Imagine if you turned up to your first ever kitesurfing lesson and the instructor handed you the kite, pointed at the water and told you to knock yourself out.
I doubt you’d be that impressed.
But that’s exactly what we do in the health and fitness industry all the time.
You rock up at the gym, have an hour induction and are left to it.
You sign up to a weight loss program, are given a few recipes and are told to get on with it.
No wonder so many people fail.
Exercise and weight loss are SKILLS, and they’re very complex skills. Let’s have a look at just some of the sub skills you have to learn:
* How to exercise correctly so you wont get injured.
* How often you can exercise and how much recovery you need.
* What you should be eating, how much and when.
* How to shop for food effectively.
* Strategies for dealing with social events.
* How to cook
And that’s just the start…there are literally thousands of sub skills you need to learn and like any complex skill they take a long time to master.
As a result there will be learning experiences (ie. failures) along the way, that means at times you will get off course, you will mess up…and you know what?
That’s OK!
Because each failure teaches you something and means you are learning the skill more completely.
True mastery in any skill isn’t something you’re born with, it’s something you learn.