From my recent experience of transforming gyms in Dublin like Be Fit For Life from a 3,000 sq ft gym to a 6,000 sq ft luxurious state of the art facility, you need to follow the same step-by-step guide that we did if you want to be successful in transforming your body.
There are 5 fundamental principles that should help you reach your goals.
1. Start With a Vision
It’s important you take the time to visualise how you want the end goal to look.
It helps bring clarity to your vision of success .
Google Maps looks for your destination, and your current location before it can map out the step by step directions and the time frame it will take to get you from where you are to where you want to be.
2. Design Your Success Strategy
We need to reverse engineer your goal in a step by step fashion, and analyse the strategies and challenges you will face on your journey so we can avoid the pitfalls.
What is the starting date you will commence on your fitness journey?
How many days a week will you train?
How frequently will you eat, shop and when will you cook your meals?
Do you have any current or previous injuries that can derail you that need to be addressed with a physiotherapist or a trainer experienced in rehabilitating injuries?
What will happen your training when your kids are off school, work demands you travel abroad or your holidays arrive?
Have you a strategy designed for any eventuality that can go wrong?
In the gym transformation, it meant we had meetings with builders, electricians, painters and carpenters.
We explained our vision to each tradesman and we structured which order, each tradesman would complete their work, timelines for completion and how they would interact with each other.
3. Plan for Success
Steven Covey – author of the 7 habits of highly successful people – describes – planning as sharpening the saw.
It is common to see people busting a gut in gyms in Dublin with no plan, and ultimately no results. They end up giving up as they have been running enthusiastically in the wrong direction.
Rather than trying to cut down a big oak tree with a blunt saw, step back and sharpen the blade.
You will make faster progress with less effort when you have taken time to plan your workouts, nutrition and training week.
Decide on your plan whether you choose to fly solo or will you plan to utilise the services of a personal trainer to design a training and nutrition plan to get you nearer to your goals.
4. Execution
“The best programme is the one that you will do.”
A plan is only as good as its implementation.
A long-term goal involves developing new habits and learning to alter your behaviours.
Experts in psychology will say it can take between 21-66 days to change a habit and nearly 90 days to change a behaviour.
Committing to train 4 times a week over 12 weeks is 48 training sessions. The question is how many sessions will you actually complete?
If you decide to eat 4-5 times a day, that is 28-35 meals a week.
How many of those meals will go as you planned?
If your compliance is low, success will be hard to achieve.
A true lasting body transformation asks not only what you need to do to achieve success, but who do you need to become to attract the success you want.
5. Measure your Milestones of Progress
You don’t know whether your plan is working unless you have different metrics to track along the way.
In body transformations, you may take weekly photos of the front, side and back of your body and compare them against previous weeks.
Tape measurements of your girth and body-fat measurements from a skilled coach trained by ISAK (International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry) will also suffice as metrics of success.
Measurements are essential because if you are off track towards your goal, you can make adjustments in your plan so your success is not derailed.
These 5 fundamental principles should help you reach your goals in your own body transformation, just like they worked for us during our extension at Be Fit For Life.
