Time
I was reading the newest edition of Success magazine the other day and I came across an article called Balance Life and Work. It was basically about how certain successful people balance life with work and it got me thinking about how we as fitness professionals struggle with this. I also thought about how some of the people who we encounter as fitness professionals say that they have no time to exercise and I think these two problems are deeply correlated.
Let me explain – we all have the same certain amount of minutes per day to get life accomplished but the one thing that fitness professionals and their clients can relate to is time and everyone including myself can be better with time management.
I put a post up on my personal Facebook page and I received interesting responses from respected strength coaches in the fitness field. One where the person said “have goals, have boundaries” meaning for example only work until 6pm and never use your phone on vacation for example, and another response where the person said “One trick with finding balance is realizing that it's a moving target. Too many variables all in flux. Today's balance will not be the same as yesterday's. The workout you recovered from last week might not be the best if this week is plugged with overtime. The overtime you handled last month might not be the best if there was a recent significant family issue… etc… etc… We must strive for a dynamic balance in life rather than a myth of a static balance that, once we find it, will make everything work”
That last response had the greatest meaning to me because as fitness professionals we are always going to fight with time and some days we are going to have more time with our life and other days we won’t because something needs to get done in our professional lives. I think as long as we recognize it and that this is there we have really won half the battle.
Also if you know taking time away from the most important things in life like your kids then chances are the tasks that you will get done will have greater impact towards you and or your business.
If your clients are struggling to fit exercise in with their schedules here is where we as fitness professionals can relate to them.
A great strategy for all of us to do especially for your client that is struggling to make exercise a part of their daily routine is to create a list of the things that mean the most to you. For example mine are family, exercising and work. Those are my priorities every day. If a priority for you is exercise then you will find a way to get it done. After all we all have the same minutes in the day. Besides exercising the top CEO’s of most of the Fortune 500 companies are ALL masters of time it’s just a matter of how you use it.