I’m not gonna lie….this transformation stuff is TOUGH WORK! You have to invest a lot of time, money, and effort into the process and you have to have a lot of faith in the people that you are asking for help. The goal of this blog is to help you make sure you are getting the most out of that time, money, and effort. As usual, it is going to get real and I’m going to ask you to think about some heavy stuff but that is where the progress will be made.
There are going to be two layers to this discussion with two questions for you to answer. Here is the first thing you have to ask yourself: When it comes to my fitness program am I just doing something or am I getting something done?
Obviously there is a big difference between the two halves of that question and it can be a tough thing to assess for many reasons. As we have discussed before, one of the hardest things for human beings to do is take ownership over a perceived negative or “failure” situation. We naturally want to think that we are in the right and someone else is to blame. So for the purpose of this blog I want you to just play along and pretend if you have to! We are going to step out of our own heads and analyze our situation. So ask yourself “Am I just doing something with my fitness and nutrition plan or am I getting something done?”. Another great way to phrase this question is, “Am I just taking some random action or am I actually seeing results?”.
I think that any time you are investing your time, money, and effort into a fitness program you have to stay focused on the fact that you are not just buying “the program” you are actually making an investment in future results from that program. Let that one soak in for a second because it is important to understand! I cut my teeth in a commercial gym for 10 years and it used to drive me crazy with the way people would shell out big bucks for multiple personal training sessions each week and they either looked the same (not a good thing) or worse over that ten year span. Now one clarification I want to make (to avoid the haters in internet land!) is that taking some sort of action is an amazing first step. You should 100% be proud of yourselves for taking that initial action. What I’m trying to hammer home here is that if you just keep doing the same thing with no results and no expectations of results then you are really wasting a lot of time, money, and effort. That is the mental shift we are hoping to make here! I have a friend that I see once per quarter in a business group. He’s from the east coast and he’s had a personal trainer for the past five years. Every time I see him he tells me that he isn’t happy with the trainer and hasn’t seen any results yet. He’s also paying his trainer $75 per hourly session! The reason he hasn’t dumped his trainer yet is that they have become friends and he doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. So he’s doing three sessions per week at $75 per session. That comes to a grand total of $11,700 per year for a personal friend. This is insane but it happens ALL THE TIME.
A great question to ask in this situation is “What are my results per dollar here?”. If you get a $10 per month gym membership and gain 10 lbs of body fat over the course of a year that will equal very low Results Per Dollar or RPD. If you do a bootcamp for $400 and lose 40lbs in eight weeks that is a very high RPD. Hopefully this is all starting to make some sense.
The next layer of this blog has to deal with the following question: “Who is to blame for the low results per dollar….me or the fitness professional/program?”. Again….it is always easier to blame anyone but yourself so just for now…just for me….let’s step outside of our own head and analyze this situation because this is the tougher of the two questions for sure.
Lets say that you hire a personal trainer. They set you up with a nutrition program and they run you through a workout twice per week. During the workouts they are super friendly and helpful. You give it 100% with the entire plan by following what they say. After six months of this you haven’t seen any results. This is a situation where you need to change the program/professional you are using.
Now lets say that you hire a different personal trainer. They set you up with a nutrition program and they run you through a workout twice per week. You follow the nutrition program about half of the time and you don’t really push it very hard during the workouts and sometimes you skip them. After six months of this you haven’t seen any results. This is a situation where you need to get your head in the game and give the program an honest chance to work.
If you are one of our NGPT clients you will notice that I’m pretty obsessed with the concept of Results Per Dollar. We want to show you the results and celebrate every chance we get. Our personal trainers have to produce a progress report for you every eight sessions and I recommend that if you don’t see any results then you should fire us! Sometimes the person isn’t a great fit for our program and sometimes our program is the best fit for that person and this is going to be true for any of you out there and any fitness program out there. The key is to use this simple (but intense) two question process to analyze your situation and achieve the highest RPD for yourself.
In review:
Question One: When it comes to my fitness program am I just doing something or am I getting something done?
Question Two: Who is to blame for the low results per dollar….me or the fitness professional/program?
As always I am excited to help you out however I can and your feedback and comments are always appreciated!
Until next time,
Adam
