Work Smarter, Not Harder: 5 Proactive Tasks for Fitness Success!
The #1 Habit of Highly Effective People is BE PROACTIVE. I describe proactivity as doing something now that sucks that your future self will thank you for. It’s having the ability to do something that is in YOUR CONTROL; in your circle of influence to dramatically change your future.
The opposite of PROACTIVITY is REACTIVITY or waiting until a lingering problem becomes an emergency-like chaos where you have to drop everything you’re doing to “put out the fire”. Most people in our world live reactive lifestyles and feel like their lives are putting out one fire after another. It also has the narrative of “only if”.
“Only if I had more time.”
“Only if I had more support.”
“Only if I lived closer to the gym.”
Living a reactive lifestyle is finding the blame in things, situations or people as to why you’re not succeeding. This lifestyle will always deplete your energy, time and motivation. You’re allowing life challenges to defeat you.
Here are FIVE PROACTIVE tasks that you can build habits around to make your fitness journey successful!
#1 Make Your Workout Schedule Before The Week Starts
Scheduling yourself in advance (for anything) is an effective habit to getting tasks accomplished. When you schedule your workouts for the week in advance you can give time for yourself to be physically and mentally ready for them.
You build a sense of readiness and prioritization. It also helps with saying “NO” to other random commitments and appointments. When you say “NO” to other plans, you are becoming more responsible with your health and fitness. You find it to be more of a priority than other plans that won’t give you that sense of accomplishment.
You can also use it as a way to learn more about yourself. When you cancel on yourself, you can see in plain view what you obviously find more important or find out what made you miss the mark. For instance, maybe you find going to happy hour with your friends is better time spent (which is propably not) or maybe you missed breakfast and ate once that day leaving you with physical exhaustion causing you to miss the workout.
Learn, adjust and try again.
#2 Plan Your Workout Route and Routine
Planning the logistics and what you actually do at the gym will save you a bunch of stress, time and energy. Do you need a babysitter to watch your kids? Are you going to the gym during rush hour where traffic is worse than normal? How many exercises are you doing? How many reps shall you do? Are you lifting weights or doing more cardio based training?
Finding the answers to these questions before you leave will make you effective and super efficient. Imagine being excited to go to the gym and not checking peak traffic times and then sitting in your car for an extra 20 minutes…that could be enough to drop your motivation level to nothing.
Most people that I work with used to go to the gym and then wonder what should they do when they get there. You should not be making your workout when you get there. To be effective, the plan should’ve already been written down or else you’ll just end up doing the same, old workout you’ve been doing for months that’s giving you plateauing results.
PLAN ahead and execute!
#3 Pack Your Gym Clothes and Accessories the Night Before
This is a proactive habit that will significantly increase your chances that you WILL workout. Habit #2 of Highly Effective People is “Think with the End in Mind”. This is exactly what your are doing laying out your clothes the night before.
You are visualing what you are going to wear, when will you change, and the comfort level you will be experiencing during the workout. The more that you can see and visualize it happening, the more likely you’ll be able to make that visualization come alive.
Even if you missed the workout, at least the clothes are still ready for the next workout. It’s a WIN-WIN situation (which is Habit #4 of Highly Effective People - Think Win -Win).
#4 Pack Your Post-Workout Protein In Your Gym Bag
This habit will ensure that you are making the most of every workout and prioritizing muscle recovery and gains before you do anything else. To wait to get home to have a protein drink is risky because there are so many random obstacles and distractions when you leave the gym that may make you miss the most important window of growth and repair.
The first 30 minutes after a workout is over, your muscles are most susceptible to growth and change depending on the what the body is being fed within that window. You can leave the gym with all the great intentions of making a protein drink when you get home BUT life always randomly strikes.
You have to get gas. You forgot to pick up something at the grocery store. Someone calls you to help them out with an important task. You get a flat tire. Now that window has been missed, your muscles are burning, you’re starving and you end up ordering Chinese food out of desperation.
You can see how being proactive prevents emergencies from arising in the future.
#5 Have Your Post- Workout Meal in The Fridge
This leads me to my last proactive habit. Imagine this.
You get home after a grueling workout. You’re tired and hangry, You open the fridge and it’s completely empty. What do you think you’re going to do? Open the Uber Eats or Door Dash app and let your eyes pick your post-workout meal for you.
This is a common mistake that most people make causing them to make zero progress. People that are healthy and fit always have their fridge stocked with healthy foods. This is why meal prepping is a very effective habit in fitness. Is it easy? No. But is it worth it to have meals ready in your fridge when you need them the most? ABSOLUTELY.
You don’t have to have 10 meals prepped in advance all the time either. Having frozen healthy ingredients on standby is already helpful to remove the daunting task of cooking a meal from scratch.
Prioritize grocery shopping. Build the habit of going 1-2x per week to avoid falling into the same pitfall week after week.
CONCLUSION: BE PROACTIVE!
Always remember, if you’re doing something positive but it sucks or feels like you don’t have time or energy to do it now - JUST DO IT. This is the “hard work” that everyone talks about. Nike built a whole brand about this habit.
Your future self will always be so glad you did it and it will transform you into the most effective version of yourself!
Thank you all for reading. Please share this with someone that needs to hear these words!
- Carl Anthony Grande
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