ForeverFitU

Chapter 2 The Power of Practice “Practice is the best master.” Latin proverb “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” Benjamin Franklin So, why is practice the “best master”? Simply because whatever you practice, whether it be physically or mentally, you will soon become. If you were to ask most professional athletes or actors at the top of their game about how they prepare for their sport or performance, they would tell you about how hard they work at not only physically practicing their skill, but also mentally preparing for their upcoming event. I remember hearing stories of Jim Carrey seeing how many ways he could contort his face in the mirror as a child. I’d say it payed off. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to make not only physical practice, but also mental practice, work for you. And I’ll share my secret to getting started and making progress. It’s essential gear for your journey to becoming ForeverFit. Practice for permanence and normalcy We all have heard the phrase “practice makes perfect,” which is an illusion. Do professional athletes practice to become perfect? Hardly. Life, like sport, is not perfect. So why should we try to be perfect when it comes to our exercise habits? I prefer the phrase “practice makes permanent” because permanence is what happens when you practice anything long enough. It becomes more and more a part of you. The more permanent your new habits become, the more confident you become. The more confident you become, the more positive habits you will add to your life, including becoming ForeverFit. You are what you practice on a daily basis. Both your good and bad habits become permanent. If you practice watching TV and eating chips, you’ll get very good at it – and your body and mind will reflect that habit. If you practice going for an early morning walk, you’ll get good at that. And you’ll reap the mental and physical benefits.. This concept of practice is often overlooked, especially in exercise books. Many books and videos show you all of the exercise routines, which is great and obviously essential, yet they never say how long to practice it until it feels like a more natural part of your life. Infomercials do exactly the opposite. They promise you a firm, toned body in as little as X weeks. Or they promise that you will lose up to X pounds or take as much as X inches off your waist. Do you realize that even if you lose no weight and take no inches off your waist, you have still lost up to X pounds and have lost as much as X inches off your waist? Many people fall for these alluring promises of quick fixes. Then they become frustrated after the first few weeks and quit. If you’ve tried this, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The excitement of the new routine fades as the twenty-five-plus pounds you gained in the last ten years aren’t melting away. You feel cheated. Or you decide this stuff just doesn’t work for you. This is one huge reason that a majority of people quit their exercise routines within the first two months. They haven’t been told (or didn’t hear) that it often takes months to years for exercise to feel like a normal part of life. The ForeverFit people I interviewed confirmed this. That’s not a message the quick-fix people want to deliver. But I’m delivering this message to you because you need to know it. Here’s the honest truth: exercise will only feel normal for you after you have done it consistently long enough. Steve (FF 28) knows all about this. For the first eight years of Steve’s fitness career, he was inconsistent, due to many factors. He claims that it wasn’t until he began running every night after college that exercise began to feel like a normal part of his life. During the eight years that Steve didn’t work out every night, he was still exercising; it just didn’t feel normal – essential – to him yet. Steve’s story drives home two huge points. First, it doesn’t matter how long it takes for regular physical activity to feel normal. Just keep exercising! His story also underscores the value of repetition. Exercise in some way every day – even if it’s only a five-minute walk or a few stretches at bedtime – and it will begin to feel normal to you much more quickly than if you do a big workout once or twice a week but don’t look for opportunities to be active in the rest of your life. The payoff is huge. At forty-one, Steve now sees exercise as an incredible privilege to have in his life. Steve gave me a great quote that I, for one, intend to live by: “Life’s journey is not to be laid rest in a well-preserved body, but rather to come in screaming in sideways, yelling, ‘holy crap, what a ride.’” He has obviously got the attitude thing down. Knowing that exercising will probably not feel normal to you right away is very powerful for many reasons. First, you will start to think more long term. Second, when you hit bumps in the road (which you certainly will) or you have a bad week, you will realize this is just part of the practice, like learning to ride a bike and falling off at first. Third, that annoying feeling of having to force yourself to exercise will be okay. Why? Because you will know that one day it won’t feel like forcing any more if you just keep practicing. Then one day it happens. You wake up in the morning and ask yourself, “When am I going to work out today?” before you think of all the other stuff you have to do. Get here and you have begun the shift to making physical activity a normal part of your life. The coolest thing is that you do not have to wait for this day to come after weeks or months of practicing. You can make it happen now. In chapters 4 and 5, you will discover what you can do to shift your thinking in this direction. What is going to help you make this shift to thinking about exercise before other things occur? Practice, practice, practice. For the golfer to learn a new swing technique, he or she needs to hit over two thousand balls while consciously thinking about this change before it will begin to feel normal and natural. Regardless, if it is five hundred or five thousand swings, the point is that it needs to happen more than just at the lesson. As you begin your journey of becoming ForeverFit, your new mantra is practice. Each and every day that you make positive steps towards your health and fitness is a practice day. Understand they are all practice days, not game days. No pressure. If you screw up, it’s no big deal, because you are not in a game situation. In fact, the game never comes, unless you decide to return to a sport you once loved, or to take up a new sport, or decide to do cycling rides, running races, triathlons, or other events. (I would recommend trying any or all if you are interested.) If you decide to try any kind of sport or event, your practice will become even more meaningful and fun.