This morning I was doing a Barre3 workout with online streaming. I’ve worked out regularly since I was thirteen. At the moment I work out every day for 40 to 60 minutes. I have done a lot of different home exercise since I began when I was 13. The first was a Felicity Kendall cassette tape called ‘Shape up and Dance.’ You could send for a poster when you bought the tape so you could see pictures of what the exercises were actually meant to look like. Then there was Jane Fonda and fire hydrant moves. Later times saw me glamazoning it with Cindy Crawford. Her trainer was Radu (named after the pasta sauce?) I’ve boxercised till my knuckles were blue and developed my deltoids with David Kirsch. I’ve given Jillian Michaels a lot of press-ups when asked (commanded) to and learnt mind-bending choreography with Tracy Anderson.
Fast forward a couple of years and I am doing Barre with Barre3 and Suzanne Bowen Fitness. I do yoga with Yogaglo and Tara Stiles.
I notice that in Pilates exercises and barre exercises they say to suck in your stomach as though you are putting on a tight pair of jeans. This makes me wonder, how come their jeans are so tight when they are all exercising so regularly? These women surely don’t remember what a tight pair of jeans feels like.
The other thing I notice is that the trainer of these DVDs has usually got two hired in assistants with her. Often you can tell that they have never done the workout before and are just the sort of superhuman that a trainer can throw any kind of tricky move at and they will get to the last rep with balance, poise and a lack of sweat. One of the two shows the advanced move and the other fitness model shows the easier move. You always know that they would have no trouble doing the really difficult move and sometimes the trainer even has to swap who does the difficult moves so that fitness model number two also has a chance to show off and not feel so fed up about not getting a work-out in on the shoot.
So what has all of this to do with self-development and coaching? Well sometimes in life we can end up being the fitness model demonstrating the easier moves. We do the kneeling press-up because it’s easier and other’s can relate to us more. We might be perfectly capable of doing the one handed Spiderman press up, but we are playing it down and instead we are doing the on the knees less reps version in our lives. So think of a task that you do that is important in your life or in your business. What is your full press up, sweat dripping version and what is your play along, don’t try to impress anyone too much in case you make them feel bad version? Sometimes others ask or expect us to feel small and less accomplished and it becomes a pattern that we live up to. Set your own standard. Do the life press-ups you want to do. This does not mean you have to stress your body forever. After every workout there is a cool down. What’s your’s going to be? When you’ve done the work, when you’ve stepped up to the Power Plate, when you’re spent because for a burst of time you showed the world what you were really and truly capable of doing what will be your stretch?