Where to Start:

It might surprise you to know that this first post about how to start strength training journey doesn’t focus on teaching you how to lift a weight or try to give the ‘recipe’ of what exercises you should do.  This post will aim to get you to start thinking about what exercises you could do to enhance your individual lifestyle.

We are going to cover the following areas

• Goal setting
• The importance of writing goals down
• Enlisting people to be accountable to

The most important thing to do before you even step near a weight is to work out exactly what the reason is for starting to exercise.  If you haven’t done any training in the past there is probably a reason why.  

It is likely that this has never been something that has interested you.  You may have done some previously but lost the motivation to continue.  If you don’t identify what that reason is, there’s a good chance that this short term enthusiasm will wane. 

The best way of gaining that motivation is to really understand the benefits of getting stronger.  This shouldn’t be considered from solely a physiological point of view. You really need to explore this deeper in terms of how it can benefit you specifically and what it can add to your lifestyle.

There are several reasons that people get into any form of exercise.  These could be for some of the following reasons…

• Become Healthier
• Improve fitness
• Feel Stronger
• Lose weight
• Reduce risk of injury

Whilst these are all great reasons, they are very vague.  If you don’t know specifically what you want to achieve, you won’t know how much progress you’re making towards your goal.  This is demotivating and is why most people lose interest and end up stopping.

Goal Setting:

You need to take those vague ideas and turn them into some tangible goals. 

You can do this by breaking these down into three areas:

• Identifying a problem you have that strength training will solve
• Ascertain what you need to achieve in order to solve that problem
• Consider if there are any barriers that you’ll face in achieving your solution?

Let’s look at an example from a patient that saw me in clinic.

Scuba Diving Holiday

My first patient was going on a scuba diving holiday in 4 months time. 

Problem:

Due to a recent episode of pain, she was worried that she would not be able to manage the physical demands that are associated with a diving holiday. 

We identified the movements she would need to be able to carry out:

• Carrying a 15kg oxygen tank around whilst out of the water
• Doing the above whist wearing another 10kg in lead weights
• Climbing a ladder with this additional weight
• Manoeuvring around an unstable boat

By identifying these required movements it allowed us to create goals of:

• Lifting 25kg from the floor
• Walking 10 meters whilst carrying a 15kg load
• Getting up from a chair with a 25kg barbell across shoulders (back squat)
• Stepping up to a 30cm step whilst holding 25kg 

Working back from those goals, using the time frame we had available, it guided our exercise selection.  Setting interim goals along the way helped her to monitor her progress, which in turn increased her motivation.

When doing these exercises she could then link them back to her end goal of scuba diving.  She was able to see how doing a step up or a squat would help her to get back in the water.  This reminded her of exactly how exhilarated she would feel when returning to this activity.

She had never considered or done any strength training before.  Without connecting what she was doing in the gym to her scuba diving holiday she admits that she would have been very unlikely to persevere with her training program.

She went on her scuba diving holiday and loved every second of it.  She has continued to go to the gym, now working towards a skiing holiday in the new year.  Skiing is something she had resigned herself to giving up, but now feels more confident heading to the mountains than she has ever felt.

Looking after the Grandchildren

Click here to read my post on grandchildren, to see the type of approach used with my patient to make him confident enough that he could manage two days a week looking after his grandchildren.

Useful Reading

I can’t recommend the book The One Thing enough. The focus of the book is to help you understand goals, habits and motivation.

Writing Down your Goals

If you write down you goals, you are far more likely to achieve them. 

A Harvard Business Study asked new graduates whether they had set any clear goals.  84% hadn’t, 13% had goals but had not written them down whilst 3% had clear written goals with plans for accomplishing them. 

10 years later the graduates were interviewed again.  The 13% who had goals, but had not written them down,  earned twice as much as the 84% who hadn’t set any goals. 

More interestingly the 3% who had clear written goals were earning 10 times as much as the other 97% put together.

Whilst the circumstances are different when looking at strength training and income potential, the same principles apply to working towards any tangible goal that you have.

Accountability

It is also good to tell somebody else about your goals and when you plan to achieve them by.  This should be someone you trust and are happy to be accountable to.  They will need to hold you to your original plan and not let you off the hook if your motivation starts to slip. 

When originally setting up this blog, I offered two friends a meal out if I did not manage to launch it by December 1st.  I knew that there was no way either one of them would let me off if I hadn’t launched it.  If you’re reading this on Dec 1st, you know that they didn’t get their meal!

Homework:

If you are seriously considering taking steps to become stronger then I’d like you to do the following:

• Explore what it is you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it by
• Break that goal down and into smaller steps and set smaller targets to be achieved
• Write it all down and keep it somewhere so you will see it on a daily basis
• Tell someone you trust what is on your list
• If you feel comfortable post your goals in the comments below.  It might spark an idea in someone else and give them the idea of a goal that they also want to achieve.

This post was written by myself, Chris Tiley, a physiotherapist based out of Movement Therapy Clinics in Harborne, Birmingham. For more information on how I can help you visit christileyphysiotherapy.com