“I am just getting started with fitness”
“I fell off the fitness boat and need help getting to shore”
If one of these clauses applies to you you are not alone. We have all been in a spot where life gets difficult and self care takes a backseat. The good news is that it can take as little as one month to get your feet pointed in a better direction. Whether you are a novice or an elite athlete there are times when you need to get back to basics and build from the foundation up. This short one month program is designed to give you an explosively effective foundation. There are no excuses or gimmicks, just homework and honest reflection.
Hippo Block Builder Program
The first and most important foundation in every fitness plan is fidelity. Fitness requires consistency and time to be effective in shaping anything. There is good news in that fitness can be very fast with huge results in very little time especially if you are new. The problem is that most individuals will start a fitness plan and fall off in two months. Life has a way of pushing you off the road into the bushes and its not a matter of if that will happen but when. Injury, grief, adulting and many other factors can become obstacles to lifting ourselves up. The best way to prevent future issues with fidelity is to build a strong foundation of supports and tools so when you do fall, you don’t fall as far. The team hippo builder is designed to facilitate that foundation.
Target Athletes: Beginners – Elite
Materials: Pen, 2 Notebooks (checklist notebook)(Log Book), Calendar
Week 1 plan: Build Honest Self Reflection
– Create a “Wellness Fix” checklist: Consider things in the way of your basic wellness and write them down in a list, sleep, career, relationships, money, nutrition, exercise, fulfillment, self care and any other item you can think of.
– Create a “Supports” checklist: Consider your effective supports and the relationships that dont serve to support your progress. Write down old supports and consider reaching out and letting them know what you are up to. Write down ideas to network into institutions with similar goals online or in your town. Consider pruning relationships that you have outgrown. Document all these relationships, good or bad on your supports checklist.
– Create a “Replacement Behavior” checklist: Consider the things you do in your life that you know are not the best for you. Consider your dependencies and behaviors that don’t serve your goals. Consider that a cold turkey approach is not really reasonable and it may be better to give yourself versions of those wants and needs that are not as unhealthy. Write down some possibilities next to those dependencies that have the potential to replace them.
– Create a “Fitness Bucket List” checklist: Write down some realistic things you think would be interesting fitness goals to achieve within your lifetime.
– Create a “Progress Log”: Set up a progress log book and consider it an honest assessment of your progress. Remember that the only person you can lye to is yourself so you might as well make an accurate assessment. Taking accurate data allows you to look back and conquer imposter syndrome by noting how far you have come.
Week 2 plan: Approximate Solutions
– Consult your checklists and plan three times this week to approximate solutions to your checklist items. As much as we would like perfect solutions they don’t exist. Some days you will knock 10 items off your checklists sometimes you wont knock off any. However, The only way to fail is to give up entirely. Log any progress you make in your progress log.
– Walk, swim or bike daily and log each outing with progress in mind, give yourself two days off from activity during the week. Log each outing. This is designed to increase your activity safely and prep yourself for a more intense block latter.
– Schedule daily time to practice mindfulness and increase the time you are mindful on a daily basis. Give all your thoughts a time and place to process. Log the increases in mindfulness practice time. Log any notable thoughts in your progress log.
– Approximate three safe workouts related to an item on your fitness bucket list. Log each workout, the idea is not to be a super athlete the idea is to invest in the now to give your future self a gift.
– Try a new food and a food you wrote off previously due to preference, redress that food and try it again. Increase your protein in general and increase your whole foods in general. Log progress in your progress log.
– Do one thing before the end of the week that your future self will appreciate the next week.
Week 3 plan: Progressive Overload
– Consult your checklist and plan three times to approximate easy solutions to checklist items and plan one time to make progress on a harder item. Log any progress in your progress log.
– Note your previous log entry for walking, swimming or biking and increase your time or distance at that activity. Log each outing.
– Note your previous log entry for mindfulness continue your mindfulness exercise daily and focus on increasing time being mindful. Log any notable thoughts in your progress log.
– Note your workouts related to your fitness bucket list. Watch some videos on those workouts and clean them up if you can and approximate them again with your new changes.
– Try a new food and a food you wrote off previously due to preference, redress that food and try it again. Log progress in your progress log. Move towards 1.6g/kg of protein per pound of bodyweight. Aim for 90% whole foods.
– Do one thing before the end of the week that your future self will appreciate the next week.
Week 4 plan: Reflection
– Consult your log book and create new checklists in your new state, get specific. Write down your checklist achievements in your progress log.
– Consult your fitness log and write down achievements in your progress log.
– Take several days off to deload and reflect on your progress and the causes of that progress. Only do two fitness sessions during deload week. Use the freed up time to schedule self care.
– Continue with Hippo builder on your own repeating the above or consult a fitness coach to help you plan the next blocks of your fitness journey.
Resources:
Nonprofit fitness resources:
https://darebee.com/
Time effective workouts:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8449772/
Mindfulness effectiveness:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK304578/
Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans:
https://health.gov/sites/default/files/2019-09/Physical_Activity_Guidelines_2nd_edition.pdf
Progressive Overload Explanation
https://blog.nasm.org/progressive-overload-explained
