what I’ve said about my current hip thrust lifting weight I have a question for you:

Out of 10 what are the chances of me (Ester) reaching 100kg within a 6 month time frame assuming I am consistently engaging with glutes once a week?

10 being most likely, 1 being not at all.

Circling back to the competency learning cycle, the main insight is this, harnes a learner mentality. Be present, hold humility and hold patience with your fitness goals because you will get to where you want simply through consistent intentional effort.

If you are scared of seeing your incompetency, trust me when I say this, it is way better to be aware when you can’t do something than being unaware you can’t do something. I’ve heard gym horror stories when people have lost their lives lifting a weight that they couldn’t fully handle yet.

• Two, Be realistic and keep your training goals achievable: Growth is growth, if you lifted 40kg and then added two 1.25kg weights onto the bar and lifted that, that is growth, please, do not overlook this as you will end up harboring more gratitude towards yourself in the short and long term. This would not only boost your desire to come back and be consistent with your journey, you are also more likely to prioritise your form/ endurance development (depending on your priorities) due to your little but intentional progress.

This will always be better than unhelpful thoughts and feelings of not doing or being enough and rushing the process. Fitness isn’t a race it is an active choice of wellness and betterment, there is nothing well about beating yourself up or missing out on genuine development.

Meeting achievable and realistic goals fosters a sense of accomplishment and improves self-efficacy which is the aim if you genuinely wanting to encourage a consistent sustainable practice that becomes a natural part of your life. I started off with 2x a week for the first 2 weeks and then 3x for my third week and I’m intending to hit 4x a week (my original routine 2 years ago) next week. Soon, I will bring in step counts and measuring my calorie intake consistently. What helps in monitoring/logging my progress, recently I’ve been taking a notebook to the Gym but there are apps out there.

• Three, Treating fitness as a genuine task in your routine: This is quite fresh in my mind so take this with a grain of salt. I have a positive connotation of going to the gym, (I will write about this at some point) there are memories I have that have helped romanticise my gym experiences. The problem is, that romanticization focuses only on the positive elements and keeps you chilling in the gym longer than you need to (I was in the gym taking 5-10 minute breaks per set not seeing how it affected the way I saw the gym). I started to use my feelings as a determining factor as to whether I would head to the Gym, when my aim was always for it to be a part of my morning routine. Yet, the only reason I would be put off by heading to the gym was because it felt draining coming out and it takes out too much time of my day i.e. 2-3 hours of my morning/afternoon. Today I tested myself, I set the intention to be the personal coach I used to have in 2022 and move through sets as soon as my stamina was back (1 – 1.30 min breaks) Our sessions were approx. 50min. With such a clear intention, today, I was in the gym for just under an hour and then took 20 minutes to enjoy the sunset whilst stretching. If something is a part of your routine treat it as a task, if something is a part of your hobbies and interests treat it as past time. Feel free to romanticise whatever part of your fitness journey you want if you intend to take it likely i.e. group walks or runs but be clear of your intentions.

My final note as a facilitator for emotional wellness. Your emotions are a multisystem of 4 interrelated factors. Thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and bodily sensations. These 4 separate cogs are a catalyst to one another. Without breaking it down too deeply, your behaviours influence the thoughts and feelings you have, and vice versa, you should keep this in mind.

Personal example: In the first few weeks I came in with thoughts of ‘what have I done’ ‘Why did I leave this so late’ ‘If only’ ‘I’m not pretty’ I felt disheartened, sad, and unmotivated. When this happened, mindfulness gave me the moment I needed to refocus (let thoughts and feelings pass rather than wallowing in your thoughts and feelings) you can do this by shifting your attention to your breath to know when you recovered, or looking at the time so you know when to start a new set. Moving forward, your previous negative thoughts won’t hold much importance because a) they are temporary and will pass if you remember that ) your behaviour of showing up consistently will change the type of thoughts you have anyways. For me, because I have been going to the gym consistently, my mood has been more positive and my thoughts by the end of my gym session today were ‘ I killed it’, ‘ I did a good job today’, ‘well done’, ‘you did well Ester’, because today I reached a personal best, before writing this I looked in the mirror and was admiring the dimple I had which is a different mental state from before. I hope this helps, make sure to trust in the process and don’t overthink it. All the best.