MidStrong’s 7 Habits of Highly Successful Middle-Age Fitness Programs
Let’s talk middle-age fitness habits.
What behaviors could we consistently adopt that would help us to enjoy better middle-age fitness, improved health, and greater consistency?
Almost 30 years ago, Stephen Covey wrote a wildly successful book called The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.
He studied how the habits of some of history’s most successful people across the full spectrum of academia and industries contributed to their remarkable success.
His premise was that people of integrity and character who had made a significant impact on their time and place in the world all shared a pattern of seven habits that they leveraged to be productive and impactful. The book enjoyed enormous success and sparked an entire genre of self-improvement publishing and self-management tools.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.”
- Will Durant
Good or bad, habits are immensely powerful. They are tough to build and tough to break.
Here are MidStrong’s 7 Habits of Highly Successful Middle-Age Fitness Programs
Stephen Covey’s seven habits went like this:
Be Proactive: Take action, show initiative, you have complete control.
Begin With the End In Mind: Have clarity on what you want.
Put First Things First: Urgent vs Important. Focus on the important.
Think Win-Win: Abundance vs Scarcity. Seek solutions through which both parties win.
Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood: Demonstrate empathy, actively listen, seek to truly understand others before you attempt to make your own point.
Synergize: Find and use the magic of teamwork.
Sharpen the Saw: Continually seek self-improvement.
Here’s my take on Dr. Covey’s 7 Habits… Good habits that, once formed, are wonderful bulwarks against our tendencies toward self-sabotage.
7 Habits of Highly Successful Exercise:
Be Proactive:
Schedule your workouts. Put them on your calendar, like you would any other appointment. Then, honor that commitment yourself just as you would any other person. You wouldn’t let anybody else down by blowing off an appointment or meeting that you had agreed to. Why would you treat yourself any differently?
Begin With the End In Mind:
Stop exercising and start training. The sense of purpose that "training" inspires is useful motivation. When you are working toward some tangible, well-defined event in your future, you are much more likely to follow through with your middle-age fitness program. You will know that missing a “training session” is considerably different than skipping a workout.
Put First Things First:
Train in the morning. I know this isn’t easy for some folks. But, I have found that if I don’t get my training done early in the day, the likelihood that distractions, fatigue, and inertia will make it really hard to get them done later in the day. My unscientific observation of people who are the most disciplined with their training is that they religiously train first thing in the morning.
Think Win-Win:
A workout is a gift, not an obligation. Yes, committing to a functional fitness program is hard. But this has to do with mindset again. If you consider your workouts as a task, like it’s just one more thing you "have to do”, it will be harder to summon the self-discipline to be consistent. But, if you adopt a mindset that considers your workouts as a gift or blessing, like “something you get to do”, I believe you’ll find you may not even need self-discipline to remain consistent.
Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood:
Know your “why”. Embrace it and cling to it. When you truly understand the intrinsic reason you’re spending your time, energy, and resources on this, you’ll be much more apt to stick with it on those dark and gloomy days when your will is sure to be tested. Maybe you want to lose weight. OK, that’s a worthy objective. But why? What’s the point? What difference will it make in your life? How will it make you happier? More fulfilled? When you know that reason, you’ll truly understand your “why.”
Synergize:
Workout with somebody or in a group session. It might be that “misery loves company” or just simple camaraderie. Whatever the reason, my observation is that if you include others in your plans, it introduces an element of accountability that is powerful. Now, instead of dealing with just your own feelings of disappointment when you skip a workout, you are letting somebody else down. That is a powerful motivator. You may find the quality of your workouts improves as well.
Sharpen the Saw:
Be constantly learning about fitness, nutrition, and overall health. The more you know about all of this, the more effective and productive your training will be. You’ll find motivation and inspiration from your learning. As you’re learning, you’ll be exposed to new approaches, new modalities, and new methodologies. It never fails that once I learn something intriguing or compelling, I can’t wait to get back in the gym to give it a try.
For better or for worse, our lives are built on habits.
Habits, both good and bad, have a powerful effect on the quality of our lives. We know from painful experience how destructive and disruptive bad habits can be. Our good habits, those that support our goals and ambitions, and serve to make us healthier, happier, and more productive, also serve to make us better people.
Thankfully, we have agency with all this. We can change, difficult though it may be. Even small changes that are consistently applied, compound in a positive way to, over time, begin to make a huge difference.
What exercise habits have made a difference in your efforts to get and stay in shape? Let us know! We’d love to hear from you!
MidStrong is for life.
At MidStrong, our middle-age fitness programs fit you. Your busy life, your equipment, your goals, and your pace.
Whether you train with us online, or join us for daily functional fitness sessions in our Westborough gym, with MidStrong, your best years are yet ahead.