Make the 'bad' days better.

One of the things we are HUGE on here at Elevate98 is CPD or Continued Professional Development.

Myself and the team spend lots of time and budget on making sure we can grow and develop our service.

This year a big focus has been on interpersonal skills, behaviour change and self-awareness.

Why you may ask?

Technical coaching is a HUGE part of what we do and something we will always have a big focus on but I want our coaches to rise a level above that and be top level when it comes to attentiveness and, understanding how to help clients at the right dose for them, aka Small Group PERSONAL Training.

As the old adage goes, no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.

For me we need to understand clients road blocks mentally before we get overly into the nitty gritty of technical coaching.

With this in mind I have been working with a performance psychologist to understand a bit more about myself so that we can then relay to the team and in turn make the client experience even better!

One of his ideas that has been a game changer is 'raising the floor'.

We all do this thing as humans where we try and optimise the things that are already pretty good.

'Yeah my Squat has bumped up by 50% but I still feel there is another tweak I can make'

'Yeah my breakfast is good but if I changed X it would be even better'

'Yeah I'm hitting 10K steps but imagine I could do 12k'

You get the idea.

Now none of this is wrong, anyone who has read my stuff in the past will know I'm a big fan of the little 1% increments, they add up over time.

However this is known as trying to 'raise the ceiling' aka make the good things or the good days even better.

Chris (the psychologist in question) suggests 'raising the floor' or making the 'bad' a bit better.

So instead of trying to make the days when you train, get out a walk and manage you're nutrition well even better, why not try and make those days where you sack everything off a little better?

In a classic example, making Friday-Sunday even 10% better from a training, lifestyle and nutrition perspective better will have a much bigger impact than trying to make Monday-Thursday a little better when it's already good.

The smaller a gap we have from the 'good' days to the 'bad' days from a health and wellness perspective the better off we will be.

*It should be said that when it comes to nutrition nothing is 'good' or 'bad' in our opinion, everything in moderation!

I have just used these terms to make the point easier to understand.