Tik Tok Exercise Challenge

There is a time in every fitness journey that I call being “stuck in the middle”. The focus really being on the word stuck.
There are a number of ways that you can arrive in this place, but two of the most common are:
1. You exercise 1-3 times per week at low to medium intensity. Enough that you can lay claim to being someone who exercises regularly, but not enough to go beyond creating minor surface changes in your strength, agility, and over all appearance. This is the “barely enough” effort level that keeps you in a holding pattern – never really moving forward and barely holding you where you are. It is very common for people to be stuck here treading water for years – putting time in but never making any real changes.
2. You push yourself temporarily out of barely enough and push harder for a period of weeks or months and this extra effort starts to really pay off with noticeable changes in your body composition, confidence level and overall strength and performance. You can see and feel that you are closing the distance on your goals and you are within striking distance of being in the kind of shape you have always dreamed of. Just before you make that final breakthrough you begin to slip back into your old patterns and behaviors and all of the momentum you have built up begins to dissolve. You start a gradual reversal and end up back where you started. So close, yet so far away from having reached your goals, you ready yourself to start over. This time it will be different – this time you tell yourself you will see it through.
I have lived both of these scenarios, but #2 has been a slippery slope repeatedly. The most painful part of this is often the prospect of continuously having to start over. Of course when you fall in life you should get back up and press bravely forward, but what happens when it’s less of a fall and more about giving up on the brink of achievement? We tend to blame the missed workouts and sloppy diet on busy schedules, work, family etc, but if we are completely honest we know that we gave up on ourselves, and that can be the biggest let down of all. Brutus looks at you with a smug, knowing grin on his face and tells you “I told you so.”
There are a lot of over-comers here, BodyRockers that have pushed through being stuck, achieved success and continue pressing bravely forward. Bravely, because if it were just a matter of moving your body in a particular way for 20 minutes a day it would be so much damn easier wouldn’t it? But there are a lot of other things that tend to get in the way – all of the messy bits that make this a very human journey – but that’s exactly what makes it so powerful and worthwhile.
If you have ever found yourself feeling stuck take a few minutes and share your experiences in the comments below – remember that we are here to support each other and your story and strategies will very likely help another BodyRocker who is going through something similar.