It’s Never Too Early to Start

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how it’s never too late to start, which is still quite true.  Plain and simple, there is always room for improvement and progress, regardless of how far down the road you think you are in your personal journey.  

Today, however, I’d like to talk about how it’s never, ever too early to start with fitness and intentional movement.  

I talk to hundreds of people every year about their fitness and health.  

The ones who have the easiest time understanding the journey, staying consistent, and just knowing that their body needs to move everyday are the ones who either started in the gym or played sports growing up.  

The most successful are the ones who did both.  The ones who went further in their sporting careers and who got to a level where they would have a competition season, a postseason, an offseason and a preseason.

Without going too far in the weeds on what the points of these seasons are to an athlete, in a general sense, it’s safe to broadly say for each season an athlete will:

  • train 3-5 days a week for roughly an hour.  This gets them in the process mindset.  They know that they might have good days and bad days, but that everyday, their coach and team are expecting them at training.
  • have a specific goal and outcome that allows them to focus on one short term thing that will help them get to the long term thing.  This may feel way outside the scope of what the ultimate goal is sometimes, but it helps them understand the long view.  Doing slow, basic movement patterns and injury prevention in the offseason might not feel like it’s going to help with their explosiveness and speed in the regular season, but it will. 
  • Notice their bodies and performance will change dramatically during each season, and that’s ok.  They may gain some weight and some body fat from season to season, but they know that if they follow the process, it’ll all work out like it’s supposed to.  You can’t stay in competition physique and shape all year round.

So what’s the point?  

Well the point is that your kids should be in sports or fitness as early as possible.  A good coach will help guide them through this and make it a permanent part of their life that they’ll always be drawn to, even if they don’t know it.  

And if you’re an adult who didn’t happen to play sports or start in the gym early, it’s ok.  Look to a coach or look at a professional athlete for an example.  They’ll show you how just by showing up everyday, trusting the process and knowing that it’s ok and normal for each season of the year to have a different goal and expectation, that your overall goals will be achieved.