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I’ve trained a wide variety of people over the years, ranging from the marathoner to the grandmother.  When I taught college I would frequently tell them, “You don’t have to be skilled in motivating an athlete, you have to be skilled in knowing when to pull them back.” Athlete’s are driven to continuously strive to do better…they are overachievers.

The vast a majority of the people I worked with were not athletes.  I was hired for motivation and accountability…and what I noticed is that many of them were just plain overwhelmed with even the thought of starting a regular exercise program.

Now, I consider myself pretty good at handling situations when people are afraid.  When I was a labor and delivery nurse I realized that women in labor responded well when I took control, explained what was happening, what was to come and empowered them with how to handle labor at each stage.

I applied the same principles to training new clients and jokingly told them they were going to join my “Underachiever’s Club”.   The first workout was no more than 15 minutes and solely focused on basic core strengthening exercises…and always geared toward doing under what I knew they were capable of.   It built their confidence because they accomplished the workout with relative ease.  Most of the time the response was “That’s it?”.  Yep, that was it.  But, I told each person the same thing…”From here we will continue to move forward, but never backward.”  Since the workout was kept relatively light there was minimal to no soreness, again erasing the fear that they were “that out of shape”.

Being true to my word, none of my clients ever went backward (I know some of you are on this blog and will validate me).  Moving forward could have been as little as 1 more repetition on an exercise to from 30 more seconds speed walking an incline on a treadmill.   Within 2 months I had them doing full hour workouts to include walking lunges with weights across the entire gym floor, to interval training on the treadmill for 20 – 30 minutes.  The mantra never changed…continue to move forward, but never backward.

Because my clients were empowered with the knowledge and had their confidence built, they sky was the limit.  What I started seeing was that they were pushing themselves and testing their own limitations.  What they found out was that they had very few (if any) limitations…and the ones they did have…they were mental, not physical.

So for all those afraid, come join my Underachiever’s Club…and before you know it you too will be surpassing all your goals.  Continue to move forward, never backward.

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Donna Hoffmeyer