Make Time for Fitness or Make Time to Be Sick

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

What's going on, guys? Welcome to the Warrior Soul Podcast, and this is our weekly Fitness Notes edition. This week, I'm gonna be covering a subject that I think plagues everybody, and that is lack of motivation. It plagues everybody at one point or another. Some people are more motivated than others.

Some people can get to the gym every single day. Some people can get out there and get some exercise in every single day. But some people, and I think a lot of us, we face a point in our lives where we're like, well, what's the point? Why am I doing this? Why am I killing myself in the gym?

Why am I trying to do this? Why am I trying to live up to this image, this Superman that I built up in my head? Why am I even putting in the effort? It's important to think about. And it's an important question to ask.

Because there are going to be points in your life regardless of who you are, where taking care of yourself, getting to the gym, getting some exercise in is going to seem like it's not supposed to be a priority at all. Right? All of you got jobs. Well, most of you got jobs. Most of you got lives that you've got to live.

At some point, every human being faces hard times. They face tragedy. They face hardship. They face unemployment. They face financial difficulties.

They face having kids, they face all of these different things. At each and every step and turn, our minds tell us, well, maybe it's time to hang it up. Maybe we don't have time to exercise right now. Maybe I just need to focus on grinding it out. I'm going to talk to you about how to get through that, how to overcome it, and what you should do as strategies, strategies strategies to keep yourself motivated, to keep yourself going to the gym, to keep you on top of your game.

For those of you who have never joined us before, my name is Chris Albert, and you're listening to the Warrior Soul podcast. Each week, I publish three different types of episodes. On Mondays, we have interviews with some sort of expert that's going to deliver a tool, a tactic, a strategy. I said strategy again. A strategy or a story that can inspire you to live your best life.

On Wednesday are my Fitness Notes, and that's what this episode is all about. This is where I give you some sort of piece of advice, some sort of specific thing that you can do to improve your fitness. And then on Fridays Fridays, we do our Warrior Notes, and those are actually becoming some of my favorite episodes. I like Fitness Notes too. These are awesome.

But those mental strategies, those mental strategies, they they're really getting a great response, and I'm hearing from people every week about how they're getting helped by what we cover on all these episodes. We just published an amazing interview with Matt Sapaula, somebody who's really putting himself out there in order to educate people on financial matters and educate people on the values of capitalism, which I think is important because we live in a capitalist society, and that's not going to change hopefully for the foreseeable future. So it's important that we all know and understand that. So you should listen to that episode. Why do I do this podcast?

Well, the reason why I do this podcast is because for the past decade and a half, The US military veteran community has been dealing with high rates of suicide, high rates of veteran homelessness, and really, really high rates of chronic disease. It's actually been going on longer than a decade and a half. I need to slap myself in the face for even saying that because our Vietnam veterans have been facing this for a long time as well. And I'm sorry, brothers, if I neglected you. But my main focus here is on getting veterans to live their best lives.

Because there's a lot of raising awareness out there. But there's not a lot a lot of actionable. God, my voice. There's not a lot of actionable strategies, tools, tactics. There's not a lot of action being taken to stop what was going on.

So these are going to be things that you can do right here, right now that can help you. No BS, just straightforward stuff that you can do. The only thing I ask from you is that you share these episodes out with people who can use them, people who need to hear them, and that you try to make the effort to head over to iTunes and write us a positive review. If you're getting helped in some way, that's all I want from you. I don't I don't want you to buy anything.

We sell stuff. If you wanna buy it, you can buy it. I don't really care. My big thing is spreading this mission and helping people who are listening to this show. If you're not a veteran, stick around.

All the stuff we go over here can help you as well. I also wanna say that this podcast would not be possible without the good people at F Bomb Nutrition, really awesome company. They make delicious packets of macadamia nut butters. They mix them up with chocolate. They They mix them up with sea salt, they mix them up with pecan butter, and they're absolutely delicious.

They're great people as well. They're sending boxes of this stuff overseas to the troops on the front lines so that they can supplement supplement their MREs. And you can get these delicious macadamia nut butter filled packets over at www.dropanfbomb.com. And if you use the code Warrior Soul at checkout, you're gonna get 20% off of your first order. With that, let's get into the discussion for the day.

How do you stay motivated to take care of yourself, to take care of your body, and to stay fit? And this is something I put a good deal of thought into as a trainer, because I get clients all the time who come to me, they have really busy lives. They have crazy, crazy jobs that they have to do. And they have family obligations. Right?

And and when you have all that stuff piled up onto your plate, like I said before, it's really easy to say, I don't have time to work out. I don't have time to train. And I need to grind through this right now. And then when it's the right time for me, I'm going to try and get into shape. And I think that's the wrong way to go about things.

Why do I think it's the wrong way to go about things? Because of a simple reason. The only real asset that you have in this life, actually there's two assets, and they're both inextricably related to each other. Those are your body and your mind. Right?

Your body and your mind. Now, as somebody who has a lot on your plate, that means that you're putting yourself through stress every single day. Day in, day out. Grinding away at your soul and grinding away at your health. There is nothing on this planet that can ruin your health like stress.

And one of the best ways to handle stress is through exercise. Now think about this for a second. A lot of you are out there and you're saying, well, I've got a family, so I can't be in shape. I've got kids, so I can't be in shape. I can't eat right, I can't get to the gym, I don't have time.

This is the thing. If your kids are your priority, you need to make fitness your priority. Why is that? Because what are your kids gonna do if you fall out? If you fall ill?

If you aren't going to be able to run after them and take care of them like you should? What are they going to do if you're not around or you have to go through expensive medical treatment before they go off to school, or before they're fully grown up. What are they going to do if they have to take care of you by the time they reach 18 years old? What are you going to do? Well, what are you not gonna do?

You're not gonna be at their wedding. You're not gonna be there to see your grandkids grow up. And all this work you're putting in, and all these things that you're allowing to grind away at you, grind away at your soul, grind away at your health, you're doing it for nothing. You're doing it so that you can basically appease that thing in your head that's saying, oh, I don't have time to do this right now. And you know what?

The the idea that you don't have time to do this right now, the idea that you don't have time to train, that's a lie. And I'm telling you why in a second. But understand first and foremost, the biggest lie you're telling yourself is that you're putting your kids first, and that you're putting your family first, by not training, by not working out, because you're not. If you're not strong, if you're not healthy, then eventually, your family is gonna have to take care of you. And that's a fact.

Alright? So why am I saying that it's a lie that you don't have the time to train, that you don't have time to work out? It's a lie because you're feeding into the lies of the fitness industry. You're feeding into the idea that you gotta go and you gotta drive to the gym, and that you gotta go spend an hour in the gym and do whatever routine that that men's health or men's fitness or or oxygen or whatever other magazine is telling you to do, you're feeding into that lie. And because you're feeding into that lie, you and your mind, you're limiting yourself from being able to train.

You're limiting yourself from being able to train because you think that you need to go and you need to spend an hour in the gym. You don't need a gym membership. You don't need to spend an hour in the gym. You don't need weights. You don't need some jerryed up fitness routine from one of those magazines.

And I'm gonna tell you right now, most of those routines are a bunch of BS anyway. What you need is your body and a little space in your living room. And what do you do? Well, number one, calisthenics exercises, right? They're they're just as good as lifting weights.

Are you gonna be able to compete a powerlifting competition doing calisthenics? No. Are you gonna be able to become mister or miss Olympia? No. But what you are gonna be able to do is you're gonna be able to train for your life, for you, to keep you in position to be the best you possible.

Right? So what do you got here? You got squats, can do body weight squats, you got push ups, could do, you got crunches, you do those, can do burpees, you can do lunges, you can do so many amazing exercises just in the comfort of your own home. Now, here's the other thing. Most of you, despite the fact that you don't have tons and tons of time, at some point, you sit down with the family, and maybe you're watching a little bit of TV, or maybe you are sitting around the house.

What you can do is you can set either an alarm for every twenty minutes, or you can get up whenever there's a commercial break on TV, and you can do a set of squats, a set of lunges, you do a set of burpees. You can do any of that, Right? Just during the commercial breaks. And it's better than doing nothing. And here's the other thing.

Science has actually demonstrated that workouts like these, where you're doing them throughout the day, now let's say you're setting an alarm on your clock to go off every hour at work, and every hour at work, you just get up and you do three sets of 20 squats, or three sets of 20 pushups, or anything like that. Science has actually demonstrated that workouts like those that occur throughout the day are actually more effective for weight loss and health than going to the gym for an hour and then sitting on your ass all day long. Right? And it might not be as sexy. It might not be like Rocky training to fight the Russian or anything like that.

But it's something, and it's been demonstrated to be effective. So get the idea that you can't train out of your head. Now that's not the only thing you can do. There's ten minute workouts you can do. Try doing a 100 burpees in ten minutes.

Alright? That is a workout. That is a crazy workout. A lot of you aren't gonna be able to do it, but try doing as many burpees as you can in ten minutes. The next day, try doing as many squats as you can in ten minutes.

The next day, try to do as many push ups as you can in ten minutes. Then you could do that with lunges and any other calisthenics exercise. If you got a pull up bar in your house, you could do it with those. And that's not the only thing you could do. Get a kettlebell.

Kettlebells are inexpensive. You can get them off of Amazon. Right? Keep a kettlebell in your house if you want to lift weights. If you want to have a strength element, you can do any exercise that you can with a barbell or dumbbells with a kettlebell.

You do squats, you do overhead presses, you do rows, you do swings, you do deadlifts, you do so many awesome things just with a kettlebell, a simple piece of equipment that you can keep in the corner of your home or your office. Right? And again, most of these workouts don't have to take longer than ten to fifteen minutes. Really, really simple stuff guys. Right?

So stop telling yourself that you don't have time. That's a lie. There are solutions out there. Number two, how do you find the motivation? Right?

Because a lot of you are gonna be like, well, I'm old now. I'm old. I don't have to look good. I don't have to I don't have to, you know, go out there in my swimsuit or anything like that anymore. I'm not worried about that stuff.

And you don't have to be. You don't have to be. But it's like I told you before. What do you want the rest of your life to look like? What do you want the rest of your life to look like?

You know, one of the most valuable things that ever happened to me in my life was when I was a kid, my mom was a geriatric nurse. She worked in a convalescent home. And I used to volunteer my time there. And then I got a side job there. And I'd walk through those halls, and I'd see the people.

And I'd see what their bodies became, how decrepit they became, how their mental faculties started leaving their bodies. And I told myself when I was a kid, I'm gonna do everything I can to keep that from happening to me. Now, am I a 100% certain that that's never gonna happen to me? No, absolutely not. But I do know that staying physically fit, taking care of my health, and keeping it so that when I'm 60, 70, 80 years old, that I'm going to be able to move, I'm going to be able to walk, I'm going to be able to do all the things that I want to do.

I know that that's going to enhance the quality of my life because, you know, I haven't had kids yet. And when I do, I want to grow old enough to see my grandchildren. I want to grow old enough and be able enough to play with my grandchildren. I don't want them to see their grandfather sitting in a wheelchair babbling to himself. That's not what you want either.

It's definitely not what you want. And you might think, well, I'll be old. I won't care by then. Let me tell you something. There is no point in this life that you're not going to want to live.

There is no point in this life that you're not gonna want to live. And if you think about it now, a lot of you guys have served. You're already at a point. You're in your thirties, your forties, some of you are in your late twenties already. And you're already thinking about what it was like to be 18 years old.

You're already thinking about what it was like to be a young marine, a young soldier, a young sailor, a young airman. Don't put yourself into a position where you're 60 years old, and you're dealing with health problems, or even 50 years old, and you're dealing with health problems. And you're wishing that you had a chance to be 30 again so you could take care of yourself. Don't put yourself into that position. I know most of you have too much pride, too much sense of self worth to put yourselves through that.

So start now. Don't wait and stop telling yourself that you're again putting your family first or anything like that. Because when you're not taking care of yourself, you're not putting your family first. You're putting them on the back burner. Right?

And you're making it so that they're gonna have to take care of you at some point. So when you're looking for your motivation to train, that's where I suggest you look. Think about your spouse. Think about your kids. Think about your future.

Life might not be good for you right now, but the future holds many surprises. And you don't want to be into put into a better position in life where the mistakes you made while you were down, while you were out are affecting you and keeping you from enjoying life when it gets much better. That's all I got for today, guys. I hope that this was helpful. And as I said, if you're finding these episodes helpful, if you're finding what we do here on the Warrior Soul podcast helpful, please share these episodes out, go over to iTunes, write us a review, let us know how we're doing.

Let me know how I'm doing. It's not really us. It's me sitting here in a room by myself with a computer and a microphone. But it's really us because I consider all of you to be part of this. I consider all of you to be my family.

My listeners are what drives me to do this every single day. And I love you all, and I want you all to thrive. With that, thank you so much. I'll be talking to you all very, very soon.