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Summary
On episode 657 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan tackles a word that gets thrown around constantly in health and fitness forums and Facebook groups: discipline. He challenges the common advice to “just be disciplined,” pointing out that the dictionary definition of discipline involves training through punishment, which is not what struggling people actually need.
Instead, Allan lays out the plan he believes people need in place of willpower: building a team for accountability, developing self management skills as the CEO of your body, adding friction to bad habits while removing it from good ones, learning from mistakes, and identifying your own wiring so the plan actually fits you.
He shares his own story of failing repeatedly for eight years before committing fully once his daughter asked him to come watch her compete, illustrating how commitment, not discipline, is the missing piece for most people.
Links
- https://40plusfitness.com/quiz
Key Takeaways
- Discipline is the wrong word, and the wrong ask. Allan looked up the Oxford definition: the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior using punishment to correct disobedience. Telling someone to just be disciplined does not give them any actual mechanism, it is like telling someone who cannot fly to just fly.
- What people actually need is a plan, not punishment. If you are struggling to eat right or move right, the fix is not willpower, it is a structured set of steps that gets you to the point where compliance feels automatic.
- Accountability has to be built deliberately, and it will eventually run out. Allan recommends bringing people onto your team, a coach, a trainer, friends, or family who will call you out, but warns that any single source of accountability is a limited resource that can disappear.
- Commitment is proven by what you invest, not what you say. Allan compares his own health turnaround to studying for the CPA exam: he only succeeded once he invested real time, effort, and money, including hiring a nutritionist, getting a DEXA scan, and signing up for a Tough Mudder with his daughter.
- Think of yourself as the CEO of your body. You decide your movement, nutrition, thoughts, stress levels, and sleep, so the job is to put structures in place that make the right choices easier, the same way a CEO builds systems for a business.
- Use friction deliberately, both to remove and to add. Keeping trigger foods out of sight, packing a laminated gym bag checklist the night before, or choosing a home gym over one 20 miles away all reduce friction toward good habits while adding friction to bad ones.
- Learn from mistakes instead of being broken by them. When Allan kept forgetting pieces of his gym bag, he recognized a pattern of self sabotage and built a system, a checklist set by the door, to fix it rather than just feeling guilty.
- Know your own wiring before you build your plan. Allan describes himself as an all or nothing person who needs a big goal in front of him to stay motivated, and points listeners to his mindset quiz at 40plusfitness.com/quiz to identify their own type.
- Consistency turns a plan into an identity. Once accountability, self management, and learning from mistakes become habitual, the behaviors stop feeling like a program and start feeling like who you are, which is what people who already have discipline actually have.
“I don’t think you need discipline. I don’t think you need punishment. I think you need a plan.”
Coach Allan
Another Episode You May Enjoy
Episode 699 – Break through obstacles to fitness with Ben Mudge
Episode Notes
Podcast: 40+ Fitness
Episode: 657
Published: 2024-08-27
Host: Allan Misner (aka Coach Allan), author of The Wellness Roadmap
Guest(s): Rachel (co-host), our co host, coach Rachel
Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube (audio only)