How To Focus And Prioritize Your Fitness Efforts

I sat down in his class on the first day of the semester. He strode into the small classroom – there were only 20 of us – and as he arrived at the front of the room, the words were already being fired from his mouth.

It took thirty seconds for any of us to realize Professor Gary Hicks already was lecturing about the course material. He spoke with such a rapid-fire speed that no one could keep up. Bewildered looks went around the room. I wrote anything I could, as fast as I could. It went on like until he glanced at the clock, finally stopped talking, and said, “alright, enough for today.”

Enough for today, indeed. I looked down at my notebook to see most of what I had written was frantic scribbles that weren’t going to help me remember anything he’d just lectured on.

This wasn’t going to work.

But what happened over the course of that semester became a pivotal lesson for me, one that still serves me well today and that will help you be a better caretaker of your body.

My semester in “Microbiology 210” showed me how to find the important stuff, organize the rest of the stuff, and be able to tease out the most important aspects from the field of important stuff. These three skills are vital to develop if you’re going to have a successful time with fitness and body care.

Hoarding Is Rarely A Successful Strategy

Sitting in Professor Hicks’ class, it was apparent after the first day that just “writing faster” wasn’t going to work. There was all this stuff he said, and it all seemed important.

“I must gather all the information,” I thought.

There have been so many clients I’ve worked with who are living examples of what I was feeling that first week of class. They are trying so hard to juggle all of the stuff they have read and heard about fitness. They are frazzled by which thing are most important, diet, workout, sleep, this supplement, that supplement, and so on. And they’re slightly worried that they’re not doing any of it right.

That was me in Microbiology, until I figured out two critical concepts. Once I learned these two things, I was able to engage with the course material, actually learn a thing or two, and have a lot of fun being in that class.

How To Manage Your Focus
In The World Of Fitness & Wellness

1. There’s always a framework, you just have to find it.

When I went back and took another look at my notes that first day of class, I realized it wasn’t a pile of randomness. There was a theme, direction, and focus to what my professor had been talking about. He had indeed organized his ideas, he just hadn’t told us what the framework that organized them was.

Once I got an idea of the framework for what he was teaching, I was able to take better notes – and – I took less notes. Because what I wrote down was easier to remember, and assimilating the new info I learned into
hi

s framework made it much easier to understand.

A framework manages complexity. A framework is not a set of firm rules, but rather, an organization of concepts emphasizing the connection between the concepts.

In my coaching, I developed the Six Pillars framework to help my clients know the key areas of focus when they are building their fitness base. The Six Pillars are: Strong Feet, Mobile Hips, Strong Glutes, Strong Torso, Mobile Shoulders, and Strong Posture.

2. Decide what’s most important for you at this time, and go deeper on that. Let everything else fall away knowing you’ll come back to it when the time is right.

As is the case in most areas of study, there’s a nearly infinite amount of ‘stuff you can learn’. In Professor Hicks class, I learned that there were going to be a lot of aspects of the immune response I would need to know. This naturally made me think of a zillion questions that were tangentially related to the subject matter. However, going off on all those tangents wasn’t going to help me learn the thing that was most important at this time.

So, I saved them for the future, knowing that there was a good chance at least a few would be answered simply by staying the course with the subject matter that was our current focus.

Caring for your body is no different. If you know that this big world of “things you can do to be fit” exists – it can be tough to put your blinders on and focus on what’s most important to you right now. In case you need this reminder, you can’t have all of the fitness all of the time.

What Are The Most Important Things
To Focus On In Fitness & Wellness?

I’ve shown you ten powerful habits you could implement in your own life that would help you feel strong and capable. You don’t have to try them all, but if you pick a few to explore, you will most certainly reap the benefits of improving your skillset as the caretaker of your body. Get this free download, Ten Powerful Habits Of An Unbreakable Human, here.

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