It is hard to believe but it has 10 years since we opened Coyote Fitness.  March 4, 2013 will forever be a day that I look back on with pride.  There have been so many amazing memories over the years and so many people that I have met through Coyote that I thought it would be a great time to reflect on the last 10 years at Coyote Fitness.

It does not take a long period of time to make drastic changes to your body composition and your health.  If you make the decision to do what you have to do, no matter what, you can transform your life in 90 days or less.  It does not take a lot of time.  It only takes a 100% commitment.  I want to share a three month period in my life that literally changed my health and the trajectory of my life.  It was one of the most impactful periods in my life up to this point.

Sometimes inversion thinking can be a great way to understand a situation better.  By thinking about how not to do something it can help us understand a little better on how to actually do it.  When we think about things in this manner we might see some things that we are doing that we didn’t realize we were actually doing.  I want to apply this thinking to fitness and talk about how not to make progress.  Here are 10 ways to not make fitness progress.

Looking at training for an athlete in a yearly calendar format can be very impactful. By dividing the year into different seasons with different priorities we can start to determine when the time to develop as an athlete is and when the time to develop your sports specific skills is. If we can create a priority for each portion of the year we can help the athlete continue to develop and avoid the frustration that can come with doing everything at once. Ultimately, by planning ahead we can help the athlete achieve what is most important-reaching their full potential.

Over the years we have had thousands of people come through the doors of Coyote. There are some people who have been members since the day we opened, some that have only been to a few class, and everyone in between. After seeing so many people you start to pick up on what the people who are making progress are doing, as well as what the people who are struggling to make progress aren’t. After all of these years I keep coming back to the same thing-the people who make progress are the people who show up every day.

Imagine you are walking along the beach one day and see a lamp in the sand. It looks just like the lamp you saw in the move Aladdin so you pick it up and rub it. Suddenly you are transported into a room and see the largest book shelf you have ever seen in your life. It is wall to wall, floor to ceiling, nothing but books. The sheer vastness of it overwhelms you. After a few moments of gawking a genie appears. “What is contained in these books are all of the secrets to life. Whatever you want to know or do in life is contained in these. You have two options. The first is that I will give you complete access to these books. You can read them whenever you want, as often as you want, and take them wherever you want. I promise you that once you have read all of these books you will know everything that you need to know to achieve whatever you want out of life. The second option is you hire me. I have read every single one of these books and know them backwards and forwards. Not only that I have coached thousands of other people and helped them achieve everything they could possibly think of.” Your first immediate response is “What does it cost?” “Everything you own.” is his response.

One of the most important aspects of training, in my opinion, is learning about pain. This can be something that is very scary for people when they first start on their health and fitness journey because their body is starting to feel different than it has felt before. If you can understand the purpose of pain and why you are feeling it you can learn what your body is trying to tell you and make much more progress in the long run.

I was listening to a podcast this week (Ben Greenfield) and he had a guest who made a profound statement that really stuck out to me. He had struggled with serious gut issues his whole life and he said he finally realized that he needed to be the CEO of his health. Once he made that shift he was able to do what it took to finally heal is gut and also to help others do the same. This is a concept that I think is crucial for people to understand and can completely change your health if you can implement it in your life.

This week I wanted to talk about the Sweat track and why we have decided to add it to the class. This is an option that we are very excited about and I wanted to talk about what benefit this will provide to our members and why we have decided to add it to the class.

When most people think about getting in shape or losing weight, they typically think of the phrase “diet and exercise”. How many times have we heard a doctor say that this is the key to being healthy? We hear it on television commercials, on our doctors visits, in our schools, and countless other places. These are two of the pillars of health for sure, but I have come to believe that the missing piece for many people is accountability. It is not enough to know what you need to do. Everyone knows that they need to diet and exercise to be healthy. It is the accountability which keeps them from doing so, which is why it is crucial to consistency and a healthy life.