I can’t emphasize enough the importance of just getting started.

Yes, this can be applied to just about every area of your life, but I’m talking specifically about fitness.

When we push off the fitness program or eating better, the barrier to entry gets higher and higher. Our brain perceives these challenges as harder and harder, and the likelihood of getting started gets lower and lower.

This kind of procrastination is incredibly common. When we think about a task as being a heavy lift, it’s easy for us to want to start tomorrow, next week, or even next year because you think you’re going to have to give up your whole life to accomplish it.

This is the problem though.

We are so unbelievably excited to share with you our biggest app update yet! We’ve been working incredibly hard with our development team to make the app the best that it can possibly be, and we know that this update will improve your workouts dramatically!

You’re taking a class and the coach yells out from the other side of the room, “let’s try to get another inch lower on our squats!”

You, being the great athlete that you are, assume that you are getting low enough in your squats and that the note was for the person next to you who isn’t getting even close to parallel.

When, in fact, the note was for you. Because you’ve been going to this gym for 8 years now and are still trying to skate by with the bare minimum requirement—never pushing yourself to move better or lift heavier than suggested.

Here’s a little trick that I want you to consider

Maybe this is just me dealing with my own personal brand of anxiety, but do you ever have those days where the spiral just wont go away?

You can’t stop fixating on your body or the tone that your husband used with you this morning when he just woke up. You’re overwhelmed with work or worried about having to pay the bills this month.

I tend to lean more into being a worrier. In the moment I can tell myself that worrying isn’t going to make the problem go away, but sometimes our brains are just too powerful to override.

And on those days where you feel like you have no control over your thoughts and emotions, I want you to remember one thing:

Life is hard. Regardless whether you do everything right.

It’s the hardest thing we’ll ever do.

The good news is that ‘hard’ is relative.

What is hard to you may seem easy to your neighbor.

What is hard to someone living in a third world country may seem impossible to us.

The privilege that we have, and it is a privilege you shouldn’t waste, is...

Imagine you’re the only person left on earth.

Are you worried about looking a certain way in the mirror?

Do you measure your health by the weight on the scale?

Are you nervous about fitting into your bathing suit?

or

Are you proud of yourself for being able to carry two buckets of water on your back today instead of your usual one?

What if I told you that you were seriously screwing up your ability to get results at the gym by not sleeping enough? Would you actually believe me? Or slough it off and say that you’re one of the few who can get by with 5 hours a night?

We all know that we’re supposed to get 7-9 hours of sleep every night. Whether we take that seriously is another story.

Believe it or not...

I’m not going to pretend like I’m a brain expert, but I’d be willing to bet a million dollars that doing things we’re bad at is good for us.

1️⃣ If you only do things you’re good at for the rest of your life, won’t you get bored?

2️⃣ …

The best way to talk yourself into something being unconquerable is to believe that you’re the only one experiencing it.

Reminding yourself that weight loss is challenging for millions of people actually empowers you to make change because it’s not a ‘you’ problem. Weight loss is challenging for millions of people!

But when we think that this is a ‘me’ problem that no one else in the world can relate to, that’s when the hopelessness sets in. That’s when the motivation wanes and the stagnancy occurs.

When climbing Everest, you stop at each camp to acclimate to the elevation.

When training for a marathon, you gradually work your way up to 26.2 miles to avoid injury.

When starting a fitness routine, you begin with the minimum number of workouts per week that you’re 100% certain is achievable, and add more workouts as consistency is established.

This means you won’t climb Everest unbroken. You won’t run a marathon tomorrow. And you won’t get life-changing fitness results in a week.

“When does this get easier?”

It doesn’t. You either give up, or your learn to enjoy some part of the process.

Coaching CrossFit gives you an unnerving glimpse into people’s first experiences feeling true pain in a workout.

When you’re first starting, it can feel like every single day is the hardest workout you’ve ever done. And the question inevitably comes up: when will this get easier?

An object in motion, stays in motion. An object at rest, stays at rest.

Probably the only thing I remember from AP physics.

Who knew Newton was talking about starting a fitness routine when he discovered the laws of motion?

I don’t need you to start with the perfect fitness routine.

I don’t need you to find the ideal diet for you right now.

I just need you to start moving forward so we can figure out what is right for you.

Once an object (you) is in motion, we can pivot, shift, or fine-tune. As the behavioral psychologists remind us: motivation follows action, not the other way around.

If you want healthy teeth and fresh breath, you’re going to brush and floss every day. 

You know this, and yet, how many of us don’t floss daily? If you want a healthy body, you’re going to exercise and eat well every day. You know this, and yet, how many of us don’t exercise and eat well daily?

You don’t have an information problem. In both of these cases...

I always say to our new members, “the slower you ease your way into creating a habit, the higher the likelihood of that habit sticking.”

But there’s another piece of the puzzle I want to add.

It’s not just about making habits slowly, it’s about making them small enough.

I was in Thailand for two weeks, and for the life of me, I couldn’t make myself meditate.

This is a habit I’ve created for myself that is solid. Every morning I meditate for 20 minutes immediately after I wake up, and every afternoon I meditate for 20 minutes after lunch.

And yet, on this vacation where I literally had nothing else to do, I just couldn’t do it. I wrote it down in the notes section of my phone because it really bothered me. I’d come back to it later.

When I sat down to do a post mortem now two months after the trip, I kept remembering waking up and having this immense urge to check my phone. A large part of this is due to a phone addiction that I’m actively working to diminish, but I have that phone addiction when I’m in the states too, and I’m still able to meditate every day.

Maybe it was that I was on vacation and a little part of me wanted to rebel and self-sabotage from the habits I do every day? Vacation isn’t a time to work hard, it’s a time for leisure and naps. Yes, that makes sense.

At Pridefit we’ve got a motto - get results ASAP.

But our “ASAP” stands for: as SUSTAINABLY as possible.

Because results that aren’t sustainable aren’t results. Results that aren’t maintainable aren’t results. If what you’re seeing in the mirror today isn’t what you think will be realistic in a year—the work, money, and time that you’re putting in right now is a complete waste...

The most common way we see people motivate themselves in fitness is by seeing results. This becomes a little complicated when results materialize in different ways and at different times for all people.

My job would be solved if I could tell you that all of your weight loss, muscle gain, and aesthetic goals would be solved in 30 days, but bodies are complicated. There are a million factors we need to take into account, and there is no one-size-fits-all prescription.

But rather than think about the takers, I want us to prioritize our focus on the givers—the people who you’re able to be honest with, have effortless dinners with, laugh with, be vulnerable with. These are the people we need to be prioritizing in our lives. I believe one of the most important lessons we can learn in life is

I’ve fallen into a rabbit hole of analyzing Japanese culture. By no means am I an expert, but even scratching the surface of some of their customs has been incredibly enlightening compared to our western beliefs and upbringings. One concept in particular felt like it coincided beautifully with our Pridefit ethos. The concept is called “yūgen.”

Extrapolating yūgen to apply more directly to humans is simple.