00:00
Hey guys, this is Cori from Redefining Strength. Welcome to the Fitness hacks podcast. This is a show where I share all my free work on the nutrition tips. I’m not going to ever fill this episode with sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is, if you’re enjoying the podcast, to leave a review or leave a five-star rating or, even better, share it with someone you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone you know. So let’s jump right in.

00:29
Treat your journey to results like a road trip. If you do this, you’re going to see better results faster. So I want to explain why your journey, your path, is truly like a road trip to your results. Okay, think about it this way You’ve mapped out even your plan, just like you would map out your road trip. But when we map out our plan, we still often think this is where I am, this is where I want to go. Here are the habits that get me there. We don’t think about pit stops or flat tires or speed limits, and I’m going to go over how these things factor in and why we need to consider them, not only on real road trips, but on our road trips to the fitness results that we want. So, speed limit, flat tire rest area why am I showing you these three pictures of these three things when I’m talking about achieving amazing fitness results, whether or not it’s, you know, performing well in a race, lifting more in the gym, seeing weight loss, seeing body recomb?

01:23
Okay, so let’s first talk about the speed limit. You won’t travel at one speed to achieve the results that you want. You think about it this way there are times you’re more motivated and times you’re less motivated. When you’re more motivated, you’re going to be willing to make more sacrifices. You’re going to be able to do a lot more things. You’re going to see results a little bit faster. However, when you’re less motivated, you can’t do as much, and trying to force ourselves to go the same speed at each time is going to get us into trouble. If you don’t go the speed limit on the road, you’re potentially going to be pulled over. So when you can drive faster on the highway, you want to take advantage of it. When you have to go to slower speed limit, you need to obey that slower speed limit, because trying to cheat your way to faster results is potentially going to get you in trouble. So consider how motivated you actually are. Think about what sacrifices you’re willing to make and then steer into whatever speed you have to go at that time. If it is a time where other priorities in your life need to take over priority, make sure that you’re scaling back on those goals to keep moving forward, because we don’t want to just stop. If we’re allowed to drive 25 miles an hour, we want to go 25 miles an hour so that we can get to that 60 mile an hour place a lot faster.

02:27
When we’re in this different speed zone, we want to think about the fastest sustainable continuum. So we want to think about, if we have to go a little bit slower, the speed limits lower, maybe we’re in that sustainable phase. We’re doing things that strike that lifestyle balance that we know are going to help us stay consistent with things, but might not drive us forward as fast because we aren’t willing to make as many sacrifices. However, maybe we’re more motivated. Maybe the pain of staying in the position we’re in pushes us forward. We’re willing to make more sacrifices. This is where we can steer towards that faster end of that fastest sustainable continuum in terms of habits Continuum. So when we go towards the fast side, we’re going to be able to make more sacrifices, do more things that will drive us forward faster.

03:05
But you can’t push yourself into one if you’re not motivated to be in one. And when we do, that’s where often we feel like we don’t have the willpower or self-control to keep going. So if you do have one of those periods where you’re on the highway, able to drive fast, consider those mini cuts. This might be a time where you go into more of extreme deficit. Do a little bit stricter macro breakdown. However, if you’re having to drive a little bit slower, if you’re not as motivated, if other priorities are taking again priority in your life, think about doing a macro’s minimum. How can I do less and still maintain my results and keep myself moving forward? Because really it’s not that we’re doing all or nothing and we do do all or nothing. It’s like we’re driving in the opposite direction of where we need to go. Right, we want to think about how can we keep inching forward, how can we go at a slower speed but keep moving in the direction. We need to go Off of this.

03:51
Okay, things won’t go as planned. On your road trip. You might have your AAA card. You might know how to put on the spare tire if you need. You might know where all the gas stations are in case you need to fix your car up. But we have to realize that things aren’t always going to go as planned. And on road trips we often do have a plan in place for when we have that hiccup with our vehicle, or at least we should. You don’t, but how are you going to get back on track after that? We’re not going to go slash the other three tires on our car just because we get it flat. We’re going to call a tow truck or replace it with the spare that we have in our car.

04:21
But sometimes, when we’re approaching our diet and workout routine, when we get a flat tire, when we have one deviation, one thing that goes off plan, we sort of say, yep, the day is messed up, and then we go eat the whole box of cookies or we skip the rest of the month of workouts. Right, we want to figure out how can we get ourselves back on track more quickly. So we want to have that plan be in place. We want to have that backup plan. We want to have something that’s going to help us move forward when deviation, step backs occur, because success is failure to some extent and I know that sounds really weird to say, but success is a lot of failures, but you just keep picking yourself back up and moving forward after each and every one. So think about how can you get your AAA card to keep you moving forward in your fitness journey? Is that having a proven plan? Is that having an outside expert accountability? What can keep you moving forward and help you get back on track when you do have those hiccups and things don’t go as planned?

05:09
Now, the last thing I want you to consider, which I think is honestly the most important and probably the least sort of done, is creating those rest areas. So when you’re driving in your car and if you’ve been driving for a very long time, you could try and push through not sleeping. You can try and do the caffeine thing right, but ultimately you’re putting yourself at risk to fall asleep at the wheel and you could end up not getting there or getting there a lot slower if you don’t just take those rest breaks. We want to do the same thing when it comes to our workout and diet routine. We need to take dieting breaks at points, give our body a mind of break. We need to take the load weeks with our workouts because while it can feel like we’re not moving forward and technically you know, if you take a pit stop when you’re traveling on a road trip you aren’t moving forward at all but ultimately allows us to keep moving forward a lot faster because we’re able to focus, we’re able to really put our all into what we’re doing.

05:55
So consider those breaks pre or proactively. Don’t just sort of let them have to happen. Really say, hey, I’m going to start a plan these things out and then don’t be afraid to listen to your body. Because if you do listen to your body, if you do even pause to learn, ultimately you can reach your goal a lot faster without having any massive setbacks. Because even think about this way, think about like, if you get a little bit off track or you think you might have taken a wrong turn, it’s better to pause, check that map, check the GPS and get back on track right then, versus continue to drive and get even more off course.

06:26
Same thing goes for our workout routine. If we keep going when we aren’t sure if something’s working and we haven’t paused to assess what our data is actually telling us. We’re not going to see the best results as fast as possible. So plan in those pit stops, plan in those breaks, embrace them. As much as we often want to try and just keep going at our 100% intensity, it gets depleted with everything else going on in life. So the more proactively we do plan in those breaks, the more we can move forward a lot faster.

06:49
So I just want you to remember that your lifestyle is not stagnant, so your route is going to constantly have to be adjusting. Every time we’re working towards a new goal, we have to outline a new road trip for ourselves, because we’re not going to the same destination and often what took us to St Louis is not what’s going to take us out to California. So we have to recognize that we have to set out a different road trip, a different roadmap, each and every time we’re working towards a new goal. So just recognize these three different things. You’re not going to travel at the same speed, okay, but you got to obey the speed limit to some extent. So embrace whatever speeds you have to go. There are going to be hiccups, flat tires, things that pop up. How are you going to move forward as fast as possible when something does happen and then plan in those pit stops proactively so that you can ultimately move forward a lot faster and not put yourself at risk for fully sabotaging everything? Because, trust me, if you don’t do a D-load week and you end up injured, you’re going to be out for a lot longer than potentially doing that D-load week and addressing things before they add up.

07:42
Hope this imagery of planning out your fitness road trip really helps you think about your journey in a different way. Thanks for listening to the fitness hacks podcast. Again, this is the place where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m never going to run sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is, if you’re enjoying the podcast, to leave a rating review or share it with someone you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and it would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone you know.