Speaking from experience, I’m lucky, I’ve found what works and guess what… it’s an INDIVIDUAL approach to my training, health and well-being. This took a while… it didn’t happen overnight.

I’ve come across many coaches, physical trainers, strength and conditioning coaches and all kinds of health practitioners with the same issue. When prescribing an approach to improvement they all take the same approach, because it has worked for someone else in the past, they assume that it’s going to work for you, immediately. They then become rigid in their approach and neglect to understand that you are different, and your individuality is a good thing.

What’s worked for me? I’ve quantified as much of my life as I currently feel necessary. Sleep quality, nutritional intake, training volume, everyday physical activity and work productivity all get measured, everything has a plan, targets to hit and a way of ensuring my progression. That scares the life out of most people and if that was prescribed to 99% of the population they’d give up within the first week. That is exactly my point.

Now it’s your turn, we can all improve, the reason most don’t is because they believe they have to conform to the expectations of others. Ultimately it’s your life, your health, and because one person prefers to wake at 5 and go for a run every day (a nutter that is part of One Precious Life does that) or another’s is to quantify a multitude of parameters regarding health and performance (possibly due to my compulsive personality) that does not mean that this is required for improvement and well-being.

The key is slow progression in whatever you feel is necessary and achievable. For one person that may well be running 5k every day, for another it may be walking to the end of the garden once a day. In my opinion they are both equally admirable, one should not be impressed by the end result but rather the process to get there, the courage to make the decision to change is what impresses me most.

I suppose the aim of this article is to spark a change in attitude, forget about comparing yourself to the achievements of others. Acceptance and enjoyment of the process associated with improvement is necessary and should be enjoyable, the only thing to do now is to decide how… possibly we can help?

Jack Barton (Researcher, Rescon Ltd)

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Picture taken from the MapMyRun App