You need to follow the ‘rules of change’ in order to really achieve a successful body transformation.
I truly believe that every person who is reading this holds the key to their own radical physique transformation.
1. Define Your Goal/Goals
Decide what you really want to achieve.
Write it down.
It doesn’t matter what this goal is – it could be two inches off your waist or the physique of Schwarzenegger in his prime.
2. Set a Timeframe on Your Goal
There is a world of difference between thinking ‘one day I would like to be ripped’ and ‘I will be ripped in 12 weeks’. I love the pressure of time-driven goals and embrace them in all aspects of my life, and so should you.
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3. Break That Goal Down Into Smaller Timeframes
If you have a 12-week goal, break it down into bite-sized weekly chunks.
Hitting small milestones on your way to big ones will raise your dopamine levels and keep you focused on the long-term goal. Merely having one longer-term aim can be demoralising when you feel as though your daily efforts haven’t made a dent in getting there.
4. Be Realistic
I am all for shooting for the stars and am a fully paid-up subscriber to the school of thought that no person, especially myself, should ever hold me back.
However, we all need to be realistic. If you only have two hours a week for the gym, then cut your goals accordingly.
If you currently carry 35% body fat and would be a welcome new entrant to The Biggest Loser, then ’12 weeks to cover model’ is not going to happen.
Dreaming big is part of what makes life fun, but turning dreams into reality is the best thing of all. Make sure that your dreams make physiological and practical sense.
5. Exert Pressure on Yourself By All Means Necessary
I am a huge fan of using every mental trick in the book to help me achieve my goals. My own personal favourite is to imagine that I am doing a specific task (that is getting hard, and I feel like capitulating on) for my children. I visualise their faces in front of me, and if I compromise on my efforts in the slightest, I will be letting them down.
The nasty cousin of that positive reinforcement is to imagine someone whom you perceive as being an enemy or hater doing better than you.
Tell yourself, ‘If I don’t do this then Person X will be more successful than me,’ or ‘Person Y will be right about me all along’.
My point here is that you should use every drive and motivator possible. Nothing is off limits or should be beyond your imagination.
6. Ask Yourself, ‘How Hard Am I Prepared to Go? What Am I Prepared to Sacrifice?’
Answer this question before you start your transformation.
Write down your answer.
Every time you feel like wavering, return to your original promises to yourself.
7. Harness Your Fear
The best motivator of all is fear. When your back is to the wall, you do great things.
Do something that scares you – lose a bet, put your photos up on Facebook, or book a photoshoot that you cannot get out of. It doesn’t really matter what.
All that matters is that you use the fear of failure to sharpen your mind and your actions.
If you embark on this programme with zero accountability for failure, then I promise you that you have drastically limited your chances of success before you have picked up a dumbbell.
8. When You Fail
The only way to see setbacks is to remind yourself that everyone has them and how you respond, right here, right now is that will set you apart from the also-rans and never-made-its.
Embrace temporary failure as the chance to bounce back stronger and harder than ever. Don’t allow it to consume you and wallow in it, or you’ll kiss goodbye to achieving your goals.
9. Self-Belief
If there is one thing that I’d love to teach you, it’s the amazing things that you can do once you believe in yourself.
I’ve lost count of the times that people have told me that until they stepped into one of my gyms, they never believed that they could transform their bodies in the way that they have done. That they thought our ‘before’ and ‘after’ results were fake or at best done by people who had nothing in their lives but the gym and consuming broccoli and chicken breasts.
Once we gave them belief, the journey wasn’t easy, but it was possible, it all fell into place for them.
