Setbacks.

When you’re in a rhythm with your routine, you’re feeling good and you’re excited about your progress, but then some giant obstable comes and blocks your way - what do you do?

All those doubts and feelings of discouragement float up to the surface, and your start to hear yourself saying things like “Maybe I should just quit” or “I’m not cut out for this.”

The 3 most common setbacks on your fitness journey are going to be dealing with an injury, feeling like you’re not making progress for some reason, and having to put your routine on hold for a period of time and not knowing how to do that properly.

I want to give you a clear path forward whenever you encounter these setbacks, but mostly I just want this to be the BIGGEST dose of encouragement you might need to hear right now.

When was the last time you encountered a setback on your fitness journey?

You hit a roadblock - some sort of obstacle - and you immediately felt frustrated and also discouraged.

The swirling thoughts of doubt & discouragement sink in:

• Will I lose everything I worked so hard on?
• Was it all a waste?
• Was I doing the wrong things?  Should I have done this differently?
• Should I just quit? Maybe wait til things smooth back out?

I know that feeling so well.

You just get hit with a wave of discouragement. Maybe at first you put up a fight, but then your spirit becomes weary and your soul slumps… “maybe I should just quit.” Things don’t feel like they’re going according to plan.

Perhaps you’re here right now.

What always helps me when I hit these slumps and setbacks is:

• Knowing I’m not alone
• Hearing some really good encouragement
• Being reminded of the reality of the situation
• And then having a clear path and game plan on how to move forward and keep progressing in spite of the setback.

So that’s what I want to do for you today. I want you to walk away feeling like a big burden or a big cloud gets lifted off of your shoulders and you feel positive again.

I want to walk you through 3 common setback scenarios:

Setback: Injury

• Story
  • Donna: 3 1/2 months in to the Jumpstart series. Super consistent, feeling great, lots of great progress happening, but then she did one single stretch a little too deep and boom - ouch! Her hip got overstretched.
• Encouragement
  • Getting some injuries along the way is common with any fitness journey. Sometimes when you start using your body in new ways - ranges of motion and movements that are unfamiliar - you might encounter a injury of some sort.
    • In my nearly 20 years training, I have yet to train any individual that didn’t uncover some random injury along the way.
  • I try to help mitigate this as much as possible with proper training program design, safe progressions, technique instruction, etc. But especially when you’re working out at home on your own, there will always be some inherent risk.
  • With any kind of injury, you will almost always come out the other side stronger and far more aware of your body and that specific body part
• Reality check
  • Before we deal with the injury itself, stop and think about what has gotten better since you started your journey - what has improved
    • When an injury happens, it can be all-consuming and dominate your thoughts, and you can begin to forget about everything else that is better!
  • In Donna’s case, her knees were significantly better, she had lost about 10 pounds, and she was no longer taking pain meds daily like she used to. Ok great!
    • Once you highlight those things and shine a spotlight on them, the injury itself doesn’t seem quite so grandiose. Instead of a mountain, it turns back into a mole hill.
• But we still need to get over this mole hill, so let’s create a clear path forward:
  • What does that injury specifically need to heal - do you need to include any extra therapies into your day to encourage the healing process?
  • And then, don’t stop exercising all together. Ask yourself, what CAN you still do? Usually the list of exercises is a lot longer than you think.
    • If you hurt your foot or ankle, you can still do a TON of single leg balance work, core exercises, and upper body moves

Setback: Feels like you’re not making progress or you even feel like you’re regressing

• Story:
  • Linda had this happen to her: 5 months in on her fitness journey, showing up consistently week after week, not perfect, but far better than she ever had before. Weight loss had always been one of her goals, and she had lost a few pounds in the first 3 months, but then her progress kind of stalled and she actually gained a pound back. And she was starting to wonder if all of her hard work was actually paying off or if she needed to do something drastically different.
  • I’m using weight loss as an example here, but other scenarios might be that you feel like you’re not getting any stronger, or your balance doesn’t seem to be improving, or you still have pain in an area and it’s not going away. Basically when you feel like you’re doing all the right things but it doesn’t seem to be working.
• Encouragement
  • Ok, this is soooo common - Progress of any kind is going to look like a roller coaster - it’s anything but linear, and it’s usually happens a lot slower than you prefer.
  • We want a quick fix!! And I want that for you, too! But healthy progress - the kind that lasts - takes time. If you achieve your results in just two weeks, I’d argue that it’s probably not healthy progress.
• Reality check
  • For Linda, I had her literally get out a pen and paper and write down everything else that HAD improved since she started.
    • She HAD lost 8 pounds. She had muscle tone in areas that she hadn’t in a long time. More stamina. Felt more flexibile. Didn’t get out of breath as easily. She could climb down on the floor and get back up without hesitating. Her back pain was significantly less.
  • So when you feel like progress is not happening, once again we’re so focused on the ONE THING that’s not working that we’re literally blind to all the others things that are.
    • You might need to get out a pen and paper and write down everything that HAS improved, rather than just dwelling on the one thing that hasn’t.
    • Because here’s the reality: IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO NOT CREATE A DIFFERENCE IN YOUR BODY WHEN YOU’RE NOW SHOWING UP CONSISTENTLY WHEN YOU HADN’T BEEN BEFORE.
• Clear path forward if you feel stuck
  • Revisit your habits. Go back to the basics and do a self-evaluation. Remember our 4 buckets: exercise, nutrition, sleep & stress. Is there one thing that you feel like you could do better and you have the capacity to take that on right now?
    • Be honest with yourself.
    • Realistically, could you increase your veggie intake? Could you try going to bed 20 minutes earlier? Could you stop skipping that Friday workout? Could you carve out 15 minutes every evening to go for a leisurely walk for your stress?
    • Maybe pick one thing to try and improve.

Setback: You had to take time off and had to put your routine on hold for a few weeks, maybe even an entire month

• Story: I got this question a lot this last summer when a lot of ladies I was coaching were traveling on vacations or they had family coming to visit them. I even had one client that got in a car accident - she got rear ended and had to take time off from her workouts for 6-8 weeks. Her biggest fear was that she was going to lose bone density and muscle mass!
  • And yes, it’s discouraging when you feel like you’re in a good rhythm, you’ve got a routine going, and then suddenly it comes to a grinding halt for whatever reason
  • The biggest fear here is that “Will I lose everything I worked on?” and “Am I going to have to start over?”
• Encouragement
  • The encouragement I want to give you is that even the most high level athletes take time off. Nobody checks every box perfectly, day in and day out. I take time off - on purpose!
  • It’s good for your body and for your brain to have a break sometimes. If you go on vacation for a week, it’s ok if you don’t workout that whole time.
• Reality check
  • It’s all about timing on this one:
    • You can’t lose much of what you’ve gained in about 7 days time. You might feel more achy just because you’re out of your groove and not lubricating regularly, but it takes longer than that to lose muscle fibers, to lose bone density, and even to lose cardiovascular health.
    • After about 7 days, you may start to experience a little decline in your fitness level, but what becomes the bigger challenge here is that you’re now wiring in some new habits - so the biggest changes might be happening mentally
• Clear path forward
  • When you’re needing to take time off, try to still ask yourself “What CAN I still do?” If you can’t exercise, can you still focus on the 3 other buckets of your health? Can you just go for walks? Do 2 or 3 stretches in the morning or evening?
  • And then if you’re stepping back in to your routine,
    • if it was only 7 days off or less, you can pick up right where you left off - no need to repeat anything.
    • If it was more than 7 days off, you might want to back up a full week and redo the final week of workouts that you already did before moving onward.
    • If it was several months off - like 3 or more - it’s ok to go back to the beginning of your program, especially for your mindset, but just be aware that it will be easier this time through because you’re not starting from scratch.
    • TRUTH: Once you start, you will NEVER be at square one ever again.

Focus on the Positives

I think the biggest thing here is that in every scenario, whatever the setback is, before you jump straight to the negative, try to stop and make a mental tally of all the positives that are going on. Write it down if you need to.

• The reality is that your health journey is just as mental as it is physical. And if you can stay on top of your mindset along the way, you’re going to do great.

There’s something we do in my Jumpstart 30 program that is EXTREMELY important for long term success, and we continue doing it throughout the entire series of training programs. And I think this one thing is the magic element, the reason why women are far more consistent with these programs than anything else they’ve ever tried, they’re still here showing up years later - and it doesn’t necessarily have to do with the workouts themselves.

It’s the fact that from Day One, I help them get in the habit of celebrating their victories at the end of each day. I don’t care how big or small, but when something goes right, I want you to rejoice like crazy. And I guarantee that every single day, there is something worth rejoicing over.

And when you’re habitually shining that flashlight on the victories every day, when the setbacks come, because they will, they’re just not as big and scary - and you can handle them SO much better and they really don’t throw you off course.

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