Personal Training’s Fundamental Flaw
What if I told you that if you did exactly what I told you to for 30 days, without falter, I could get you to form or quit any habit, good or bad? In fact, what if I didn’t even have to be there to tell you what to do to quit smoking, or to learn to work out on a regular basis? What if I could just tell you how to do it, and you could make or break any habit you desired for the rest of your life in just 30 days? And what if it was such a simple concept even a child could do it? It would be a pretty profound piece of knowledge wouldn’t it?
Well, the fact is that I can tell you how to make or break any habit you want to in 30 days and it is really quite simple. Gurus such as Jack Canfield and Robin Sharma have known and taught this technique successfully for years, although Sharma uses 21 days instead. What is it? It is simply to perform the habit you are trying to create or break for 30 days without fail, in order to make it a habit for life. This means that if you can go without smoking, or go to the gym everyday for 30 days, you will have the ability to do so until you create another habit which counters it.
This isn’t just some made up theory either. In an early NASA experiment, scientists place convex goggles on would be astronauts which made everything appear upside down. The experiment was designed to help figure out what effects the disorientations of space would have on the human mind. What they found was that after 30 days the astronaut’s minds had completely flipped the image back so that everything appeared normal even though they were still wearing the goggles. In further experiments the goggles were removed for one day on day 15, what was found in this instance was that the 30 day period would have to start all over again even though the goggles were only removed for on day. So the inference is that the mind can make any new function normal in just 30 days.
So what does this have to do with Personal Training’s fundamental flaw? It is the fact that personal trainers world wide all preach the same thing to beginners, six days on, one day off. In almost every case, personal trainers preach that there should be a rest day. And to an extent I agree, however this one rest day is in almost all cases the core reason why a person fails to continue a workout program. As soon as you take one day off, it becomes easier to take a second day off, and a third and so on. When someone who has never worked out for an extended period of time before begins a workout program, they need to make sure that the going to the gym is consistent for the first 30 days to build the habit. Even though common theory tells us we need a rest day, in order to ensure we continue our workout program beyond the initial week or so, we need to make sure a workout habit is formed. The only way to do this is to workout for thirty days straight, and then worry about a rest day every six days starting in the second month.
Of course, never work yourself past exhaustion and make sure you consult a physician before you start any exercise program. To prove my theory works, I will be testing it myself starting tomorrow and will blog about the results.
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October 25th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
30 days straight is crazy for someone who is just starting out. Having been in the profession for the past 25 years, I would never set them up for failure like that.
You have to look at where there starting point is and go from there. If they haven’t worked out for years, then one workout a week is better than they were doing.
Then build upon that success, until they feel confident they can do it long-term.
October 25th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Hi Mark,
Personal trainers are very good at figuring out a persons strengths and weaknesses and then creating a program for them to reach certain goals. What most trainers fail to understand is how to get a person to create a habit. In effect, they have no clue how to get someone to continue with a program after it has started. To back this comment up, 70% of all people who start a workout program fail to continue. Why is this? 70% of people who start a job don’t quit. Yet people rank health as a higher priority than money.
The simple fact is that if you set up a workout plan for someone who is a beginner and tell them they only need to do it once a week, there is a good chance that they will workout the first week, maybe the second week, and will never make it beyond this point. Human psychology is simply not programmed to continue anything that is not consistent.
The fact is that anyone can find a way to get active everyday of the week. Everyone can wake up in the morning and start the day with a 15 minute walk and build from there. They don’t have to be in a gym for an hour at a time for it to be considered exercise. Of course personal trainers don’t get paid if they tell the client this.
Furthermore, if you go to the gym and survey the extreme physically fit, most of them will say that despite the typical conventions, they worked out everyday of the week until they saw results when they first started working out.
Of course as I have said before, you need to consult a doctor to see how much physical activity your body can handle. I still stick to my belief that you need to be consistent for 30 days before a workout program becomes a habit. After that you can scale back to five or six days a week.
October 26th, 2007 at 6:06 am
You can line up 100 different trainers and they will have 100 different opinions they think are right.
The bottom line is “the client”. Not what the trainer thinks is right or wrong.
Every client responds to stimulus and motivation differently. The exerienced trainer will recognize this and adapt.
To tell every client they need to train 7 days a week is ludicrous. You would never retain nor even get that client with that approach. Enough said.
October 26th, 2007 at 8:40 am
And there in lays the problem. It is all about getting the client. The point is you should be encouraging the client to be active and move everyday, it doesn’t have to be strenuous movement, just enough to get them to do more than they were doing. I will re-direct you back to my walking for 15 minutes a day example. That is not to hard for anyone to do seven days a week.
A trainers job should be how to teach them to keep active over a long period of time. If they knew how to motivate themselves they wouldn’t need a trainer.
October 27th, 2007 at 10:41 am
This has been an interesting read. You both make valid points.
The critical question is “Why do people sign up for their yearly membership and within 2 weeks drift back to doing exactly what they used to do; which for most is nothing.
What personal trainers or ‘teachers’ in any field have to realize is that if we do not teach people a system that they can plug them self into they will never last for the long term.
In essence, we should be teaching ‘principles’ - a way of thinking that they can implement in all aspects of their lives.
That is exactly what Nolan is talking about, learn a system “30 days” to make or break any habit.
When I wanted to create a habit of reading I started the 30 day program. I read for 20 minutes everyday for 30 days until it became a part of me. Then if I did not read one day I felt like a part of me was not satisfied.
That being said, most of those days I did not want to read. I remember being so tired at times that I must have re-read the same page for 30 min. before bed and still could not tell you what I read. But it was the habit that I was more interested in creating in my life at that point in time.
My mentor, same as a ‘trainer’ was there to keep me inspired and accountable for what I wanted to achieve.
Fred Sarkari
February 7th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
[…] lately. So I decided to google it. I found a blog today by Nolan Matthias. He has this post called Personal Training’s Fundamental Flaw. He discusses a study done by NASA about creating a 30 day habit. What is interesting is his later […]