There is a hierarchy of health and fitness needs that everyone should be following. Unfortunately, most people, including many Personal Trainers disregard this hierarchy due to limited knowledge and the ever so mindset of skipping to the fun parts first. The reason is that we are wired to crave short-term gratification. We want it now and we are willing to skip anything and everything to get there as soon as possible. Studies actually show that kids who are able to strategically offset short-term pleasure for long-term accomplishments are a lot more successful in every area of life when they are adults. Your mind will want it now and it is not willing to put in the work to get to higher level of goals. We are all guilty of it, but what separates achievers from non achievers is that achievers strategically offset this short term perceived gain for long term results. I could get into various areas that people do this in, but I will keep it in the health and fitness neighbourhood.

I would say that almost everyone I see in the gym setting really does not understand human mechanics and movement. Not only that, but they are truly learning bad movement patterns and damaging their bodies. I do not really expect everyone to be an expert in this field. I would expect people to seek expert advice on how to move properly though. People in general want to get fit, loose weight, get more muscle and bulk up. People skip learning how to move properly, how to warm up, how to do movements correctly and how to prevent long-term injury. They want the results now! I have been guilty of it myself. It is a common human trait. I am also very impatient with things in my own life. I do understand and appreciate that it takes time to learn something properly. Because I have been there, I understand both sides. This gives me leverage to being able to make people understand the importance of learning how to prevent injury long term. The fact is that it takes a lot of time to learn proper movement, to increase range of motion so not to compensate with other joints and to be able to learn how to stabilize joints properly and build up the body to be able to tolerate forces.

If you can imagine, we have these things called duty cycles. So for example, lets say that you can raise your shoulder 1 Million times before it begins to wear and tear. So you would have 1 Million duty cycles. Now if you raise your shoulder in a compromised position, those duty cycles get divided pretty fast. So instead of your shoulder bothering you when you are 90 years old, you start getting shoulder issues at 30 years old. Do you see the importance of learning the proper mechanics to lift, especially with load? I hope so. I always use the analogy with my clients of your car. You have an old Honda Civic that hasn’t had the oil changed in a while, hasn’t been maintained in years and has the wheel alignment all out of place. Now you are so eager to go race it and push it to the max. What do you think will happen when your take your old Honda Civic to the max? You can imagine. That also happens to your body. The difference is that you can build up your mobility, your stability, your strength and endurance to a point that you can go to the max. It just takes time, proper education and patience.

Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Be patient, learn from good Personal Trainers, take your time, do your homework and in time you will reach all your goals and more.

– Simon Bialecki