Step 3: Practice, Learn, Grow

Welcome to the third post in the series on the process I use to help my clients achieve their goals. This process has been developed over the last 18 years from the courses I've done, my studies and more importantly, the people I've worked with.

It's here to give you an idea of what it's like to work with me, what you can expect if you were to ask me to help you achieve your goals. The first post, Painting Pictures, is about defining your goals, the previous post is on Laying Foundations and today, it's Step 3: Practice, Learn, Grow.

What is Practice, Learn, Grow?

You're going to fail.

I expect you to fail.

I want you to fail!

This is where the magic happens, where everything changes, where you go onto achieve way more than you think is possible for you right now!

Practice, Learn, Grow is the bit in the middle. When you get to this stage, you're into a routine, you're feeling like you've got more energy, you're enjoying doing mobility exercises while you make a cup of tea and you've even got colleagues and/or family members joining in! You feel like you're eating better but you don't feel like you've changed much and you're sleeping better than you've done in a long time

You're enjoying the journey so far and don't feel like it's killing you as much as you were expecting! You don't feel as stiff or sore when you get out of bed in the morning or out of your chair and you generally feel good.

This is now where you get to discover what you're capable of.

I often use the analogy of how you learned to ride a bike when you were a kid. You'd cycle, fall off but get back up and keep practicing until you can cycle without falling off.

Your training with me is the same.

At this stage, it's time to raise the bar. Take you to the edge of your capabilities and simply ask you to practice to become better. You're not going to be perfect and you'll falter. This isn't bad, it's good as you'll learn and know how to do better next time. I won't ask you to count reps and sets, instead do as many reps as you can until you can't do another one as well as you did at the start.

I will challenge you in the way where you get a buzz from it and want to practice more to master it. You will start to notice you can do more than you were able to previously and this builds confidence. As your confidence builds, that's when your desire to do more builds and thoughts of going after even bigger goals comes to mind.

?Why is this important?

I feel we try too hard to do things perfectly and fear failing.

I want you to embrace failing, see it as a positive, an opportunity to learn and do better. I use the phrase "there's no such thing as failure, only feedback". When you don't get something quite right, you'll usually know what you need to do next time to get a better outcome. If you learn and do better, did you really fail?

This is about letting go of the usual metrics like reps and sets and various other data points and focus on the quality of what you're doing. When you do this, you progress very quickly, your confidence goes through the roof and yet it feels so much easier than you thought.

This brings us to the final step, Step 4: Achieve, Reflect and Repeat.

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