Consistency Beats Intensity: A 20-Year Trainer's Best Advice for Beginners

It's a quickie, but it's a goodie. What's up,

you guys? Famous Ashley Grant here. Welcome to

More Movement, Please, the podcast where I hope

to inspire you to move your body more. Today,

I have another quick voice message from you,

and I gotta say, this is the quickest voice message

I've received, but it works. Here it is. My name

is Chris Cooper. I've been a personal trainer

for 20 years, and my number one tip for success

with a worker program is consistency beats intensity.

Building a sustainable, doable routine will work

out better in the long run than sporadic intense

workouts. OK, Chris, I got to say thank you so

much for your quick message. And it's a good

one because it's just the truth, right? Consistency

really does beat intensity every single time.

And I have found this definitely this week. I've

had kind of a little bit of a rough week in terms

of mental health, but yet I kept showing up.

I wasn't as intense with my workouts as I normally

am. But the fact that I kept showing up, at least

I still kept getting it done. And so I guess

that's the big message today that I want to share

with you is if you are. starting your fitness

journey and you're concerned about the fact that

you're not going hard it's okay just keep showing

up that's the most important thing keep consistently

showing up every single day and you will see

results over time if you move your body more

than you've moved it before that is a win if

you start just adding in some extra you know

movement you will see a difference. Even if it's

something as simple as taking a 10 minute walk

a day, whenever you used to never take a walk,

you will see a difference. You will feel a difference.

And the other thing is one of the great things

about if you just start doing 10 minutes a day,

I think you'll notice that you start doing more

than that, or you start wanting to do more than

that. And so that's really what I want to just

drive home is that if you are thinking about

working out and you think you have to like go

really intense. No, you don't. Just get started.

That is the most important. That is the key thing

that I really want to share. And so I'm amused

that Chris's message was only like 19 seconds,

but that's all it needed to be, right? It just,

it was a good message. And it's something that

I think too many of us get a little too hung

up on is thinking that we have to do it a certain

way in order for it to count. And that's just

really not true. The biggest thing is that you

show up consistently. If you're listening to

this and you're not moving your body, start.

You don't have to go hard, but you do have to

start and you do have to show up and you do have

to come every day. And I think that once you

start showing up every day, you're going to start

showing up more regularly, more, you know, putting

in more reps, putting in more time and. You know,

you owe this to yourself. I mean, I saw this

thing on Facebook that was going around and it

basically said an hour of your day is 4 % of

your day. And yeah, I know it's easy for someone

who works from home to say something like that.

But if you start looking at things just a little

bit differently, I bet you could find an hour

somewhere in your day that you could get some

movement in. Whether it's, you know, when you

get home from work, taking just 10 minutes to

walk around the block. Or while you're cooking

dinner, start doing some squats. Or, you know,

there's so many different ways that you can move

your body. And we've talked about it. in different

episodes and I can share some more resources

in the show notes of different things that you

can do to add movement into your life every day.

But just you owe this to yourself. You are worth

an hour. You're worth more than that. But if

you only have a little bit of time, you're at

least worth putting it in. Put in the time because

that's the one thing that we can't get back is

time. And the truth is, we are the only people

who can take care of our own health. Yeah, I

know you could go to the doctor and you can get