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These two Fitmates from Moonee Ponds Boot Camp have a fantastic attitude towards their exercise.

Since joining in early 2011, Jenny and Wayne T have not missed one single session (except when  they went away on holiday).

By way of explanation, they said that while people quite often make excuses about not having the time to exercise, their attitude is more about making time.

Jenny and Wayne T received our award for the highest attendance for 2011, an awesome achievement.

Their attitude towards training focuses more on  the benefits they receive along the way to achieving their ultimate fitness goal. They see reaching their goal as an added bonus to the many benefits they experience attending a regular exercise program. Their greatest impetus is feeling more energized, refreshed and healthier every day.

Jenny and Wayne remind us that while it’s great to have a goal, it’s also important to focus on the journey towards achieving that goal. No matter how focused you are on outcomes, if the journey brings you misery and unhappiness your road to success will be full of huge potholes and detours.

When commencing any regular exercise regime you need to first prepare yourself both physically and mentally. The biggest challenge faced during the initial stages is the shock to your system as your body adapts to a different type of stimulus. It’s during this stage that your focus and commitment may wane.  Your enthusiasm level drops as your desired goal seems like a distant reality.

But there’s a well known saying that holds true here: to climb a mountain you must start by taking small steps.

By having a great mental focus at the beginning, your goal can be broken down into more achievable bite size pieces – and this makes it much easier to succeed. Begin every new endeavour with a solid foundation of mental preparation, commitment and belief that you will ultimately achieve the goal.

Written by Andrew Talati

So if you’re feeling that your excuses are outweighing your commitment, think of Jenny and Wayne T.  They’re just two ordinary people demonstrating how true commitment is a necessary step towards achieving your goals.

Written by Andrew Talati

Quite often the biggest barrier to achieving your goals is leaving your comfort zone.

The biggest hurdle that we confront when we are trying to make shifts to achieve our goals, be it for weight loss, improving your fitness level, general well being is the idea of going into a place where we are confronting our fears.

Ultimately this makes us feel uncomfortable and it’s a human defense mechanism to avoid anything which creates pain or discomfort.

How often have you heard that people would rather (metaphorically speaking) cut off the right-hand rather than speaking in public.

This makes the whole process of trying to achieve the goal being very challenging, we will place all types of barriers to avoid feeling any discomfort, we create legitimate reasons, that we don’t have enough time, too busy, it’s too hard, not ready at the moment, I’ll start in January next year.

While it may appear to be easier in the short term to take the easier option of inactivity, in the long-term would pay the price for not jumping over the hurdles that we create.

Maybe your goal is to change job or career however the fear of going into the unknown, of feeling discomfort and possible pain will relegate you to stay exactly where you are.

Initially we can justify not committing to a goal, for example improving your fitness level, however not having the time to exercise is like making small deposits in your health bank that accumulate over a long period of time, so the effects of not engaging in regular physical activity may have a detrimental effect on your health in the long term.

Maybe you have won in the gene pool tree of life whereby you can treat your body poorly and you will live to 100, however is this the sort of gamble your wish to take with your health.

While it is recommended that you perform 30 min. of exercise 3 to 4 times per week, for a person whose goal is to lose weight, the long-term consequences of avoiding the achievement of this goal is a predisposition to cardiovascular disease and diabetes, the possibility of osteoporosis and numerous other ailments.

It’s all about taking small steps, and removing those mental barriers that stop you achieving success at every level of of the process.

How often have you heard of people placing these barriers to avoid leaving the comforts zone, ultimately it’s about removing and changing the negative chatter in the mind that leads to the proliferation of these thought patterns.

After last weekends AVL grand final draw, it’s going to psychologically challenging for both teams to maintain the energy and belief that they can win after the anti climax of a draw.

While both teams will be physically at their peak, granted with some injuries and fatigued muscles, the real challenge will be to have the mental strength to carry through with the game and win.

With the game last Saturday, even though St Kilda were behind in points, they made a comeback to equal the score as opposed to conceding defeat and giving up.

The real question is if one team takes an early lead, whether the other team will have the emotional energy and belief system to carry on.

Mentally they had pictured what was going to happen after the Grand Final, the ceremony if they won, the relief and the overwhelming feeling of success, the time away with their partner of family and achievement in reaching this awesome goal.

However after all the steps to achieve the goal were accomplished, it has lead to a need to re-evaluate their goals and create another step in the process.

It would be similar to what a person may go through say in a cycling event or marathon whereby they have miscalculated the finish line and focused entirely on finishing the race only to find out that they had another kilometer to go.

Mentally they would be devastated as they had given everything both mentally and physically to reach the destination only to find that the end point had moved or the goal posts had moved:))

After being at sea for 210 days, Jessica Watson miscalculated the distance to get the world record of 21,600 nautical but she continued on with the most treacherous seas experienced in the last leg of her journey.

So it will be interesting to see how the teams go with this psychologically challenging predicament.

While enjoying a relaxed ride (Bicycle) in Geelong to check out the UCI course, we cruised over to East Geelong to meet a friend who rode over from Arthur’s Seat on the Mornington Peninsula.

After a bit of miscommunication as to the meeting point and a few phone calls later, we suddenly realised that we only had 45 minutes to get to Queenscliff where the ferry terminal was located.
So we hand this micro goal of covering 29kms in 45 minutes, no problems if you were driving there in a car.

Given it was 30 odd kilometers we new it was going to be close to get to the ferry on time.

So what was going to be a nice gentle ride ended being a breathe gasping smash feast with all 3 of us taking turns at being at the front while the other 2 riders formed an echelon behind.

The point is that we never gave up, even when there was only 15 minutes left and it seemed unlikely that we would get there in time, we pushed through. Not that this was a life or death scenario but we were committed and all three of us had the belief that we will just make it on time.

Well with aching legs and fatigue as we had not sufficiently warmed up, so going hard from the very beginning was always going to be tough.

Well we just made it as the ferry was about to raise the vehicle loading ramp, so in the end we covered 29km in 46 minutes, so we were lucky that our watch was 1 minute fast.

How often do you have a goal or something that you want to achieve but it’s too hard, can’t be bothered or the likelyhood of success is low so it’s easier to give up than continue.

Everyday we are presented with situations or micro goals that we have created only to give up.

Keep focused and you we enjoy the rewards.

Well with Spring now in the air, some regular riders are returning after their winter hibernation. Actually if was yesterday morning at our local cafe (part of the whole cycling culture thing) when I caught up with a few mates I haven’t seen since May this year.

The first thing they commented on before I could even say “hello” was about how they had stacked on 10-15kgs over winter.

Well there is one thing about lycra, it doesn’t hide even the smallest ounce of fat so that extra 10 – 15kgs gives you a side profile like, mmm, like Homer Simpson.

Fortunately for these guys, the 10 – 15kgs will disappear in 6 -8 weeks or less and their lean body mass will return.

I would consider these guys amateur athletes, riding 450-550kms per week, doing specific training programs and racing A grade at the cycling club level.

Well out came the reasons why these wasn’t much riding over winter, work was busy, had heaps of stuff on yet over the summer period the work commitments subside and all the other things that restrict training time disappear, very strange.

It’s all about consistency and maintaining a healthy weight range on a weekly rather than seasonal level.

While I cheekily suggested to take a profile shot so we can compare there bellies in 3 months time, there was a serious note to all of this.

Apart from maintaining consistency with any exercise program, it’s equally important to watch the size of your waist circumference as there is a direct link between cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes by having a girth over 100cm for men and 90cm for women.

While these guys will typically burn anywhere from 1000 – 1500 calories during a training session, the health risks cannot be over looked.