Training with Creativity and Passion

Case Studies from 2 clients creating their own training plans for winter

You’ve heard me say it over and over again by now: “Use LOVE as your foundation for fitness.” If this is your first time reading this urgent plea, what does it mean and why love?

There are many good reasons why, but here’s the most important, love powers you through adversity and makes you willing to sacrifice more than any other force. It makes it easy to struggle through pain and discomfort. Think of all the relationships where you eagerly take on difficulty because you know in the end it’s worth it. I bet love is the word you use to find strength and courage.

That’s ultimately why, but it’s not the only reason. Another is to bring your passion, creativity, and imagination into the equation. Adults are too serious. Way too serious. Especially about the importance of physical health and the role of exercise.

One of the big reasons I see people fail to gain consistency in the gym is they strip out the fun and adventure of physical activity and replace it with monotonous movements aimed only at the body. It’s something I work dilligently with my clients to establish in their own lives.

A lot of them end up finding a passion for running, following my lead, but others do not. I want to share two stories today of what me and two of my guys are working on heading into the cold winter months up here in Canada. Hopefully they serve as example on how you can build out a training plan from your heart that not only motivates you to get after it consistenly but that build off of your love of movement so that when the motivation dries up, love fills in and keeps you moving forward towards your goals.

Client A

This guy loves the gym, specifically hitting the weights and watching the numbers go up. He hasn’t found as much time to work on lifting the past year because he started a side hustle that’s currently on pace to become his main gig! This is something we worked on together in 2023, but he started to miss the physical consistency we established so we began working together again to make a solid plan.

First thing we established was an idea of on and off seasons for training. His summer is busy with work, so his on season for training is the late fall, winter, and early spring.

I challenged him to create a training block that got him excited to train, not simply to maintain physical fitness. We tried that before and it didn’t work. He’s a guy who needs to see improvement in something to fire that deep internal desire to strive towards achievement. So his goal was to listen to his heart, find a proper target, and design a lifting program for himself to get there.

After some soul searching, he decided to chase the big 3 lifts (bench, deadlift, squat) but not for a 1 rep max, but for an 8 rep max. He loves those lifts, and wants to see the combined number creep up and up. But he also can’t risk injury and the 1 rep max sets him up for an ego lift that could take him out. An 8 rep max is better for his current age and goals.

Now he has a target he’s inspired to chase, a structured program he created himself, and his heart to power him towards it when the motivation dries up. He just ran session 1 this past week and it’s looking good so far!

Client J

This guy likes lifting, but really gets inspired being outside walking, jogging, and longboarding. There’s only one problem, he lives way up north in Canada and deals with dark, long, cold, and brutal winters.

Before the summer ended we started to gameplan, how are we gonna keep your consistency throughout the winter months? Similar to Client A, I challenged Client J to pick out some rough objective aims he could target in the winter that would build him up to hit the ground running once the ice, snow, and darkness leave next spring.

Client J has a unique connection to exercise, really feeling his muscles and mind connecting in a lot of ways. He used this internal intuition to feel out a winning strategy. This is a guy who loves the 1 rep max, and in particular in the deadlift. But he’s no spring chicken and the most important component of consistency in not getting injured, taking yourself out of the game entirely.

So we found some harmony. He’s currently still writing his own program but he’s aiming to get his 3 rep max in the deadlift climbing higher so that he can keep longboarding and moving into harder forms of running when spring returns next year.

Your Turn To Apply

I want these stories to be loose templates to follow, not strict guides on what you need to do.

What connects both stories is each individual looking deep within themselves to find their true desire. Without strong internal motivation, no amount of external pressure will help either person establish consistency.

Each have different life situations, goals for fitness, and schedules to get the work in. But through finding that internal desire, they’ve both created a robust framework that harmonized subjective meaning and objective results that is adaptable and personal. Because they’ve created the programs themselves, there is an additional incentive.

They are practicing what I wrote about yesterday, in allowing their creativity to create paths of least resistance in establishing foundational habits and attitudes. Now it’s your turn.

I want you to follow these simple steps to follow in the path of both A and J.

Step 1: What’s a phyiscal goal that excites you? It could be finishing a particular race, signing up for a new sport entirely, or finally getting to that particular number on a lift.

Step 2: Audit that aim. Is this something that is truly coming from inside of you, or are there external factors at play. Ask questions like:

-If I never told any body about doing this, would I still be excited?

Step 3: Reverse engineer achieving that goal using your current schedule. How much do you need to train? Where do you need to travel to in order to get in the training? How can you still meet your current obligations and responsibilites with additional training?

Step 4: Begin crafting out your own training plan based on the above factors.

Step 5: Be open to adjustements, modification, and adaptations. This is a roadmap, not a prison. So experiment and have fun with the process on the way towards the goal.

Don’t overthink this either. Part of the fun of exercise is being open to exploration. Don’t think about ‘doing it right or wrong.’ If you have a good sense of what your body needs, be confident but not arrogant. If you don’t have a clue where to start but feel called to start this journey for yourself, send me a message using the button below and let’s craft your plan together.