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Fitness Success for Life

Years before I would become a certified personal trainer and nutrition consultant I recall approaching a man at the gym where I had just begun working out. This man was well in to his late forties or early fifties yet you had to look real close to detect that. He was well-muscled with low body fat, trim and cut as we say and he absolutely glowed with energy and life.

"How do I get to look like you?" I asked as the rookie plebe in the gym.

He looked at me with an intense glare eyeing my 6' 1", 165 pound frame. "I am going to give you three words;" he responded, "Discipline, discipline, discipline." That's all he said and he walked away.

I remember those words today because he would not only prove to be correct but he would demonstrate in his almost non-genial manner that those three words encompassed all that was needed. I realize now that over twenty years ago he was attempting to convey to me what is now a commonly accepted mantra among true fitness professionals.

In deciding to be healthy and fit for the rest of your life you are deciding to permanently change your lifestyle as it now exists. This necessarily affects everything in your life including your overall nutrition, your exercise routines and methods and your priorities in life. It will even affect the way you dress because you are about to embark upon a journey that will literally change the way you feel and look.

You're going to need discipline to do this. It's going to take discipline just to start incorporating exercise as a vital part of your life. This exercise, if you truly wish to be fit, will inevitably include cardio/aerobic workouts, strength training and will involve your whole body. It will take discipline to get off the couch or drop your briefcase and immediately change your clothes and head for the gym on the days when you want nothing more than to sit there with a cold beer after a long hard day. It will take discipline yet the payoffs are huge and the energized, jazzed up feeling of accomplishment will only make the beer taste better when you finally drink it. (Yes, you can have that beer after you've earned it.)

Men will need discipline resisting the urge to go in to the gym and only hurl iron around lifting weights. Being able to walk in off the street and bench press your body weight does not mean you are fit by any stretch of the imagination. Though many of them do not incorporate it into their exercise routine, men must understand that cardio fitness is as

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