What do we get if we throw pebbles into a lake. Small ripples that quickly subside. There is little disturbance or change to the large expanse of water. How about a heavier stone? Well there’s a splash! Water flies everywhere and the disruption is causes to the once deathly still lake is pretty significant.
What can all this possibly be related to in the game that is health and fitness?
I strongly believe that one of the BIGGEST reasons that people will struggle to achieve any health and fitness goal is because they put too much effort or lack there-of (I’ll explain later) in to the pebbles. What are some examples of pebbles in health and fitness?
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Fat burners and most supplements for that matter.
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If you do your cardio before or after you have eaten.
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When you eat carbs and what type of carbs you eat.
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Protein within 10 minutes of finishing a workout.
To explain why these are pebbles I need to tell you what some of the stones are. We are looking at things like;
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Energy balance.
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Protein intake.
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Adherence.
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Appropriate resistance training that;
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Is specific
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Is performed with timeless technique
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Follows a progressive overload
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I could go on but you get the picture
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A healthy mindset around training, nutrition and the body.
What I’m getting at and for now we will keep this discussion to physique based goals is that if you put more time into the stones you will elicit a far greater result in comparison to putting your effort into the pebbles. If you’re trying to drop body fat but don’t have your energy balance in check then no fat burner in the world is going to help you.
When you look at it, it makes perfect sense. Do the things that you HAVE to do in order to achieve your physique goal. Using fat loss as an example again. For the goal of fat loss you HAVE to be in an energy deficit. You DON’T HAVE to use a fat burner or do your cardio before eating to lose fat. So why are the latter the things that people put most of their thought and effort into? Well it doesn’t take much effort to pick up a pebble and throw it. A stone on the other hand is heavier. You’ll have to squat down, use two hands and then give it a huge full body swing just to get it over the water’s edge. It’s tough to begin with but once you get over that initial barrier, the effect is huge. It’s easy to buy a fat burner and chug a scoop every morning hoping you’ll have abs by the end of the day. It takes more effort to sit down with a coach to get real and honest about your current nutrition and what needs to be implemented for you to make long lasting change. I believe that we all know WHAT has to be done, facing it is the issue especially when we are constantly promised easier and quicker solutions. Believe me, if you told me that I could keep my s**ty diet and all I had to do to get lean was do cardio for an hour before I eat I’d be all over it.
After all that I still need to say this. The pebbles have their place BUT ONLY when you have thrown all the bigger stones. They have the potential to give you that extra 1% with your training and nutrition but I can’t stress enough how useless they are without the key foundations in place. It’s like trying to drive to a destination. You can have the car and the directions but if you don’t know how to drive then you won’t be going anywhere.
In summary, if you want to create long lasting change then you have to do things that make waves.
