The Integra Blog

Maintenance (Achieving the Perfect Balance)

As a trainer and a manual therapist having a client get to the maintenance phase is the ultimate achievement. They achieve their goals, are injury free and have a perfect lifestyle balance. This allows them to deal with the stresses of their life while seemingly maintaining their new found objectives.

In my experience, usually when people set health-related goals they seem to always take a short view, creating short-term goals. They are not happy with their lives as they are at the time and want to get away from their current circumstances. This more than often creates unrealistic goals and an even more unrealistic time frame. Drastic changes to diet and an over commitment to training and whether or not the goal is achieved the result usually ends in non-participation. The reasons for this vary from injury in the pursuit of their goals, not being able to keep up with the training or stick to the diet plan, achieving the goal and not being able to keep up with the demands of maintaining it.

The key to achieving maintenance (achieving your goal and then maintaining it) is to take a long view and start as you intend to continue. This creates a different objective in itself, that being participation, with the results being a bi-product and training and nutritional balance becoming habitual lifestyle traits. I think a friend and colleague of mine, Tom Purvis (founder of RTS) put it best when he said:

“Maintenance over the course of your lifetime is actually progression”

Seemingly, while others beat themselves up by over-commiting to the pursuit of their short-term goals, those of us who take the long view and truly achieve maintenance are able to stop the decline that ageing creates. Not only does this take away the accumulative stresses of over-training in a short time, it takes away the feeling of training and diet changes being a chore and creates enjoyment and balance in your lifestyle.

Current trends all point to people usually training for an event - that being a holiday, a wedding, going home after years of being away, for the summer or rehabilitation of an injury. In all these examples whether achieved or not the conclusion remains the same - short-term participation. You see, usually that person in your gym that looks great, healthy and fit, that inspires you, has found the perfect balance of training and nutrition and is currently running their routine week after week month after month and year after year. Training to them is not a chore, it’s not six or seven days a week, it’s not the latest exercise fad or diet, it’s the perfect blend of stimulus, fuel, recovery and adaptation. For this intelligent minority amongst us, a holiday or a wedding next week causes no stress for if they needed to be in a bikini or a pair of shorts, tuxedo or evening gown, they will be ready today.

What a nice feeling it must be to have the perfect balance and to be maintaining your goals.

This post was written by Travis Allan and posted on the Integra Facebook Fan Page, click LIKE below to subscribe to future content on our FB page.