Are your foundations set in place to enable you to achieve results?

When we meet and talk with women who are coming to HQ for the first time, we hear common threads of frustration appearing.

“I am training consistently and not seeing any changes in my strength”
“I am eating healthy but my body composition isn’t changing”
“I have been really consistent for 4 months now and nothing is working”

When we delve deeper and get really honest together, there are pivotal areas that are often getting overlooked time and time again.

You have probably seen the following scenario on television or you might even know someone too. She loses 10kg in the space of 8 weeks only to put it all back on, plus more, 6 months later. She squats 100kg within the space of 6 months of training only to them encounter countless niggles and injuries that cause her continual frustration and she then gives up 6 months later.

We have certainly spoken to many women who have stories similar to the above. The process is often rushed in order to get the result now, at the expense of foundational focal areas being neglected.

Foundational areas of focus are being rushed and skimmed over for the hope of the results fast and now.

So what are these foundational areas of focus?

1.  Learn your training foundations: breathe, brace, hinge, reach
Start with mastering your basic movement patterns over and over again before you start loading and adding every exercise under the sun. Create body awareness around these movement patterns in order to ensure safe and optimal lifting in the future. If you don’t know how to breathe and brace properly under an empty bar, do not load your barbell any further! If you don’t know how to execute a hinge with a controlled and precise tempo then stay here. We have seen too many women load themselves prematurely resulting in poor technique and movement patterns which has impacted their results.

2.  Become aware of what you are putting in your body
A lot of the time we talk with many women who are completely blind to what they are putting into their bodies. They are unsure of how much they are eating and how this impacts their overall health. We see women becoming frustrated at the lack of results to then fall into restriction patterns as a desperate plea to try and gain some progress which then completely backfires. Learn your nutrition basics and become calorie aware with what you are consuming and how this makes you feel. Keep a food log for 2 weeks. Writing down everything that you consume along with a few key notes along the way:

Did this meal make you feel bloated? Did you feel guilty eating that for lunch? Did you restrict at a certain meal to later blow out on the next?

We find this to be a really powerful tool for our ladies to be able to see where they may be over consuming certain food groups. This can also show our ladies where they may be under consuming nutrients and what areas they need to focus their efforts on.

3.  Prioritise sleep
Your results are only as good as your recovery practices. Sleeping is one of the only times where we get the opportunity to fully rest and recover. A good night’s sleep is something that many of us take for granted. It is just as important as eating healthy and exercising consistently. When you are sleep deprived, your mind is foggy, your energy is low, you may have poor digestion, your decision making can be impaired. Incorporating a good sleep routine will ensure that your hard work in training and in life will be equally rested.

4.  Your mind game
Strength training and results chasing is a test of your mental strength alongside your physical capabilities. For so many women we meet, they are often scared and holding back with their training. For fear of the unknown. Fear of injury. Fear of looking like a numpty. They are leaving opportunities for growth and opportunities for achievement time and time again. Why? Because this area can be hard to quantify. It is not as black and white as seeing progress in your training, watching your lifts get better, seeing your weights going up over a 6 month period. Stepping into your mindset game is a grey world that can be hard to quantify and hard to determine what may be “working” and this is one of the reasons stopping many from stepping into this world. The first point of call for anyone is to become aware of your own thoughts. We can’t move forward if we don’t take time and make effort for understanding the words, sentences and comments that go through our head on a daily basis.

In order to move forward we must recognise that there is more to the puzzle than just training and what we do in the gym. Goal chasing is a multifaceted moving target that requires constant reflection and assessment if we want to continue to move forward.

Ya feel us, but still unsure of how to make a change?

Let’s move forward together x