Hi, everybody. Kris Stokes from Custom Fitness Personal Training Studio, and today we’re talking about playing to your strengths. This is going to be the first in a two part series, so be on the lookout for part two coming soon. And as always, if you have any questions about today’s blog then please give us a call at 806-322-3188 or email us at info@customfitness.biz

Things are just not always put together the way that you want them to be. Today, we are talking about playing to your strengths. It’s something that keeps coming up in conversations of people coming in to talk to me about past health endeavors and changes that they’re wanting to make, things that they’ve tried in the past. A lot of times, the problem isn’t that they can’t do something or that they failed at something, it’s that they didn’t really pay attention to their strengths when they were choosing what to do.

Too often, we put ourselves in these situations where it’s just not a good fit for our skillset. At times, I think we do that to build our weaknesses. I have a good friend who says perfect your strengths and you build on your weaknesses until they become strengths. That’s great to a point. But we all have to understand that there’s certain things that God really intended for us to do well and certain things that God intended us to make other friends who do things well and to lean on them for some support.

I remember this fondly back in my 20’s whenever I was doing a lot of work by hand for my training business, and a lot of friends that I had back then would say things like, “Well, math may not be your strong skill yet but if you keep practicing, you’ll get better at it.” I’d say, “Well, I keep three different copies of books to make sure that everything’s right. Math just never was my strength, starting, what, the third, fourth grade.” I knew that that was not what I was meant to be was a mathematician of any sort. Doesn’t mean that you can’t do it, you still have an area of skill in that weakness, but it’s definitely not a strength for you.

Now, that can come across in any place from your math to science to history to English, obviously, if you’re looking at just the school realm, but then you look outside the school realm and you start thinking about your job. You think about the people that you are with and what they demand of you or volunteer opportunities or whatever it may be, there’s areas that you are able to apply the very best of you to, and there are areas that you’re just rolling with the punches and hoping to make it out alive.

As you go through and you kind of think about those things, then, for me, it always comes back to health and fitness, obviously, so I kind of get to thinking about the nutrition side of things. There’s so many times that people try to go with a nutrition plan because so and so did it. Their friend did it, their cousin did it, maybe you’ve done that, that you’ve fallen victim of these failed nutrition plans because you went with it because somebody else did it and it worked for them. Well, that’s great, your body has specific needs, even down to how your body type is designed. If you have a certain figure, then specific foods are going to fuel you whereas other foods are going to cause harm and not allow you to be fueled the way that you need to be.

When we’re picking nutrition plans out, we want to make sure that it’s something that not only sounds good that we can do, but that it’s physically good for us as well, that it’s playing to our strengths physically and physiologically to be able to make us better, to make us healthier, because all in all, your nutrition plans are not there to make you lose weight, they are there to make you healthier. As you become healthier, that excess fat begins to shed off, the muscle builds, and the body finds a new physique through better health.

Another example would be exercise. People are all or nothing this time of year, right? You’ve messed up all holiday long, you’re just determined, you’re going to get this done, and you go in because a friend said that this exercise program did it or you saw an infomercial that showed these great results. Here’s a little secret, most of the infomercials actually take their after picks at the start and then they have the models go and gain a bunch of weight to take their before … or their after pictures … or their before pictures, it gets switched up. So, they’re not always being truthful, and that’s not everybody, I’m not trying to judge the world and be condescending. But there are a lot of misunderstood concepts whenever it comes to nutrition and health and exercise, and a lot of that is the marketing that we’ve been fed.

I’m going to end part two here. We’ll be back with part two very soon! So, if you are wanting the accountability and help with creating an action plan to see results, or are wanting to someone to help create a workout plan to push you to your greatest potential, then that’s what we’re here for. We work with our clients not just on fitness, but also nutrition. What we do is we will ensure that you are supported throughout every aspect of your health and wellness journey, and that includes making those eating changes. We have an entire team of dedicated professionals to help you with your health and fitness goals. To get your consultation set up, give us a call at 806-322-3188 or email us at info@customfitness.biz At Custom Fitness, we are YOUR personal trainers in Amarillo, Texas. Have a great day.