“I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” – Albert Einstein
Do you enjoy physical training? Personally, I love to train. Even when it’s hard, and I don’t think that I really want to do it, I get started and I end up loving it. Following a program, feeling skills improve and sharing the experience with great coaches and training partners is just fantastic. But, unfortunately, this isn’t the experience everyone has. In fact, a lot of fine people dread the prospect of training, so I’d like to present a hypothesis: Without the right training conditions, it’s pretty hard for anyone to enjoy, or even succeed with physical training.
I think we should be able to improve ourselves because of our training conditions and environment not inspite of them.
Before we had our very own special place to train, I chose to lift at home because I couldn’t find an environment that worked for me. I’m sure that I was only successful because I didn’t lift alone, though, I always had training partners, programming and coaching. Those factors made all the difference and effectively created the right conditions for success, even though my environment wasn’t ideal. It was good, but it certainly wasn’t as fun as training with our amazing community of athletes at Breakthrough Strength & Fitness like it is now. Here are the conditions I think we need to be able to fully enjoy a successful training regimen.
- A beginner’s mindset – Being focused and ready to learn and practice in every session is key. You get out of it what you put in, so getting the mind right has to happen even before starting to work on the body.
- A dedicated training space – Even if it’s just for one session, establishing a space in which to work will keep the distractions at bay and helps with safety. Ideally having a space that doesn’t serve any other purpose (like our semi-private training studio!) is the best.
- A program – If you want to get from where you are to where you want to be, you’ll need a map.
- A coach – Even if you have the map described above, you still need a guide to look out for unexpected pitfalls and keep you on the path.
- A training partner or, better yet, training partners – It’s been proven through scientific study that we accomplish more in training when we don’t do it alone.
If you can get all five of the above, it’s going to be hard not to have fun and get the results you’re looking for! If you can’t get all five, but can at least get the top three, you are still going to do much better than if you approach fitness like an unpleasant task that can be tolerated only if your mind is elsewhere (like watching TV), your body is any old place (like your home office) and you are trying to remember a “workout” you saw someone do on instagram.
Thanks to new advances in technology, we’ve been able to transform spaces all over the country into remote Breakthrough Strength & Fitness locations so that our trainees can still enjoy coaching and community even while traveling or from their dedicated home gyms in distant locations. We’re very fortunate to be able to continue our mission of celebrating strength in all its forms with more good people than ever before, but I sometimes think back to the days before we opened our training studio and wonder why I never felt welcome in other commercial gym settings. Perhaps if you’re reading this, you might have had a similar experience too. Why is it so hard to find the right training conditions and, especially, the right environment?
Well… The fitness culture, especially in Los Angeles, is pretty messed up. There’s a fairly prevalent unspoken rule in many training communities which decrees that for trainees to feel welcome, they are supposed to be a certain size and shape (not necessarily strong or truly healthy, mind you) and they’re required to emphatically embrace an “if it’s hurting, it’s working” attitude. There’s an expectation that one has somehow already attained a certain level of skill and physical prowess before joining a gym, and that everyone will simply demonstrate their awesomeness with each visit. It’s as if you need to somehow get “pre-fit” before you can embark on your training journey in public. This bias undoubtedly made me feel like I didn’t belong, and the dearth of professional coaching or customized programming certainly made starting out more challenging. Where was I supposed to learn the skills I needed to eventually feel accepted in a gym setting? Was it even a community that I really wanted to be a part of?
One of the big reasons we opened a training studio of our own is that we were frustrated with this culture. Fortunately, I spent many of my younger years learning various martial arts, so I had an example of what a positive physical training experience could feel like. It caused me to wonder what made that environment so different from what I always felt walking into “the gym?” Well, for one thing, a good martial arts school is considered a place of learning, not a place for grandstanding, or big egos or taking your frustrations out on your training partners or equipment. In such a community it isn’t expected that everyone is already good at everything; there is no shame in being a beginner, or hubris expressed by the advanced student.
The martial arts school where I first had the privilege to train never made me feel self conscious about training there, or trying new things, learning new skills. It was okay to not be good at something yet because it was understood that we were all there to practice and help each other get better. New students avidly learned new techniques and black belted aces practiced the basics with just as much enthusiasm, if not more! In a school with this attitude, everyone is always working on improving their skills, and helping others improve theirs with no time for self-doubt or judgement. It was a dedicated place to train, where there was always a program to follow, a coach to learn from, and training partners to practice with. So why can’t a gym be like that?
A training facility should be a place where everyone is there to help each other reach their goals with a skilled, passionate and professional staff leading the way. Although this isn’t how you might describe most of the fitness industry or the gym scene in general, we can all be part of a change for the better! The right training conditions create an experience that extends well beyond the four walls of the studio. In such an environment, where physical strength and movement capabilities are taught, practiced and developed within a nurturing community or people, our lives are improved in many surprising ways. Strength of character and spirit emerge to help us face many of life’s unforeseen challenges, along with strength of mind and the physical body, of course.
I believe we can forge a new future for the business of fitness. Strong people can lift each other up, after all. If we work together and continue to grow a community eager to learn the secrets of becoming strong, to move well, to become resilient, and to welcome anyone with a desire to improve themselves, we make the world a better place for all. We can change the image of the fitness industry from one that expects us to look a certain way, or be a certain way. Personally, I know that I need my training space to be a place for coaching, practice, learning, encouragement and fun, not a place for self doubt and suffering! Those are the training conditions that make it a joy to challenge ourselves and to continually improve.