Top 3 Fitness Tips from our First 3 Years!
We figured the day before St. Patrick’s Day would be a lucky day for us to officially open our doors as Breakthrough Strength & Fitness. While we didn’t have our official Grand Opening until May, we taught our first training session at the gym on March 16, 2015 to a small group of loyal clients – some of whom had been training with us for six years already at that point!
We knew that making the leap to owning our own gym wouldn’t be the easiest path, but we knew it was the right one for us. It was the best way we knew to help as many people as we possibly could discover one simple truth: When you feel physically stronger, you will start to feel stronger in other aspects of your life as well. Saying that fitness can be life changing sounds like an exaggeration, but we’ve seen it too many times to deny that it’s true.
As we reflected a bit this week on our first 3 years, we thought, hey let’s make this week’s newsletter a joint message from both of us… So we decided we’d share our “Top 3 Tips for Fitness Success We’ve Learned in the Past 3 Years”.
Tip #1 – Attitude is Everything! If you approach your fitness goals with a self defeating attitude that you “can’t do it”, or “it’s too hard for me”, or “I’ve failed before so this time will probably be the same”, then guess what – it’s probably true. But the good news is that the opposite is also true! Whether it’s wanting to lose weight, or being able to walk without back pain, or recovering from a major illness, or dealing with major life trauma, or just the minor stresses of the daily grind, we have noticed that the people who get the biggest results are the ones who believe they will. It may not be easy, but we can learn to choose a more positive attitude everyday!
Tip #2 – Be a Team Player. If you’ve known us for a while, you probably already know that Caleb is an only child, and Kati is more of an introvert on the “Type A” side of things… so this tip might seem a little surprising at first – ha! But seriously, we knew when we opened Breakthrough that we wanted to focus on semi-private and small group training because we had seen the powerful benefits of training in a team environment with the small groups we were training at our home. It’s a well researched fact that you are more likely to be successful in reaching your goals when you have social (training partners) and professional (coaches) support – a team. Let’s face it, gyms (especially in Los Angeles) don’t really have great reputations for being team environments where anyone is welcome. So it was important to us that Breakthrough be a place where people of any age, background and fitness level could train together towards their own individual goals, while at the same working towards a common goal of elevating the whole team to become the best versions of themselves. There is nothing quite like having the support of your FitFam when you need some extra encouragement, and hearing them cheer you on when you reach a new PR – whether it’s losing a pant size, deadlifting double body weight, or touching your toes for the first time in years!
Tip #3 – Focus on the Good. Too often in life we tend to focus on the things that aren’t going well. This can become a slippery slope that can lead you to feel like nothing is going right and you may as well just give up altogether. But taking time to recognize the things that are working will help you feel more successful, and help you connect with gratitude. Focusing on the good will allow you to see the ways that you are able to make improvements on the things you’d like to improve. People who are able to identify what’s going well, are more easily able to view challenges, setbacks and even failures as opportunities to learn and improve, rather than giving up. A busy season at work can turn into an opportunity to find meals you can prep and make really quickly. A minor muscle tweak can be an opportunity to identify technique flaws you want to improve.
We realized two things as we came up with our 3 Tips – First, they don’t specifically have anything to do with training or nutrition, and could apply to anything in life! Second, they happen to be the first 3 core values we run our business by:
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Attitude is a choice – chose to bring your best everyday
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Cultivate a team spirit – we can accomplish more together than we can on our own
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Find the good in people, situations and experiences
Whenever we have decisions to make or feel like something is off in some way, we come back to these values as our guide.
We are so grateful for the journey we have been on these past three years, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for Breakthrough! We know that when you choose to bring your best, build up those around you, and focus on the good, just about ANYTHING is possible!
Strength, love and gratitude,
Kati and Caleb