Create A Fitness Basecamp

When it comes to our goals, making progress and achieving results, many of us get very very close to the finish line but end before quite getting there.

It’s a bit like going for a hike, putting in loads of effort to climb the hill, getting a bit tired and then turning back home without ever reaching the top (and seeing the great view!)

In health and fitness, we start on a goal, climb up three-quarters of the way, hit an obstacle and then decide to climb back down again.

• You may have lost a few pounds but then the scale plateaus for a few weeks, so you skip the gym and order a takeaway.
  

• Your 5km personal best improves but you then can’t get under the next minute marker, so you stop running as frequently
  

• You progress to being able to do the 16kg kettlebell on squats but you can’t seem to jump straight to the 20kg, so you start skipping that workout.

Do any of these sound familiar? They do to me! I look back over my training career and see numerous summit attempts on some fun goals which I would have loved to complete, and yet I never got to the top.

Yet, you (and me) may have been just around the corner from where we wanted to be. A little bit more climbing in the right direction and we may have got there.

Getting to the summit of any goal is challenging, and those last steps or progressions are often the hardest. If it was easy or straightforward then it wouldn't be a challenging goal!

So if you get to the point where you’ve put loads of effort in, you’ve climbed that hill, you don’t think you can go any further… but you’re yet to see the view - please don’t start climbing down the mountain again.

‍Stop, establish a fitness basecamp. Simply sit tight for a little while, gather your thoughts, check your directions and rest up.

So what’s a fitness basecamp? It’s where you keep doing what you’re doing but you knock it back 20%. You get your workouts done, you eat well and you take care of what else you need to do. But you do so at a level you can maintain without loads of effort or mental energy.

Often basecamps coincide with other stressful events in our lives, moving house or returning to work after some time off for example.

Yes, you won’t get any further up the hill, but you won’t start climbing back down again.

‍Pretty soon you’ll have recovered enough to strike again and do what needs to be done to reach the summit (or take the next step - some of the biggest mountains in the world, have multiple basecamps, just like the biggest goals)

We can do this. Let’s go!

Oh and it’s worth considering this - you might have been sat in basecamp for a while now (that’s OK - it’s comfy there and safe!) but if you want to climb that hill, then you need to leave camp, act and get going. Those first few steps might be a bit uncomfortable, but taking action is what gets us closer to our goals.