Fighting Adversity Is What Fitness Is All About

Let’s agree, fitness is hard. There are infinitely more reasons not to exercise, starting with the fact that it’s not a natural habit. Well, maybe it is a habit for you, but it’s a habit that’s easy to drop. Exercise is work.

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My advocation of managing your fitness habit over every other aspect of your program stands. The most important thing is your consistent habit. Don’t flinch on this one thing, ever.

You can always improve a poorly executed habit, but it’s much harder to move the habit boulder. It’s just as hard to keep it going. It is in the spirit of this philosophy that I lobby for your thoughts.

Life is going to present you plenty of reasons to not exercise, but your ability to maintain your habit of wellness against adversity is what living a fitness lifestyle is all about.

Logical Reasons

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When it comes time to maintaining your habit, you’re going to have an inordinate number of reasons to quit. Stop thinking of them as excuses.

Somehow that word, excuse, has come to imply that we are talking about a lie. Excuses are always true. They are always legit reasons that something did not come to pass.

The implication is that excuses are not good enough reasons, but they’re all good enough reasons. If the dog eats your homework, how could you have turned it in?

The question we never ask ourselves is, to borrow the metaphor, how did the dog get close enough to our homework in the first place? When someone does not accept your perfectly logical reasons, it’s because he or she is asking that question.

Don’t give them the chance. Avoid reasons by rising up against them. In fact, cut them off before they have a chance to knock you down.

Rise Against Adversity

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When we want something, nothing stops us. You’ll sleep in the snow to be the first in line for the most important things in your life. If someone or something threatens your child or someone you love, you could be down with the flu and a broken arm, but you’d stand up to put a stop to it.

In those cases, who would blame you for not standing? Those are some good reasons to do nothing. You had the flu and a broken arm!

With the things that matter in life, it takes a force of nature to push us down. Even then, we stand back up.

Make this your resolution in fitness, not to lose weight or get healthy. Resolve to rise up against adversity to never lose your habit. Let no reason be good enough until it’s so strong you cannot stand against it. Then when it’s not looking, stand up anyway.

Fitness Lifestyle

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This is what your friends who stay fit do. They don’t relent. The workout not as an event of inspirational music and triumph, but as a course of habit.

If they lost the use of their legs, they would use their arms to workout. Holidays, birthdays, weekends, even against the occasional cold or flu, they put on their gym clothes to get it done.

That doesn’t mean you have to workout holidays and birthdays to stay fit, but fit people don’t let those days become the reason for missing a normal workout.

Obviously, everybody has their breaking point. I won’t workout if I have aches and pains from the flu, but that’s about it unless I’m under doctor’s orders.

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Once, I worked out in the tail end of a hurricane just to rise up against the adversity of it. Plus it sounds cool to say, not just to others but to me. That self-talk becomes part of how we see ourselves.

If you want to change your fitness for real, go against your instincts to find reasons, not to workout. Start asking yourself why not workout?

Don’t wait for yourself to answer. For one you sound crazy talking to yourself, but you will find a reason and it will be a good one.

I promise.