I’ve recently been engaged in some very demanding, specialized gym training programs engineered for online personal training clients of Fit Forever Finland.  In the process of filming these training programs, I’ve been pushed to the limit, as the online trainer and demo guy for these aforementioned programs.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve been huffing, puffing, straining, pushing, pulling, in all kinds of discomfort and duress.

One thing that I’ve really surmised to myself in the past few weeks has been the fact that saying you train hard and feeling like you are in shape are completely relative thoughts in and of themselves.  The reality of the situation might well be completely adverse to your train of thought.  What I mean by this, is that if you are a hard trainer at the gym, per se: you feel that you push yourself to move some pretty good amounts of weight, that doesn’t specifically mean that you are actually as “in shape” as you’d like to think.

Yours Truly in a feature article in Bodaus magazine from Finland a few years ago

Let’s say you have to lose a bit of belly fat, the old love handles, but you argue that you lift hard and eat well.  Guess what?  I have news for you: if you are struggling to reach a certain goal, you still have to up the ante, no matter how much you argue that even now you are training seriously.  What you consider to be hard training is not actually hard at all: it’s status quo FOR YOU.  Your body is USED to the kind of training that you’ve been subjecting it to.  Where you actually are is on a plateau, simply maintaining what already IS.  You are not growing, not developing, nor are you training as hard as you should be.  Sucks, doesn’t it?

Really, the truth is unforgiving and it’s brutal.  I have to admit: I hate having to face up to the truth sometimes.  Trying hard?  Try harder!  Go faster!  Exceed yourself!  It can be damned exhausting, especially when viewing the price you will have to honestly pay to achieve your personal goal.  The truth really is a bitch.

Getting gassed during training is a good sign, it means you are training hard (photo Marko Simonen)

People are all too susceptible to fall into their own, personal comfort zone.  Hey, we all have one!  We all like to feel comfy and just snazzy, just the way we are.  But guess what?  Staying in your comfort zone won’t make you look good on the beach.  It won’t make you feel confident naked.  You can go to the hairdresser all you want, buy as many fitting clothes as you want, take as many carefully-angled selfies of yourself as you want … but none of that is going to mask the truth.  And the truth is something that hits you flush in your self-esteem bullseye every time you look in the mirror.

So, not confident with how you look naked or how you strut your stuff on the beach?  Then start busting your ass harder than you’ve ever tried before.  Get uncomfortable.  Get mad, get motivated, get rid of the excuses that you tell yourself time and time again, as to why you aren’t where you want to be.

There ain’t no hiding at the beach

Unless you have a serious physical illness or hormonal imbalance, your physical health is not like the wavering stock market: you can actually completely commandeer your body into a lean, mean, healthy & muscled machine.  It’s been proven multiple times, that even the elderly can build muscle and greatly improve their physical fitness and vitality by training regularly.  What you need to get “there” is a map (crystalized vision), the right kind of fuel (a healthy diet), the tools (a proper, tailored training program), heart (complete resolution and determination) and sacrifice (make time for what really counts to you, forget the excuses).

I thought I had been training fairly hard for the past several years.  I was wrong.  Thank God it’s not too late to wake up — there’s still a lifetime to go!