Tips for Empowering Successful Self-Regulation with a Fitness Program

Tips for Empowering Successful Self-Regulation with a Fitness Program

If you are like most people you probably do not work with a trainer to achieve your fitness goals.  Like most people, you establish your own fitness goals and work towards them without a lot of outside help.  This is referred to as self-regulation by those who work within the fitness industry and a person’s success is the result of how well that individual can adapt and manage his or herself to overcome gaps in knowledge, setbacks, or sometimes injury.  A person can have problems in one or more areas concerning the diet, designing an appropriate exercise program, or with the correct performance of a particular exercise.  There are five different steps in the process of successfully overcoming the challenges: Identifying the Problem, Commitment, Execution, Environmental Control, and Generalization.  The ability to correctly progress through each of these stages will eliminate anxiety can get the fitness program back on track.

Identifying the problem is often challenging when it comes to meeting proper nutritional needs or a well-designed exercise program., whereas pain during the performance of a particular exercise indicates an injury that needs to be addressed.  Injury assessment is easy; when in doubt have it checked out by a medical professional.  But for people trying to change body composition the problem is often and over compensation in order to identify the problem.  Too often, I see people who are not achieving desired results completely scrap a diet or exercise program to start something else entirely or give up.  In reality, small subtle changes to the existing program would be easier to manage and would, long-term, lead to a more improved state of health and fitness.  If you feel like the current program is not cutting it change just one aspect of the program; change your caloric intake, change the number of times per week that you work out, or change the intensity of the exercise program.  Be patient when making these changes.  Make only one change at a time and give it two to three weeks to accurately gauge the effect.  Impatience has caused more people to fail in achieving their goals than anything else, stay committed.

This leads into step two: commitment.  The ability remain committed to a program is directly tied to the goal.  A solid goal is going to be clear: meaning that it is specific, measurable, and realistic.  Goals must also challenge without overwhelming.  Do not make a task so complex that you cannot accomplish it own your own and be open to feedback.  Talk to a professional if you are not sure how to make sure that your goal and program are appropriately related to build your success.  A good goal is going to ensure that you are persistent and focused.  This will keep a person motivated to work through the problems that come up.  The more a person works towards establishing an appropriate goal the easier it is to remain committed because lead to the development of skills that make executing the plan easier.  Focus on improving your knowledge and skills in working towards your goal and increased commitment will naturally follow.  To focus exclusively on the end result is fail through ignoring the lessons that will make the goal reality. It is true in fitness and in life.  Stay the course!  Self-efficacy, the belief in the ability to succeed, directly tied to setting appropriate goals and openness to feedback.  They are the keys to identifying problems and overcoming through commitment.   Commitment leads into increased success in execution.

Execution is the stage at which a person is moving in their own groove and able to regulate their own progress successfully.  There are two keys to successful execution; self-evaluation and self-consequation.  Self-evaluation is easily explained by considering the performance of any exercise.  Anyone who has exercised regularly develops the ability to know whether or not a given exercise was performed correctly.  Performing an exercise correctly feels good while performing it incorrectly is often awkward, if not painful.  Self-evaluation is the ability to know the difference.  Self-consequation is the ability to use self-evaluation to improve future performance.  Self-evaluation is worthless if it is not used as a form of feedback to improve.  The key to doing this successfully on the positive; focus on the repetitions that felt good and use those as the model for future success.  The positive experiences are what are essential for improving future performance.  When going to through the steps of self-evaluation and self-consequation focusing on the negative will only hamper the ability to positively self-regulate.  Being negative will only lead to worse performance so stay positive because positive becomes even better.

Environmental control is probably the most over-looked aspect of self-empowerment.  The environment in which you train must positively support the achievement of the goal or your commitment will suffer.  It sounds simple but most people do not consider this when looking for a facility to use.  Does head-banging heavy metal mixed with screaming and slamming weights appeal to you?  If not, find a different facility, you will just pay for it without using it if the environment makes you too uncomfortable to show up.  Likewise, if you want an indoor play to train for marathons find somewhere that has more cardio equipment than strength pieces or you will never find an open treadmill.  If the environment of the facility does not match your training goals success probably will not happen and neither will generalization.

Generalization is a culmination of the previous four stages.  It is the ability to prepare oneself to  identify problems, remain committed to the goal, execute self-regulation, and rise above environmental factors.  This is the point that every person, whether high-level athlete or the casual cruiser on the treadmill, should reach.  It is the point at which clear understanding and success have built confidence to the point that nothing can dissuade from achieving the current desired goal and the willingness to set more challenging goals in the future.  This is where self-empowered success builds upon itself into a pattern of unrelenting progress.