Early morning workouts, meal prepping, dragging yourself to the Box even when you feel beat and tired, all of these things have one thing in common – they require a lot of willpower.
Consistency is one of the most important aspects of training, but how do you train yourself to be consistent and stick to things? The good news is that willpower and self-discipline can be trained and turned into habits.
1. SET SMART GOALS
If you want to be disciplined, you need a “why”. Getting out of bed at 5.45 am for the early morning class takes a lot of willpower, so being able to quantify EXACTLY what this is going to help you achieve will make it much easier to do. You need targets to aim for.
SMART goals are a great way to define your goals, which in turn will give you a ‘why’ for each action you have to do.
SMART goals must be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Timely
Train hard and set high goals for yourself
For example, say you want to nail a 200kg Deadlift, a bodyweight snatch or your first pull up. These are all specific, easily measurable, attainable (relative to ability) and relevant to CrossFit. If you speak with your coach, work out exactly what you need to do, how often you must train etc, then you will be able to estimate a date for when you should be able to hit this goal by. Next step is to give yourself a deadline and get on with it.
However, it can often be more complicated than this. What if your new year’s resolution was to “become fitter” or “eat healthier”? As an exercise, try to turn these resolutions into SMART goals and see how you end up describing them.
“Become fitter” might mean making sure you go to the Box twice a week. “Eat healthier” may mean stopping eating chocolate from Monday to Friday, or it may mean cutting out refined sugar from your diet. It is up to you to decide.
2. WRITE DOWN YOUR GOALS
Once you have identified your SMART goals, write them down and put them on your wall. Keep writing them down. Buy a notepad and write down your goals every day. It will only take a minute, but will turn this action into a habit, and ingrain these goals into your life.
3. THE 5 MINUTE RULE FOR GETTING STARTED
One of the hardest parts of anything is just getting started. Any of these sound familiar?
- That dissertation you needed to begin two weeks ago, but haven’t got around to it yet?
- The extra core work you wanted to do twice a week after class that somehow hasn’t happened yet?
- What about each weeks’ worth of meal prepping that you were going to do every Sunday that now only stretches to cover Monday and Tuesday (I used to be so guilty of this one so badly!)
We are all guilty of procrastination in some form or another from time to time. Knowing this, how can we improve our willpower and discipline to actually do the things we know we need to?
One of our mind’s greatest flaws is that it often struggles to get things started. But once we’re in flow, it’s easy to keep going.
If you’re finding it difficult to get started on some work you have to do, or your meal prep, or that extra core work, make the following deal with yourself: “I’ll do it for just 5 minutes.”
- Answer one email
- Run 1 time around your block
- Meditate for 5 minutes
From personal experience and discussing it with others, I’ve found that 80 to 90% of the time, once we’re in motion, we end up continuing well past the 5-minute mark we had initially decided on.
4. NO EXCUSES: ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS
This is easier said than done, and when executed properly, can often deal a huge blow to the ego. Taking accountability for your own actions is hard, and excuses are always easy to find.
CrossFit and weightlifting are excellent ways to objectively measure our progress and achievement, because there is nowhere to hide. 100 kg on the bar is always 100 kg on the bar. Fran doesn’t care if an athlete has a cold, or if they forget their favourite shoes, it’s still 21-15-9 reps of thrusters and pull ups.
If an athlete isn’t improving their times, lifts or numbers then it could very well be linked with bad nutrition advice, poor coaching, not enough focus in training, weak programming etc. External factors do play a role, but it is also important to be able to be honest enough with yourself and have the guts to admit it when a lack of progress is simply your own fault.
Get an accountability buddy, train with others, this will help you reduce or get rid of your ability to procrastinate.
- Record your progress
- Track your meals
- Be objective and scientific
Once assuming responsibility for your own actions becomes a habit, you will be able to more easily assess where you are succeeding and where you need to improve, and make the necessary changes. This is an emotionally mature and disciplined way to approach your training and nutrition.
5. BURN YOUR BRIDGES
This one is short and sweet. If you want to be disciplined and achieve a particular goal, just give yourself no other option.
Attack every WOD!
An everyday example of this is your alarm. If you want to get up early to go to that morning CrossFit class, yet pressing the snooze button is always so easy, simply put your phone or clock on the other side of the room so that you have no option but to get up and turn it off when it rings in the morning.
Say you are thinking about trying your first CrossFit competition, yet you have lots of questions and worries: when should I start? How fit will I need to be? What if I don’t do well? Just sign up now, pay the money and tell your friends you are doing it. Now you have no option for backing out and I guarantee that will be a great motivator for making you train hard and eat well.
6. WE ALL HAVE LIMITED WILLPOWER, SO GET THINGS THE IMPORTANT STUFF DONE FIRST
Willpower is not unlimited. Ever noticed that when you feel tired or stressed or hungry you are more likely to eat the foods you aren’t supposed to, break a few good habits that you’ve become disciplined enough to keep, or even skip training?
Generally, our willpower is at its highest at the beginning of the day, and progressively decreases as we go about our business. It makes sense to do the most important tasks first.
If you are struggling to manage your meal prep, keep having to skip training because work runs late, or something else comes up, then try and re-arrange your day to do these things first. Go to bed 30 minutes earlier and set your alarm 30 minutes earlier. Wake up and meal prep. Take that early morning class instead.
Sometimes a change can be as good as a break, so rearrange your schedule and see what effect it has on your discipline and willpower.
7. REMOVE TEMPTATIONS AND DISTRACTIONS
Extended willpower is the concept that in order to improve your willpower, you should avoid situations that will offer temptation for the habits you are trying to avoid. For example, if an individual wants to cut down on their drinking, it doesn’t make sense to hang out in bars all the time.
Making small changes to your own environments can have big effects in the long run. If you want to eat less sugar and snack more on spinach, nuts and fruit, then don’t leave the ice cream in the freezer. Give it away and stock up on healthier foods. This means that the next time you need a bite to eat, all you have available are the healthier options to choose from.
It’s easy to make the right choices when we are fresh, awake and happy, yet much more difficult when feeling tired, stressed or down. Removing any negative temptations altogether means that you don’t have the option of making the bad choice, even when you want to.
Try putting these practices into effect
- Identify distractions
- Turn off notifications on your phone which are not urgent
- Be selective about what and who you surround yourself with
- Put your phone on airplane mode whilst training and working
This last one is especially important for training. We all know an athlete that spends more time on their phone than they do on working out every time they are in the Box. Don’t be that guy.
Focus on the task at hand and give it 100% attention, whatever you are doing.
Finally, Ben Bergeron, the coach of Katrin Davidsdottir, hits the nail on the head completely with a quote that he often uses:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.”
Improving discipline and willpower for CrossFit training, healthy eating and general life is hard. It takes time to turn what we know we should do into habits that we regularly perform, and discipline to make it happen.
What other tips or tricks do you use? Any that should be added to this list? Let us know in the comments section.
