Personal Training Failures

Believe it or not, I have had a few clients that I can classify as a personal training failures. Wait, did you just read that right?

I want my personal training clients to fail?

Well, yes and no. It’s not as simplistic as it sounds.

Typically when a personal training client contacts me, they have tried to lose weight many, many times. They have done what most people do when it comes to weight loss. They lose weight, they gain weight, they lose weight, they gain weight…

And the cycle keeps going.

Sound familiar?

The problem with most people is that when they fail, they quit. They don’t try again. They tell themselves, “What’s the point? I have been riding this roller coaster for so long that it just isn’t worth it anymore.”

Have you ever heard of the old Japanese saying, “Fall down seven times, stand up eight?”

What does that mean to you?

Does it mean that after the seventh time that you tried to lose weight permanently that you just quit?

OF COURSE IT DOESN’T!

Fall down seven times, stand up eight. Hell, fall down twelve times, stand up thirteen!

Look, I know that losing weight and keeping it off permanently is frustrating. I have seen it hundreds and hundreds of times. I have seen clients quit because they weren’t losing weight fast enough. I have seen a client quit because she went on a Taco Bell (yes, Taco Bell) binge one night and figured what was the point?

Why did they quit?

Because they didn’t know what to do with failure. And they became permanent personal training failures.

Failure is an integral part of success. Without failure, you will never know what to do with success.

I guarantee you that every single person who is successful in life has failed at some point.

If you want to see what a successful person does with failure, then I urge you to read an autobiography about Thomas Edison and learn about his failures. This guy failed, time and time and time and time and time again. Did he fade away into history?

Did you turn on any lights last night?

How about listening to music? We wouldn’t have iPods if it weren’t for Thomas Edison figuring out how to record sound. But he had to go through many different prototypes to finally get the first phonograph to work.

Look, you are going to fail. It’s going to happen. And if you don’t fail, then you aren’t trying. I have failed in this business. In 2010, things weren’t looking so good. I lost 15 clients in ONE MONTH! Was I scared? Hell, yes. Was I concerned that maybe the business was going to die? Yes, I did.

Did I pack up my bags and call it a day? Hell, NO!

I revamped what I was doing. I looked at what went wrong and LEARNED from it. I built a new website, I joined some networking groups, I changed the way we train clients…but I did not give up!

Failure is scary. But not succeeding is even scarier to me. And it should be for you too. But it’s all about changing your mindset!

The way I look at it, failure is temporary as long as you learn why you failed. Quitting, however, is PERMANENT.

So what are you going to do today? Are you going to look in the mirror, see that you still have weight to lose, and tell yourself, “I quit.”

Or are you going to look in the mirror and tell yourself, “ENOUGH!”

Fall down seven times, stand up eight.

It’s that simple.

The choice is yours.