 Here's the deal. People don't have trouble starting workout plans. The challenge is maintaining them. Today's episode, we're going to talk about how you can keep yourself going when you've lost the motivation. I even like to keep it up. I even like better saying like how to maybe restart because I think the inevitable for most people, right? We have a percentage of people that are fitness fanatics that remain pretty damn consistent, which I think is a very small percentage. And then we have a majority of people that, you know, are on and off the wagon, including myself. And I think my entire journey, what I've gotten better and better at is not allowing the swings to be so dramatic, both in how far off I go nutritionally on the diet and then also how far away from doing something in the gym that I stray away from or exercise wise, that's good for me. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I, and I think that better suited than just like, oh, addressing people that are, you know, losing motivation to keep going is that like, hey, you know, maybe you're in one of those slumps and what are some good strategies to not allow that slump to turn into a, you know, one month, two month, five month off time from exercise and training. Yeah. I remember years ago as a, as a teenager, I don't remember where I read this, it was an article, I think, in one of those like fitness magazines. And the person who wrote it made the point, and this is now something I've quoted many times on the show and they said something along the lines of a subpar workout will outperform an excellent workout if it's done consistently. In other words, a subpar workout that you do consistently will do better than a great workout that you do inconsistently. And I was like, wow, that was so mind blowing to me because at that point, it was like all or nothing. Like I'm wasting my time if I'm not really going after it and it really being perfect. And if it can't be perfect and it can't go after it, like why even, why even try? And when I read that, I realized like, no, that's totally true. Like, you know, even it's never going to be always perfect. It's never going to be always the greatest workout or the right, the time that you set aside to work out or whatever. But something is always better than nothing. Of course, within the context of appropriate, right? You could hurt yourself and all that stuff. But the consistency of doing something is the key. Not doing something perfect. That's not the key. In fact, nobody will ever do everything perfect when it comes to anything, let alone fitness. Well, that was a big lesson I had to learn was it's not always, you're not always going to be the hero of the workout and you're not going to have the best workouts every single time. How do you keep doing them consistently? And that was, that was a hurdle I had to overcome because I always thought, well, maybe I'm just not adding enough intensity. Maybe I'm not doing, you know, enough things to really challenge me the right way within the workout setting. When in fact, it was really about kind of taking a step back and realizing like, I need to just keep taking steps and I need to just maybe approach this a little differently in terms of my intensity going in and just so I keep doing it, keep it fresh, maybe tweak a few things to make it interesting, but not necessarily take on the kitchen sink every single time. I always struggled with the, like I'm really good about if I commit to something, whether it be something competitive, like I'm going to prepare for some, you know, muddy, buddy thing or I'm going to get ready for a basketball season or my buddy and I are competing against them and I decide or I have this goal, the body fat percentage wise, I'm really good about committing and then going all in on the diet and training, but if I don't have that, then I always struggled with just staying active and fit because I didn't have something to focus on and to be fully committed. And so then I would kind of ride it off. I'd have this attitude of like, ah, I can whip it back into shape and I know what to do to get, get in shape pretty quick. You know, you can always fall back on that, right? Yeah, so I knew what I needed to do and so I just had this, oh, I'll start later or I'll get back on it later and then I got on where now, you know, the older, wiser version of me is like, I never won, do I allow myself to get so far off track that I write off training, exercising, and then also the diet, it's like, okay, I recognize there's times, there's going to be times in my life where I've got to move or I get sick or okay, I'm probably not going to get as much physical activity and so I need to, you know, cut back a little bit on the calories. And so, and then also learning, okay, there's times where maybe I'm limited on time and I can't commit to that full hour intense workout, but it doesn't mean I can't go to the gym and just do one exercise. And in the past, I used to think that that was worth so little that I would, unless I could fully commit to this full workout schedule and plan and goal that I wasn't going to do anything at all. And I think that was such a bad strategy where now many times I'll have these stretches where I go months where, you know, I'm not training hard, but I'm still active and doing things for my body that is either improving mobility or improving strength or improving a movement. Like, I've found ways to always be doing something moving in that direction, even if it's just a little bit. Well, I mean, every step is forward. So, I'm going to post it within the first 24 hours. And if we declare you the winner, we'll let you know in the comments section that you got free access to MAPS strong. Oh, by the way, you also got to subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you don't do those things, we will not let you win a free program. Also, we got a sale going on this month. MAPS 15 minutes. MAPS anywhere. MAPS Prime and our ebook for performance. All bundled together. All of them together. $99.99. That's it. You pay $99.99 and you get all that stuff. It's pretty awesome. If you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right. Here comes the show. I remember having a client once that I, one of the things I loved about training, people was you train people from all different walks of life. And if you're a smart trainer, you start to realize that you can learn a lot from each of these people because you'll have executives in different fields and professions and different age groups. And so it's great because you can have these conversations and if you're, like I said, if you're smart, you can learn from them. And I remember talking to one of my clients who's very successful and I said, how are you, like, how do you stay motivated to do what you do for as long as you've done it? And he goes, motivated? Because you think I'm motivated all the time? So, well, obviously he goes, no, I'm disciplined. I said, well, what's the difference? He goes, well, the difference is, you know, I get motivated sometimes. Sometimes I'm not. It goes away like it does for everything. The discipline is I just keep moving forward anyway. I just keep doing it anyway. And I said, okay, well, how do I stay disciplined? He goes, you just build it like a skill. You have to practice discipline over time with small steps, which eventually become bigger steps. And then you become a master of discipline and then motivation doesn't matter. He goes, and it's great when you get it and when you get it, you accomplish so much more. But when it's not there, the discipline stays there. Now this changed me as a trainer because as an early trainer, my goal with my clients was, when you're coming in, you're going to get the most effective workout you could possibly get. Later on, I realized the goal is to get the client to show up and if they show up, that's like 80% of it. And then we'll do something and we'll make sure it's appropriate and I'll make sure there's some value. But if I can teach this person to show up week in and week out a few days a week, keep coming back. If I can do that, I have one because managing gyms and working in gyms like we all did for a long time, the turnover rate was so huge that you realize it wasn't getting started that was the problem. We used to sign people up every month. Every month we'd sign hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of new members up. By the way, this is a gym in a city meaning it's the same populace or people coming in or whatever. And oftentimes I'd sign people up oftentimes who were members at some point before or were members of another gym at some other point. So the challenge wasn't getting them started. The challenge was how can we figure out a way to keep people consistent, to keep people coming. And so there's a few things that you notice with this. Is that there are barriers that prevent people from maintaining this consistency. And we talk about motivation, but motivation is a feeling. So we're not going to talk necessarily about the motivation part of it. Although I will say this, if you do all the stuff that we're going to talk about, that feeling of motivation will appear more often than if you don't. So if you want to invite or create the environment for motivation to pop up more often, just do what we're talking about. But if you just focus on trying to be motivated all time, then you're going to be screwed and you'll end up doing what we just talked about which is either in or out, either on or off. And it's usually off because motivated state of mind is not the majority of the time of your state of mind. Very few people are motivated all the time. Most people are motivated a little bit of the time and then the rest of the time they're like everybody else kind of normal. So there are real barriers that can get in the way. And I say real barriers because there's a lot of fake barriers as well. There's a lot of barriers that people will kind of say or create. But then there's ones that are like legit. Like I could see like how this is a real challenge and if we could solve this barrier or move this barrier out of the way, then the lack of motivation or the feeling that I don't know if I want to do this or not, it doesn't become so difficult to overcome. One of them is not enough time. The time issue is a big one. Now I used to scoff at this when people would tell me, oh, I just don't have enough time. Why would I scoff at it? Because I would do the stupid speech, which I've heard trainers say over and over again. Still popular by the way. It's still popular, which now when I look back, which I could go back in time and slap myself. Yeah. Because it was so, I was so naive, right? But it was this whole like, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. And what you do with those hours is up to you. And the more you invest in your health, the more time you'll have to do all these other things, the more energy you'll have to do. So it's not that you don't have enough time. It's what you do with your time type of bull crap. Okay. Now, as a father of four kids, person who's owned businesses before, it's a real issue. Time is a real issue. And prioritizing, being able to work out for hours at a time. I mean, that's going to be really, really challenging when you've got little kids. You've got bills to pay. Your job is stressful. You have to produce there. You don't have endless, you know, boundless energy. So time is a real issue. So we got to deal with that. Not having access to a gym is another issue. Now, this is not as big of an issue as it sounds because there's a lot, there's actually, you could do tons without a gym. But I want to address it because for a lot of people, this is a real issue. They're like, well, well, I can't work out at a gym. I don't have equipment at home. Going to the gym is too hard or I don't want to spend the money because I don't know how motivated I am or how consistent I'm going to be. So I like to get that one out of the way. So time will figure that one out and let's figure out, don't have access to equipment or a gym. Let's figure that one out. And then the last one, and this is a, this one actually is a big one is that people just don't know what to do. So when they finally do decide to do something, they end up doing something, which is fine. I like that people actually would do something, but whatever they do is so such an inefficient, ineffective thing that they choose that they soon think to themselves, this is just a waste of my time. I can't do this a lot because I don't have the time to do so. And maybe obviously because I don't feel the energy to do so or the quote unquote motivation to do so. And I did see some results for the first month, but now I'm seeing nothing and the little bit of results I got in that first month, devoting this time doing this thing and it feels hard and I'm sweating and I'm getting sore and now my knee hurts, not worth it. So those are the three kind of like, you know, big things I would say that we, that we, if we can get rid of those barriers, then we can focus on building habits and building discipline and then success is there. And I'll tell you what, the success rate for the average person with staying consistent with the workout routine is less than 10%. The success rate in my experience, once you do what we're about to talk about, is north of 50 to 60%. Now it doesn't sound like a lot, but it's five to six times higher. So if you're serious about this and you want to give yourself five to six times more probability that you're going to stay consistent, then, you know, keep listening. Well, first of all, I think we have to, I want to address, you made a comment about the real challenges and then fake challenges that people have. And the truth is, all the challenges are real. If they believe them to be real, it's a real challenge. So, and that's the idea of this is we're addressing, I think, the most common challenges that people express. And instead of looking at those challenges, whether we believe them to be true or not, if that person believes it to be true, it's true. And so instead of looking at it as like, oh, I can't do this because of these reasons, let's find ways that we can solve that issue. And my favorite is the very first one that we did. And I know we addressed this just recently, ironically, in all the programs that we've created that, you know, looking back, it's probably something that we probably should have done sooner. And that's a shorter workout or like what I've suggested in the past on when we get our live questions is, you know, just pick one or two exercises and do that. Instead of over complicating it, like, oh, I need to have this, like, crazy workout or I need to get this crazy burn or sweat. It's like, I'm just going to commit that every day, I'm going to do one exercise or two. Just so that's it. And doing that, I think we'll build momentum and you can build on top of that. And you talked about creating motivation. Like, if I can just discipline myself to commit 15 minutes to go carve out, to do a couple of exercises, I know what will happen and eventually what will happen is I will build momentum. The momentum then will cause more motivation and then I can build on top of those workouts. Well, look, to put differently, imagine if you were trying to read a book that you weren't really super into but you're like, I got to read this. What is going to be more challenging for you to stay consistent? Think of your life. Think of everything that's going on in your life. Think of how this book, you think, you know, you should read it but it's not like this book that's really pulling to you. Type of deal, obviously you're in the state of mind where you're like, I'm not motivated. What is going to be easier to stay consistent with? If you read 15 minutes every day or if you read for 55 minutes or so, twice a week, it's going to be the 15 minutes a day is easier, much easier. So instead of, because a lot of people think, okay, I'm going to start working out, so I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to work out for an hour and I'm going to start small. I'm going to go an hour twice a week, which is fine. Actually, that's a fine goal but it's actually easier to do 15 minutes a day every day. It's easier to find 15 minutes a day than it is to find for a lot of people one hour twice a week and they both come out to roughly the same, close to the same amount of time that you're exercising. But there's also another part to this that's important, which is we talked about building discipline. It's easier to build a discipline when you do a little bit frequently than it is to do a lot infrequently. The best way to build a discipline is to practice daily. The hardest way to build a discipline is to practice infrequently, even if it's a long period of practice infrequently. You're better off in terms of building the discipline of doing something to do it a little bit every single day than it is to do it infrequently. I love that analogy because you gave a suggestion but nothing stops the client from taking that to it and even further extreme, meaning you get the suggestion of reading for 15 minutes and I know you're drawing the parallel to the 15-minute workout so we wrote, but nothing stops that person from reading one page. Sure. And that's if you feel like you have no time, right? So instead of being like, oh, I'm just so on my day is crazy, I have no time, give me five minutes. Give me two sets of something. Of something. And can you do that one time in the morning and then one time in the afternoon? Guess what? We got four sets right there. Four sets of squats in a day is actually not a bad, not a bad step forward in getting started here. So wherever you're at, meet yourself there and start to build the discipline even if it means one page, right? Or two sets of something and then build on that. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny because most of the majority of a lot of fitness people and influencers will invalidate people's excuses, right? And that's the big thing is to try and wedge in that time and punch in the amount of time that you can provide yourself instead of like realizing that these are real concerns and real barriers throughout your day that will prevent you from being consistent in going through like a longer type workout. Why not reduce that barrier down and make it to where it doesn't feel like it's very invasive at all? So this is just something that now you don't have to pick of definitive time that you have to punch in. It's there for you anytime throughout the day. It's just a matter of stepping into it, accomplishing it in little doses consistently and then building off that. This is exactly why I wanted to address what Sal said because I don't want to invalidate anybody's excuse. Like every excuse is okay but instead of going like that's my excuse and never doing anything about it, let's solve it. Yeah. Let's solve the problem. I think a better way to word it to word what I said would have been more like these are the things that I had to really solve for people as a trainer because if I didn't solve those things it was almost impossible. Like if you didn't solve the time issue Yeah, we wouldn't be able to be effective. And if you couldn't solve the gym issue if you couldn't solve that the person didn't know what to do then there was nowhere to go. So I guess yeah, I definitely could have worded that. Well the truth is what Justin is saying is so on point. Like trainers the influencers I should say in the space lean on the motivation side. So they look at a challenge like time, like gym, like money, like this. Like do it anyway. Right, like instead of instead of addressing the actual concern whether it's true to you or not it's true to the client instead of addressing that they go to the motivation route and like how do I fire you up to be motivated to train harder or find a way versus okay well we can work with that. Oh, you have no equipment? Okay, I have something for that. Oh, you don't even have 15, 20 minutes a day? Okay, I got something for that. Like that's what we're supposed to do, right? Like that's what we get paid for is to take those challenges that people have that have kept them from getting in shape in the past and find ways to start creating these small steps in the right direction. You know what? This is talking to even people again that are advanced. Experience lifters. I'm experienced. I still find myself in these moments too as much as I love fitness. I love fitness. Yet, I still have moments in my life where other things take a priority and it feels like I have no time where all these things are hard but and instead of like not validating that and going like oh I'm just I'm being a wuss I can figure out. I go okay yeah it's tough to figure that time out and now let's just do this. It's unique because this isn't like a goal where it's a seasonal goal or it's like a very specific thing I'm training for and then I'm done. Like this is a lifetime pursuit we're talking about. This is something that we're trying to figure out how to actually be motivated to keep up the effort you're putting into better yourself and you know being able to do that in a way that's realistic and reasonable. Yeah the working out a little every day versus a lot a couple days a week I first applied that to my new mom clients that would come and hire me. Like these are these are these are moms it's like six months or nine months or a year postpartum hey I want to start exercising I still take care of the baby so I think I can make it in twice a week I got a sitter or my mom's going to watch the kid or whatever inevitably they'd miss a workout because you know kids it's super unpredictable and I would say to them do you do you think you could do like 10 to 15 minutes a day if I gave you some stuff that you could do at home and they'd be like yeah I mean baby goes down for an app or you know I got 10 minutes here 10 minutes there absolutely and so I started doing this with these clients and the results they got were phenomenal why because they were consistent and they were like oh my god this is so easy now there's some more benefits to this by the way the feel-good chemicals that are produced through exercise the immediate ones you get more of them more frequently if you do this meaning you're setting up the environment I said earlier you're creating an environment where that feeling of motivation is going to pop up more often so those feel-good chemicals you get them with that one hour workout as well but what if you could get a little bit of them every single day you're now creating an environment where that feeling of wow this feels good is now happening on a daily basis and it also reinforces this potential discipline that we're trying to build so working out a little bit every day versus less but more but longer less frequently throughout the week that's one of my favorite strategies for this particular individual next is to work out at home workout at home because not because you got better equipment or anything like that you might even have any equipment in fact you don't need equipment travel time you have eliminated a barrier of having to drive to the gym yeah get in the car which is a big one get over to the gym put your stuff in the locker get out do your thing put your stuff back in drive back home oh my god it's traffic so your hour workout actually now took an hour and a half or longer because of travel time and setup and all that stuff what if you could just work out at home now statistically speaking people who work out at home versus who work out at gyms are more consistent now it's not a huge percentage because consistency is a challenge across the board but working out at home has a better track record than people who sign up to go to classes or to gyms or anything like that and you got also think that it paint the whole picture you're alone at home you don't have motivating classes you don't have all the fancy equipment and lights and yet people still find that they can be more consistent at home why because you don't got to go anywhere it's there I can do it does it require equipment no you could do it with no equipment or you could do it with resistance bands which are super inexpensive and you could literally store in a small drawer or in the corner or you could have like a suspension trainer which you literally hang in the doorway and it's super stable and when you're done you could hang it over the door if you want to take it off you could take it off you don't need barbells dumbbells a squat rack if you have all that stuff great too that's that's even better but you need nothing but working it at home eliminates all that and then parents who are listening right now it's awesome because you can model this in front of your kids you could do your exercise while your kid is over there and then what you'll find your kid ends up trying to do it with you know practice it with you or whatever or if you you know want to take a break from something you're doing at home and do what I said earlier which is work out a little bit at a time there's your boost of energy go do your exercises you didn't have to worry about going anywhere or you know changing your clothes or anything like that and heck you can listen to whatever music you want work out at home I always tell people if this is a challenge for you let's start you off at home yeah no I mean this was the motivation behind writing maps anywhere and when you haven't been consistent and you're trying to get back and like body weight training body weight training is good even for somebody who's advanced like I think all of us value no matter what I think no matter where we're at in our training we were always incorporating some sort of body weight exercises in there so they're good even for an advanced person but man if you haven't done anything really like body weight lunges and push-ups and pull-ups and dips and row I mean you get a phenomenal workout and there's lots of ways to to progress that so I mean and then back to your point about being as a parent like I love the idea and this is how I've seen our maps anywhere used a lot is somebody who has a kid that's a toddler or whatever and you can break up the workout it could be it could take you four hours to get the 40-minute or 30-minute workout in because you do it in these little five-minute increments every time you have a little bit that doesn't change the effectiveness it doesn't it doesn't at all I would even argue it makes them more effective well isn't there hasn't the research came out and supported that like if you were to break up the same like a 60-minute workout done over the course of the entire day versus done in all all together when you get better results recovery is better your performance then as a result of that as you're doing the exercise is better and so it maximizes your efforts as you're actually doing it and I love highlighting that because that was that was something I didn't understand yeah I mean even as a coach and a trainer as a trainer for many years again the way I coach clients was very similar to the thought process that I approached my training which was this all or nothing like if I wasn't getting after it for an hour it was all of a sudden so less effective when the opposite is true it's as effective or more effective for me to do it that way and it's easier it's more conducive for my lifestyle especially being a father now to be able to go hey I got these four or five exercises I'm going to do I'm not going to tell myself I have to dedicate this hour of a block I'm just hey when I got a little bit of time I'm going to bust these lunges out when I got a little bit of time I'm going to bust these pushouts out and it's like you end up getting that full workout today look if you've been listening to show long enough you know Adam was like anti-home workout for a long time then he had a son and this is how you guys work out I haven't been to the gym since no and but this is how you guys work out you go out in the garage and you do your three four sets of something go back inside go in and Katrina is the same thing you guys are maintaining great fitness from doing this and I mean like you can see you can see the difference in the value and working out at home it's uh this is a great place to to do it in fact I would say if your base workouts are at home and then you get those bouts of motivation that are wonderful when they pop up yeah and you want to go to the gym go to the gym yeah perfect but yeah you make that you make the workout at home your base you're far more likely to be consistent by doing so because of the convenience factor no the the next point I really like because it's something again that I found later is like a focus when I get in these places and I start back and I typically pick one or two exercises that I'm gonna start back into doing is I I pick something that I know is is going to really benefit me sometimes that's a mobility exercise sometimes that's just a squat that's it but I'll choose something I know that my body needs I'll choose something I know that I neglect or that adds so much more value and so instead of again looking at this huge workout that I have to plan and be consistent with it's like hey I know when I consistently do my 90 90s I feel so much better so like and I haven't been doing anything I'm gonna commit to that little exercise today and I'm gonna do that one thing and then slowly build on top of that versus feeling like you have to organize this crazy ass workout I'm just gonna pick one or two things I know that will benefit me well especially being in the pattern of sitting in my car sitting here on the podcast like you know beating gridlock and just like constantly shrimped and hunched over all the time to open myself up you know pull my shoulders back to open my hips up to man it's it's amazing what kind of feedback that gives your body in terms of like how you feel you feel good which then you know that's another a bit of motivation you could feed off of that bleeds into wanting to work out and wanting to exercise again learned from training my clients like I call this do things that feel good okay so this is a trainer hack anybody who's been a trainer successfully for more than let's say five or 10 years you learn this if I can make a client feel good at the end of the workout not hammered not blasted not like they just got beat up but if I if they leave the workout feeling better than they came in they're going to come back and they're going to be clients forever and this was I figured this out as a trainer on getting clients to stay consistent was give them something that feels good now I know that sounds silly but a lot of people have this weird idea especially people who don't exercise you know right or haven't done it really long enough to figure it out there's this weird idea that workouts should suck somehow or that workouts should feel like crap your form of punishment and if they don't feel like crap they're not effective first of all here's why it's not effective to feel like crap when you work out you're not gonna want to do it bottom line even if it is an effective workout which it usually isn't by the way feeling good after your workouts actually a good sign means you're probably working out the right way but even if that weren't true even if the workout that made you feel like crap was the more effective workout it still would be less effective because nobody would do it nobody would do it so this is another hack do something that feels good so you're like oh i'm not you know i don't feel the motivation to like work out right now i know they said on mind pump to do a little bit every day work out at home but i really don't feel like doing push-ups i don't feel like doing lunges you know what's gonna feel good let me do some combat stretch let me do some wall presses or some 90 90 or let me do some scorpion like these are positions and movements that they require movement but as you're doing them you start to feel good they're really good they feel nice and then when you're done you get up you're like oh my god i'm so glad that i did that like that felt really good and and that again reinforces that discipline and opens the door for motivation to walk in the more things that you do with exercise that feel good the the more opportunities for motivation to kick up and make you want to do and you end up doing more you know in the the two-year kick that i was on when i was on like a hardcore mobility kick this was kind of the attitude that i had was like i was i was gonna be so consistent with mobility and then of course strength training you know when i can get around to it it was become it became like secondary to my my primary goal which is all these mobility drills but what i found many times was after doing my combat stretch in my 90 90 my hips my back everything felt so good that i wanted to go test it in a squat and so even though i went got motivated yeah even though i went into the workout and i said like oh i don't feel like training i don't feel anything but i'm gonna do my 90 90s i've disciplined myself to be consistent with that i'm gonna do my 90 90s i'm gonna do my combat and then after i get up from doing that i feel so good then i want to go squat and so i love that approach that idea and i i remember watching that work in my own life and applying it myself and going like man it's crazy just knowing that the how much that made me feel better that quickly then motivated me into doing more stuff you know the opposite feeling stiff and rigid and little bits of pain it's like you know how much do you want to to beat yourself up you know with weights like it's it's one of those things is just psychologically it's a deterrent so if you can really like regain some of that that function and feel good and smooth and and that that your body's moving well like it really promotes you to then want to take the next step yeah it would be like having a massage therapist in your house and then you're like oh it's time for your your 15 minute massage everybody would be like yeah i'll do that because it feels good you know what i mean sign me up you like the way it feels so do things that feel good all right next is to change your expectations and goals all right what do i mean by that well let's say your goal is to lose 30 pounds but now you're in the space where you just don't want to work out you don't want to do it you just like my god i can't even pull myself to even think about getting in the car driving the gym staying out in the gym whatever all right i'm going to change my expectations my goal is no longer to lose 30 pounds my goal is now to do a little something for 10 minutes every day that's my goal now why is this effective because that goal leads to the other goal the goal of of a hitting i'm going to do 10 minutes every day i'm just going to do 10 minutes every day that leads to that bigger goal so you can find ways of doing this by changing your goal so that you can get to that bigger goal but don't focus on that bigger goal focus on the smaller goal and then it's a win what you end up doing is you end up scoring wins and the more often you have little wins the more likely you are to want to go after the big wins as a side effect as an absolute side effect so set your expectations differently so your expectation might be like let's say it's with diet instead of saying i'm only going to eat you know 2,000 calories a day you're like oh i'm so hungry or whatever you know what i'm going to do i'm not going to eat heavily processed food i'll just eat as much as i want like that's not it's a different goal but it'll probably lead to what the other goal was in the first place this is so effective that i think 100% of the time when we get somebody who asked a question regarding weight loss we almost always steer them in the direction of focusing on strength how often when someone yeah calls in or asks us a question related to losing 30 pounds or 20 pounds or 50 pounds yeah we're like it's longer yeah do we not almost always go focus on getting stronger even though they're calling in asking a question about losing body fat we almost always shift their focus for them because we know that if they focus on that that this will end up happening for them all the patterns and behaviors that lead towards body fat loss and you know their desired outcome starts with that strength driven focus and like all the factors have to align well for you to keep gaining strength so to just focus on that helps then kind of simplify the process I actually applied this a few years ago when I wrote the resistors training revolution I was like man writing every day I was like you know this many pages or this much content like that sounds to me at least that sounded so just hard and oh how am I gonna do that so I changed my expectation I said every day at this time for 30 minutes I'm just gonna sit in front of my computer and if I don't write anything that's fine but I got 30 minutes of just sitting there and what did that end up turning into was nine out of 10 times I would write something one out of 10 times I would just sit there but nine out of 10 times I wrote something versus my goal is I have to write a thousand words every single day type of thing right I bet 50% of the time you stayed there longer than 30 minutes exactly yes you get long days you get a small day you're literally inviting motivation to come in and it does pop up more and you know I say that because it's cool but I don't want you to rely on that but it is it does happen you do open the door and motivation will pop in more I also think this highlights to how much we are all creatures of habit as far as what we gravitate towards in the gym or exercise like you know most people have a main goal right that they train for all time they either like athletic type training or they like being strong or they want to look a certain way and because of that they tend to gravitate towards the same type of training program or the same exercises that they always and one of the things that we know one of the best ways to stimulate change is by you know sending a novel signal to them so also learning to change your goal has incredible value too for you to break through plateaus or speed up your results because you typically always train a certain way by interrupting that with something different not only is it a great way to get you know back into the groove of things or whatever it's also a great way to break plateaus right now the last one is is to follow listen to and watch related content on a regular basis this doesn't mean you have to do anything else it just means that you're keeping yourself in the mindset of what that what that ultimate goal is which is to try to be consistent so if you're on social media follow a couple really smart good pages or listen to this podcast on a regular basis buy yourself a really good effective well-written workout program so you have a plan we have we have some great ones ourselves but doing stuff like this will at least give you the framework and kind of keep you in the mindset even if you don't do anything it's kind of still in your ear you're still thinking about it and people who do this particular step here which sounds kind of silly but let's say you did this 10 minutes every single day you're more likely to be consistent than the person that doesn't and it's as easy as like I said five to 10 minutes of following listening to or watching you know related content in this particular yeah and it helps to just reinforce good ideas and good behaviors and to kind of maybe even get a little more inside as to maybe how you could shift a little bit more to make it even more effective for you individually because everybody's has you know their own complete preferences and ways that that will help benefit them to structure this so you know that's just something to just keep keep the content coming in so it just keeps everything fresh and keeps the energy there isn't this the point of church you know what church is yeah I mean that's yeah that's why you go every week yeah yeah that's the whole idea right I mean it's not like you can't you couldn't you can they teach out of the Bible you can just read the Bible yourself what the whole idea is to be in that mindset where you're having somebody else teaching you all the time you know I would love to see the stats or maybe even just feedback from our listeners I know a forum is probably good for this is to hear you know the people that consistently listen to this podcast if they've noticed their own behaviors of you know when they're falling off the wagon of training do they fall off listening to the show and when they're and when they're training are they consistent with listening to the show like if they're how what the correlation looks like I wonder how yeah I mean I would assume I mean we we've now noticed that the show has grown to a size that we actually feel the industry waves like obviously the January early part of the year going into summer the business tends to feel feel that we're early years when we were just kind of climbing and growing we were on such a a grow a fast growth pace we never felt that where now we feel those trends so it'd be interesting to see if a lot of our audience falls on and off with listening and in correlation to how they do their training to right so check this out this is what we did for this month to help people with this because in the industry January and February when a lot of people get started marches when people start to fall off so what we did is we made a time crunch bundle we've taken our best programs that are right around the stuff that we just talked about and we put them in a bundle and then we made it very inexpensive to help people get started and to stay consistent so within this bundle we have maps 15 minutes it's a 15 minute workout every single day you use a suspension trainer so you don't need any other equipment super convenient we also included maps anywhere which is an at home workout program we also included maps prime which has those correctional exercises that feel good and then we throw in we threw in a bonus e-book called eat for performance which talks about nutrition and we made all of this in the bundle $99.99 so you get all up for $99.99 it saves you over $200 so if you're interested you want to get set up just go to mapsmarch.com today we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong well-developed chest when I think of weak points and in areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time chest was up there with the yeah it was for me it was for me for sure I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique