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Summary
On episode 627 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan closes out the six-part Building the Best You series with a look at pace: how to keep moving forward without burning out or quitting when life gets complicated.
Allan uses three vehicles, a sports car, a pickup truck, and a minivan, to describe matching your effort to your current circumstances. He argues that most people quit not at the start but right near the finish, when progress slows and disappointment sets in.
The episode closes with the idea that health and fitness is a journey rather than a destination: once you reach a goal, there is always a pick list of what to build, fix, or improve next.
Links
- https://40plusfitness.com/club
Key Takeaways
- Health and fitness is a lifelong journey, not a finish line. Even after reaching a goal, like Allan’s neighbor finishing his beach bar, there is always more building and maintaining to do. Treating a weight-loss goal as an end point is why so many people regain what they lost.
- Life is the way, not something that gets in the way. Allan argues the excuses people give, a birthday, a holiday, a family vacation, are predictable and recurring, not true emergencies, so they can be planned for rather than used to justify quitting.
- The sports car, pickup truck, and minivan analogy describes matching your pace to your circumstances. A sports car works when the path is clear and you are carrying little; a pickup handles rougher conditions and more baggage; a minivan is slower but built to carry other people and obligations. The key is recognizing which vehicle fits your current season of life and still moving forward in it.
- You are not stuck in one vehicle permanently. When circumstances open up, like kids being away for a few weeks, you can shift into a faster pace; when life gets complicated again, you shift back to the minivan without treating that as failure.
- Most people quit closest to the goal, not at the start. When progress slows near the end, like the last 5 or 10 pounds, people decide the goal is unattainable and abandon it, losing sight of the real progress they already made.
- Setting the right expectations prevents disappointment from becoming quitting. If you know you are in the fastest vehicle available to you given your circumstances and you are still moving forward, that is success, even if the pace is slower than you would like.
- A finished project always leaves a pick list. Just as a construction project ends with a list of small fixes, reaching a fitness milestone, like finishing a race, should lead to identifying what to improve next: losing a few more pounds, building core strength, working on speed.
- Moving the goalposts keeps the journey engaging without forcing bigger and bigger challenges. You do not have to progress from a 5K to a marathon to an ultramarathon; you can instead choose new races, new locations, or simply aim to be a little better than you were the year before.
- Setbacks like injuries are detours, not dead ends. When life forces a slowdown, physical therapy, recovery, an unexpected obstacle, the plan is to do the work required, then get back in the fastest vehicle your circumstances allow.
“Life doesn’t get in the way. Life is the way.”
Coach Allan
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Episode Notes
Podcast: 40+ Fitness
Episode: 627
Published: 2024-01-30
Host: Allan Misner (aka Coach Allan), author of The Wellness Roadmap
Guest(s): —, our co-host, Coach Rachel
Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube (audio only)