Perfecting your barrier-hurdling technique…

‘Nag, nag, nag’ go the voices in your head ‘nag, nag, nag’

“You’ve not got time to train; ha, in fact, why are you even considering it? You’re way too busy for looking after yourself; training is not a priority, I mean, why is you being healthy important? Taking time out for yourself? How very selfish of you! Anyway, you’ve got way too many other things to prioritise ahead of your well-being. What about that work deadline? Who’s going to look after the kids? What about food shopping and meal making?…bla, bla, bla and so the barrier list goes on!

Or there’s the creative avoidance barriers, all those jobs that suddenly need doing IMMEDIATELY

“Yes, yes, I do need to trim the edges of the lawn with a pair of nail scissors and sort through 20 years of clutter in the attic before I head out; Oh damn, I appear to have run out of time…again, Oh and I don’t appear to have trimmed the edges or de-cluttered the attic either. In fact, what have I done?? Oh yes, bugger all other than procrastinate and now I feel REALLY bad because I’ve achieved nothing whatsoever and still not been for a run and look, there’s the people I train with posting about their session and it looks like it was a lot of fun…grrrr! Why didn’t I go, now I feel rubbish and now I’m one further session behind and my lawn still looks rubbish!!’

OK, so maybe the barriers to not train aren’t as elaborate as trimming the edge of the lawn with nail scissors or straightening all the blades of grass on the lawn (just me then?) but I suspect we have all used creative avoidance as a way of legitimising why we’ve not done a session or told ourselves “I’m too busy at work; I’m too tired, there’s not enough hours in the day; It’s not fair on the family!”

Whether it’s elaborate creative avoidance jobs or not valuing the importance of making time for ourselves, what we are doing is putting up barriers. These barriers are otherwise known as excuses. These are the things that prevent us doing things we want to do, or so we allow ourselves to believe.

Some barriers are real, such as a poorly child or someone close who needs to be looked after, or our own illness or injury or a critical work deadline, but most are perceived e.g. I don’t have time, I’m too tired, I’m too busy at work; it’s not fair on my family

We all have barriers, it’s how we deal with them that matters. It’s all about finding solutions to problems, and seeing problems simply as obstacles, rather than barriers, they are just a challenge to overcome and who doesn’t love a bot of hurdling action?!

This is the part where you have to be really honest with yourself and figure out how much you actually want to do something rather than talking about wanting to do something.

Hopefully the table below will give some food for thought on how to change your mind set when addressing those barriers we so cunningly put up.

Barrier	Overcoming the barrier
I’m so busy at work I can’t possibly find the time to exercise	Yep I’m busy, but my training is really important to me, so I’ll find a way to train as part of my working day. Maybe in my lunch break or immediately at the end of the day. I can leave spare clothes at work
I’m so tired by the time I get home, all I want to do is slump on the settee and watch TV	I know deep down that going to take part in a session will energise me. I don’t have to kill myself in the session. Doing something is better than nothing and I know I’ll feel so much better after.
I have young children,  it’s really hard for me to find the time to do anything for myself	Training keeps me sane and I need to do it for my health and well being. I’ll ask my friend or my family to care for the kids so I can train. Or I’ll see if my kids can come and watch me.
The weather’s foul, I don’t like getting wet	I’ll invest in some technical gear and embrace the rain. It’s always OK once I’m out in it and I love the feeling when I’m home and in the shower

These are just a few simple examples and I’m sure everyone can come up with a whole list of their own! But ask yourself if they really are genuine barriers or are they actually just obstacles that can be hurdled?

Then think about what solutions you can find to overcome them? Sometimes it just requires talking it through with someone and a bit of thinking outside of the box.

However, it is important to recognise that there will be times when it might get really tough, there will be times when the barriers are real, so cut yourself some slack, do what you can and just move onto the next session with a positive frame of mind.

So, just keep hurdling those obstacles and if you’d like any handy tips on hurdling technique, then I know just the place to go!