Your Fitness Investment

Most of the time, the results of a certain activity or achievement are directly tied to the investment.

Let's say you are like most people and want to invest some money you have saved in order to grow it into more. What if I claimed that I could take a $1,000 dollar investment from you and turn it into 1 million dollars in just 12 weeks with no risk involved! Would you invest in my service, or would you think I was crazy?

I’ve found that a good principle to follow is this: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Most of us would laugh at the idea of seamlessly turning $1,000 into 1 million in such a short time. But when it comes to fitness pitches, people aren't so dismissive. In fact, the average advertisement for a fitness product or strategy promises a similar structure….lots of return, minimal investment.  This can hurt us in a few ways.  First, that promise will be empty.  The vast majority of people will not see the result they were looking for.  Second, because it is so common in fitness media, we tend to put some belief into it.  This makes it harder to put energy into what really works, a long-term approach to the fundamentals of fitness.

Every person should begin a fitness program with the following thought in mind: Changing one’s body or performance level is very hard, and most people don’t succeed.  If your program or strategy doesn’t seem that hard, it probably won’t work very well.  If it does seem hard, you can feel fairly confident that you are headed in the right direction.  

From here, we should all view our fitness as an investment.  To use the money example again, the first step in investing would be to learn (or find someone who already knows) how to do it right.  That way, you feel confident that the investment you are making will pay off in the future.  Your fitness program should be viewed the same way.  Once that step is taken care of, you would expect that you will see greater growth in your investment the more money you are able to contribute.  In fitness, our investment will be in time and energy.  The more you “invest” (with the right program in place) the greater your payoff (weight loss, strength, etc.)

This concept is simple, and will apply to any activity in which you are striving to improve or achieve.  I’m only writing this article because in my experience the average person doesn’t always view fitness this way.  Why should they? With the number of claims I had mentioned above, it seems like there are plenty of “shortcuts” to get the fitness result we want.  I’m confident saying that these “shortcuts” will not work long-term, but the combination of sound fitness principles and hard work will.  If you are serious about improving your fitness, make sure that your investment matches the result that you want to achieve.