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What gets measured gets managed.
Getting started (or restarted) in your fitness journey is pretty exciting. And knowing you need to move daily and then actually getting yourself to do it is absolutely worth celebrating. Showing up each day and trying your best, making small changes in your lifestyle, and supporting yourself with healthy choices all combine to give yourself a great foundation on which to build.
But excitement fades and that’s when the real work begins. Can you show up when it’s not new or when it’s not always fun?
The purpose of the Athlete Journey at Black Wolf is to establish a series of check points an athlete will pass through on their journey toward their goals so that you are able to always have something to aim for in each moment. When the excitement has faded, the system will help you stay on course and to know that what you are taking time to do is well worth doing. No wasted effort.
Below I unpack what you can expect when you join Black Wolf, beginning with The Why.
THE WHY: BENEFITS OF THE BLACK WOLF ATHLETE JOURNEY
The Athlete Journey at Black Wolf serves you in two primary ways:
1) Something to Aim For – It’s lovely when you just like to workout or eat healthy or take care of your self. But for those of us who may not naturally find ourselves doing one or some of those things, having a specific objective to aim for each day helps to move us forward.
Through the journey those objectives will change as you continue to make progress toward your overall goal.
Wanting to lose 30 pounds is a strong overall goal. And the excitement in getting started with your new workouts or your new nutrition plan will definitely carry you for a bit. But having quantifiable goals that help you to engage with and enjoy the journey itself
2) Not Doing It Alone – The journey to lasting change is not short and is not easy. There are seasons of exciting progress as well as many days of feeling like you are stuck or failing. When you are going on your journey alone, you are left only with your mind as the voice of reason. I don’t know about you, but for me that can be dangerous.
Whether it be losing weight, building strength, improving your heart rate and lung capacity, or just feeling better in your body, having someone who is aware of where you are going and where you are on that journey will save you from derailing your won efforts.
We set Goal Reviews along your path so that we are able to sit down, look at your progress and discuss how you feel and what changes you can make to continue to see progress. When you have moments of doubt you have someone available to bounce your thoughts off of. When you are making incredible progress you have someone who is going to celebrate with you because they know how much it means to you.
ELEMENTS OF THE JOURNEY
Here’s a list of the elements we use throughout your journey along with an explanation farther below:
– Goal Setting Session
– Goal Reviews
– InBody Scans
– Nutrition
– Connection
Goal Setting Session – at the start of your journey you will sit down with your coach and lay out what it is you are hoping to pursue. From there your coach will create the metrics you will measure your progress by and the steps you will take to get to your goal.
Goal Review Session – Once your goal is established and you begin taking the steps that will move you toward that change, you will meet at various points along the path to measure your progress, discuss the tough spots, and confirm the plan for the next part of your journey.
InBody Scan – We are fortunate to be able to provide you with body composition analysis via our InBody Scanner. The data gathered here will help not just to evaluate your progress so far, but also give you what you need to make changes that will help you continue to see changes in your body and your self.
The InBody scan provides you with a number of data points but the most useful to us are Body Fat Percentage (BFP), Skeletal Muscle Mass (SMM), Lean Body Mass, as well as your Basal Metabolic Rate (baseline daily calories).
Lifestyle & Nutrition Education – If you are treating yourself poorly outside of the gym then no amount of working out will get you to where you want to be. The lifestyle and nutrition component of the Black Wolf program are arguably the most impactful. Improving your sleep, reducing your stress, feeling better through your day all help position you to achieve the biggest possible change.
Connection Opportunities – The quality of our life will largely be defined by the people we are closest too. If they are high quality humans then your life likely was a high quality adventure. And if you re surrounded by trash, there’s a good chance you’ll be looking back on a life of trash. You will not be forced to make friends, but after a while it almost becomes more difficult NOT to connect to people that are working their ass off alongside you as they pursue their own goals. Take a peek at our Social Calendar if you want to start on this early.
THE GAME BOARD: HOW WE GET YOU THERE
Imagine your favorite board game. Candy Land always comes to mind for me. A winding path weaving through different lands passing by interesting characters. Now pretend you’re the piece that you are playing with.
That Athlete Journey at Black Wolf simply tracks you as you make your way across the board. And just like a game, every fews moves you run into a challenge or a checkpoint. In this case, that is where we drop in the elements of the journey discussed in the previous section. In Week 6, for example, we will be meeting for your first Goal Review and second InBody Scan.
And depending on your goals, we may drop in Benchmarks to aim for. If you are trying to get your first strict pull up then maybe we have you maxing out your flexed arm hang after 4 weeks to measure your progress. If you are attempting to run your first 5k without walking, maybe we are jogging 2 miles together in week 8.
But progress is rarely linear (a straight line). Just like a game board has different areas, your life has different seasons. Your Athlete Journey will adapt to the season your in via the discussions and assessments we have during your Goal Review sessions.
Ultimately the purpose is to enjoy the journey, just like a game. We all know people who only enjoy getting to the finish of the game as fast as possible, and if that’s you, that’s great. But for most of us, the most fulfillment comes from enjoying the journey through the game. Knowing we are making progress but beginning to enjoy the challenge.
When we do this with support and encouragement from others, and with our path being confirmed by people who have taken people through it before, we can really get excited about what might be possible when we give it a chance.
Every athlete at Black Wolf is given access to these resources. If you’d be interested in jumping off into your own journey let me know and we will get you going. I would love to help!
Let me know what you think by sending me an email to [email protected] or send us a message on our Instagram page.
Ben