Exercise Routines: Why It's Time for You to Lower the Bar and Nix the "Perfect" Workout Mentality in the Butt

If you desire every exercise routine to be perfect, think again. While it sounds noble, it's likely your biggest obstacle to success.  To make exercising a habit, combine small goals with a binary mindset. Doing so leads to more action, consistency, and better workouts.,

It's so easy to go off an exercise routine. Or get discouraged when we don't reach our precisian goals or targets. Before long, these missed goals and targets build up and send us into a negative spiral. One missed workout becomes two, then three, and soon a month of no exercise goes by. We may have short bursts of success, but they're usually only temporary. It's just not our nature to like "failing."

The effects of striving for excellence are toxic—frustration mounts. Anxiety builds. Motivation drops. Consistency fades. Many of you reading this are overachievers (a conclusion I'm making based on the assumption that you're here to learn and improve your health and fitness).

Another diagnostic question - when is the last time you were frustrated at not hitting a prescribed exercise target? Your previous workout, right? Eighty push-ups instead of a hundred? A 10-minute pace, instead of nine minutes-forty-five seconds? And how important did it matter?

How the Fitness Industry Sets You Up for Perfectionism

It's not hard to get sucked into the magic the fitness industry sells. The perfect body. The perfect pull-up. The perfect meal. You name it, and it's perfect.

By submitting to this type of act, look, and feel perfect notion, we're creating a perfectionist mindset – which on the surface, it seems like something to be proud of, but not when you dig into its true implication.

Stephen Guise, the author of How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freedom from Perfectionism, writes this about this "beauty accessory":

"Far from perfect, perfectionism is irrational, crippling, restrictive, and even lethal (e.g., anorexia and depression/suicide)."

At best, perfectionism is an imposter—a hoax. It's the worst mindset you can have when it comes to fitness. But it's up to you to kill perfectionism. And the best weapon in your arsenal is imperfection.

I've always been a pretty intense guy. Very driven. I try to exceed expectations in everything I do. Many people call me a perfectionist, but I'm not. I work at something until I get it right, not perfect, and then move on to the next thing. I killed perfectionism so perfect doesn't get in the way of good. And I've found the best way to do so is to become an imperfectionist.

What You Should Know About Changing from Perfectionist to Imperfectionist

The challenge in changing from perfectionist to imperfectionist is doing it in a way that doesn't make you feel like you're lowering your standards, which always feels wrong. When you lower the bar and accept smaller bits of progress and success, you kill unrealistic expectations that make progress look like a failure. You also begin to focus on the process and learn to have confidence in your exercise routine and that the results will follow.

Allow me to share some examples.

It was a crazy travel week. Twelve-hour airline flights. Shuffling from meeting to meeting. Socializing with customers and employees. I had a goal to work out every morning for 90 straight days but looking at my itinerary, my string was about to be broken.

My days were too packed!

Just as I was working myself up to a frenzy, I caught myself.

"Slowdown, Gulliver," I said to myself. Take a minute and imagine how your exercise routine could benefit from accepting imperfection.

I could trade 30 minutes of sleep for 30 minutes of exercise. I could do bodyweight exercises, even if the hotel gym didn't have the right equipment or space. And if I'm too tired at night to give it my all, I'm still getting a workout and keeping my string of consecutive workouts alive. So, despite my doubts, limitations, and concerns, I exercised, got stronger, and relieved a bunch of stress, making every imperfection all but irrelevant.

Trying to get back in an exercise routine for whatever reason can be very trying. I've been there. Over the years, I've had a few surgeries like a double hernia, radical prostatectomy, and shoulder surgery.

Each time I worried that I'd never get back to my previous fitness level (of course, each time, I ignored the fact that I was also getting older). Each recovery was very different from the one before.

Yet, the one constant was that I had to simplify and make success easier than failure to get myself into a "success cycle." That meant doing elementary exercise routines to start; exercises so basic, I'm not even sure they'd qualify as calisthenics.

And my goal? "Do no harm." That was it. Nothing worth bragging about. But here's the key, within three months, I was back on track and doing my regular workouts.

That's the power of going slow, taking small steps, and doing no harm. The tortoise can and often does win the race. If this approach works after surgeries, it can work in other situations, like starting a new routine or getting back in shape after a long hiatus.

Here's an Exercise Routine Designed to Make Exercise a Habit 

But don't just take my word for it.

In 1956 Bill Obran, then with the Department of National Defence in Canada, was tasked with designing a fitness program to get the Royal Canadian Air Force pilots into shape. A Ph.D., Orban ascribed to the progressive realization of goals.

That's why his 5BX and XBX bodyweight exercise routines have individual charts arranged in increasing order of difficulty with different fitness levels within each chart to progress through.

See, Obran understood the need for setting a low bar and taking small steps. He discouraged followers from advancing too quickly and encourage them to start at the bottom of Chart 1 and progress. He did this for several reasons, but the biggest was to render irrelevant the doubts, limitations and concerns the pilots had about training and allow them to make exercise a habit.

He understood human nature and the benefits of imperfection. And he used that understanding to structure his workouts.

Take a step back. Realize how perfection holds you back or, worse, throws you permanently off your exercise routine. Embrace imperfection, and you'll quickly regain your perspective and enjoy exercising more than ever before. 

About the Author:

Mike Elia is the CEO of Triad Fitness Group. He founded the company and launched TriadXP.com to help everyone achieve or exceed their personal fitness goals. Mike believes technology can help bring fitness content to life, making it easy for everyone to find their perfect workout so they can get moving on their path to better overall health and wellness. He also believes technology shouldn't interfere; it should enhance your workout experience and your results. Find a workout to help you reach your fitness goals at https://triadxp.com/collections