What kind of student are you?

One day this past week I was working out with a client of mine and she spoke about a lady in her weight loss support group that had started at the same time as she did and has lost more weight than she has. She seemed disappointed. I asked her one simple question. “Are you doing your homework?” She asked what I meant and I shared this little story with her. When I was in high school I had this history class that I did not like at all. I felt it was repetitive. Besides, I had heard all that stuff before. For a whole semester the teacher would give us assignments and I would not do them. I would just wait until I got in class and do whatever work I had there. If we had a test during class I would take it and do really well on it, but other than I wouldn’t do any other work. At the end of the semester I got a failing grade. I went to the teacher and said it didn’t make any sense because I passed all the tests I had taken in class. The teacher laughed and asked me how in the world did I think that those few A’s I had gotten on the tests would make up for all the bad grades I had gotten on my assignments for not turning in my homework. It was at that moment I realized he had a point. Haha!  We had homework every night and tests once a week. I had to bust my butt for the rest of the school year to get that grade up.

As a personal trainer I look at my job as if I am A teacher. When you come to work out you’re in my classroom. I’m going to give you a lesson every time that you show up. You’ll work hard and feel accomplished when you leave. The only thing is that when you leave, you do the assignment that I give you. Now, the assignment will consist of very simple things for you to do. You need to eat healthy meals, drink plenty of water, and exercise. I know that if you do these things you’ll have success. It’s great that you do well when you are in class with me, but just like me not doing my assignments outside of class, you are destined to fail if you don’t complete your homework. 4,5, or 6 hours a week of exercise will not make up for eating bad unhealthy food and not drinking enough water all week. You will never be able to “out train” a bad diet. I wish that I could follow every one of my clients around and make sure they eat healthy and exercise all the time, but we all know that’s not possible. Since it’s not, an individual most take personal responsibility and be diligent about doing what they are supposed to do outside of the gym to reach their goals. You get out of your program what you put into your program. If you do the bare minimum, then you will get the bare minimum results. If you find yourself not making as much progress as you want, you may have to ask yourself this question. “What kind of student am I?”