Why Culture Is Important for Your Long Term Health and Fitness
Culture is the crux of long-term health and fitness in today's world. By culture, I don't mean socioeconomic or geopolitical culture. I'm talking about training culture—not just the culture of the gym you go to, but your PERSONAL training culture.
Over the many years of coaching clients of all ages within different training populations and from six of the seven continents worldwide, I've picked up on one significant differentiating factor to what makes people successful and what doesn't (or at least creates massive obstacles for them).
Training Culture
I'm referring to the cultural components that blend into your health and fitness journey. How do your values, behaviors, and perspectives in life influence your commitment to your personal goals?
How important do you think this is to be successful?
In my opinion, it's everything!
What I love about training is that it's incredibly objective. You can't hide from it.
You either lifted the weight, or you didn't.
You either worked hard enough, or you didn't.
You either stayed consistent with your program, or you didn't.
The results speak for themselves. You can't lie about it. No matter how you feel about the process, "the iron never lies."
Objectivity isn't something to shy away from. An objective process like this can be extremely valuable to go through from a character-building standpoint if you know how to go about it.
But just because I said it was objective doesn't mean it's obvious. Human physiology and exercise science are both extremely complex. The point is that once you have a plan if you execute it with precision, you now have data, whether you succeeded or failed.
That's the beauty of training's objectiveness. It always tells you how to create the next plan.
Which is why never giving up is so important.
Which is why discipline is vital.
Which is why work ethic is a non-negotiable.
Which is why consistency is key!
These are valuable character traits to possess when pursuing health and fitness and are just some components that make up a personal training culture.
Committing to a health and fitness plan really boils down to the elements of culture that dictate your decisions.
Your perspective influences your values.
Your values lead to actions.
Your actions lead to behaviors.
Your behaviors lead to a process.
A process leads to systems.
Executing systems opens you up to a world of success and failure.
Success and failure lead to the development of character traits like discipline, work ethic, conviction, courage, devotion, gratefulness, humility, and many more!
How you perceive your process's journey and results and your system's successes and failures influence your values. And the cycle continues.
This is why developing a training culture for yourself is so important. It involves everything fundamental about staying committed to your goals—if they are meaningful to you.
If they are, and you realize that you don't have your culture set, you need to work on this step.
The good news is that culture is malleable and adaptable, and you can control it.
Culture infused with actionable values creates a solid and seamless foundation.
This is where the rubber meets the road. I've seen this happen to many of my clients, as well as to friends, family, and people I know from my fitness journey.
When something in life changes, they break.
If the process gets too hard, they give in.
If their system fails, they lose faith.
Life inevitably changes. It's in constant flux. We can't control all of these variables. But we can control how we react to them.
The successful people I've known could forge new paths with every hardship placed on their health and fitness journey.
They perceived these as challenges to a goal that was so meaningful for them that nothing could stop them.
They learned to adapt.
They made changes to their systems.
They maintained their process.
These character traits all fall on top of their values and perspectives in life.
So, if you are committed to your health and fitness journey but struggle to stay on top of your routine, maintain consistency, or hold up to the hard work it requires, take a deeper look into your personal culture.
Think about how you perceive the journey of health and fitness.
Write down the values related to it and the character traits you'd like to obtain or work on.
Start acting on those values over and over and over again.
Forge new habits and behaviors that build character and lead to your goals.
Create a clear process and system that fits into your life, knowing you'll have to adapt it as life changes.
If you didn't grow up in a culture that cultivated the values and traits necessary to maintain a healthy and fit lifestyle, you want to focus on this now. Otherwise, it will always be THE obstacle between you and your goals.
Commit to the journey!
What are your values, codes, customs, or systems that make up your culture?
Share your success and obstacles you face in your health and fitness journey in the comments below!
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A system to optimize personal culture. Love it.
Asking ourself the simple question “why?” and peeling back that onion until we get to the core of our true why reveals those opportunities in training/anywhere.
All the attributes you listed not only optimize training but life itself. This is why I’m passionate, like you, about using fitness and health as a vehicle for life optimization.
Involving the mind in both the objective and subjective applications of fitness allows for growth in and outside of the gym.
Good shit brother