A Start Of The Week Routine

​Today I explore a simple (but incredibly powerful) habit you can get into at the start of your week, which can make a dramatic difference to your long term training journey.

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So today I wanna share with you an incredibly powerful routine that you can do at the start of the week, which can honestly make some dramatic results to the improvements in your training journey. And I'm just gonna be sharing this simple routine and just talk through why it can be so valuable and how I like to apply it with my hikers. So essentially what this routine involves, involves. It's really, really, really simple. Essentially, what you want to do is just block out 10 minutes, either on a Sunday at the end of a week or on a Monday morning. Simply 10 minutes where you're going to be undisturbed and you can do it every single week. You're going to get out a pen and paper, and even better if you can do this in a journal where you're going to be doing in the same book every single week. And essentially, you're going to block out this time, make sure you're not disturbed, get pen to paper, and you're going to ask yourself these questions and write down the answers. Number one, you're going to ask yourself, how did my training go last week?

[1:07] You're going to sit down in your journal, on your pen and paper, just write down how it went. Was it good? Was it bad? Was it kind of okay? Were you consistent? Whatever it may be. However you want to word this, whatever you think, write it down. Number two, what was the highlight of my training week? And ask yourself, okay, what was a positive? What was a win I got out of last week with my training? Did I do a few more repetitions on a certain exercise? Did I get out for a hike? Did I manage to take some time to do a bit of stretching? What was a win? What was a highlight? Question number three, what was an obstacle that I came across last week with my training. You know, examples of this, maybe I was low energy one day, maybe I slept in and I messed up my schedule, maybe a work meeting took over or whatever it may be. Write it down. Question number four, do I have any obstacles coming up this week?

[2:00] Are you aware there's any meetings coming up? Are you aware that you're going to be short on time? Are you aware that there's going to be bad weather? Whatever it may be. And question number five, what do I need to do to make this week a success? What are the things that I need to put into action to make sure those obstacles don't get in the way, that this week is going to be better than last week? What are the things I need to do? So I'll recap them again. Number one, how did my training and go last week? Number two, what was a highlight of last week? Number three, what was an obstacle? Number four, do I have any obstacles coming up this week? And number five, what do I need to do to make this week a success?

[2:40] Five simple questions, shouldn't take you any more than 10 minutes to answer, put it pen to paper. Now, this may sound very, very simple. And you'll be like, might be like, all right, Rowan, why are you asking me to do this? You know, sounds good in theory, but what's the point? But I promise you, if you can take the time to do this and do this consistently, it can be such a powerful thing. And the reason why it can be so powerful is all too often when we get into a bit of a training journey and we're ticking off sessions week after week, we're working through things, whether we're training for a big goal or just generally getting fit, we get it getting routine, but we don't really take any time to reflect on how things We don't really take any time to really actually think properly if things are good, if things are bad, or whatever it may be.

[3:28] And I see this because the amount of times that I've talked to hikers, and I talk to them and they've been training for a long period of time, they said, hey, I do lots of training, this and that. But they really do have minimal self-awareness around how things are actually going. And when asked, I'll ask them, you know, how's your training been going or whatever it may be. And at first, a lot of people say, you know what, my training's been good. Or, you know what, I've been consistent. You know what, I've been training really hard for, you know, three or four weeks. Or I go to the gym all the time or whatever it may be. But then we dig into things. Someone like, well, how many sessions did you do last week? Or how many sessions did you do two weeks ago? Or, you know, how many weeks have you sort of done everything you set out to be? Or whatever it may be. And it turns out people have been missing sessions left, right, and center. It is a really, really, really, really, really common thing. Everyone does it because life gets in the way in this and that. But this lack of self-awareness is a little bit tricky. And it really does come from a lack of self-reflection because we're just going through the motions. We're just kind of thinking things are good, but we're not actually taking the time to really, really think through this. So the idea behind these questions, these five simple questions, is to sit down at the end or the start of each week and actually think about this. Don't just have in the back of your head and be like, oh yeah, you know what, it's all good. But actually think about it.

[4:46] Identify what What has been good? If it's been good, shine a light on it. Highlight it because we're always our worst enemies and sometimes we get a little bit negative. Shine a light on the good stuff. Identify what's been bad. Don't shy away from it. Sometimes we just ignore the bad things or ignore if we miss sessions and it just turns into this habit where we're never actually aware that things might not be going as well as they can be. And write it down so it's clear. Don't just do this in your head, but literally put pen to paper, write it down and you'll be like, oh my gosh, there it is.

[5:16] Now, this is something we get everyone to do with our hikers in the online summit program. So the online summit program is our signature online training program for hikers. And this particular program, we help people with their training, but they also get quite a bit of coaching and support on top of that. And essentially what we have and what this falls into is we have this thing called Monday Accountability, where every single Monday we get our hikers to answer a series of seven different questions, similar to kind of what we were talking about above, plus a few other bits and pieces. And every single Monday, we ask them, hey, can you answer these seven questions? Write it down, send it over to us, and we do it via message.

[5:54] Or at the very, very least, we strongly encourage people to do this. And yeah, admittedly, not everyone does it every week, but we really do and strongly encourage people to do it. Now, many people will look at this and be like, okay, cool. You know what? That makes sense. You know, my coach wants to know what's going on. So it's just a way of sharing

[6:09] information with my coach, which is true. Like you know it's always good for us coaches when we're working with hikers just get an update at the start of each week around how things are going so we can do some coaching we give some advice or whatever may be however that's only half of it the other half of it and the other half we will ask half the reason why we ask people to do this is really to encourage people just self-reflect at the start of each week and really think through these things so they've got this self-awareness so they really really know if things are good if things are bad if there are struggles if there are obstacles. It's just such a powerful thing. Now, a really cool example of how useful this can be is actually this podcast was inspired by this, was an example of a recent client who just started training with us. And they've basically been training for maybe a week, a week and a half or something like that. I can't exactly remember. But they did their check-in on this Monday.

[7:02] And they shared all the relevant information. And they shared in this check-in, like when it came to the obstacles, they were like, look, there was numerous challenges which came up, you know, lots of things in life were kind of getting in the way, making things tricky, making things difficult. So first of all, they took the time to shine a light on these things, identify these things and share these things, which is really, really useful. But on top of that, because of this process of literally writing down these answers and this and that, they'd actually taken the time to not only identify these challenges and reflect on on these challenges. But then that got their brain thinking. And with that question, like, what do I need to overcome things? And they actually came up with a plan of attack that each of these challenges coming up, they thought through, okay, this week, I know this is going to be an obstacle. I know this is going to be a challenge. Last week, I struggle with this. This week, I'm going to put this into action. I'm going to try this. And they'd come up with pretty much a plan of attack for almost all of those things just under their own selves. And their coach gave them a little bit extra advice and talked through a few other bits and pieces. But in all honesty, 90% of the action plan was sort of just self-made.

[8:09] Because 90% of the time, we kind of know what we need to do to overcome things. Yes, professional advice helps. Yes, specialist direction helps. Yes, having sort of an outside perspective can help. But a lot of the time, we kind of know what we need to do. We know if we've got a really busy week coming up, we're like, oh, you know what? If I really want to fit in my training sessions, maybe I need to wake up in the morning and do them in the morning. Or we know if it's going to be a really rainy day on Friday and I usually hike on a Friday, maybe I better go hike on a Wednesday or whatever it may be. But whatever it is, just having this time to sit down and self-reflect, it's such a powerful thing. So if you have been training for a while and you've been going through your sessions, you think you're going well, or maybe you think you're going poorly or whatever it may be, I really, really, really strongly encourage you to take some time to do this. It only takes 10 minutes at the most each week. Lock it out at the same time where you can do every single week, whether it's a Monday morning before you get into your week, whether it's the end of a Sunday or whatever it may be.

[9:09] Block out the 10 minutes make sure you're not disturbed or try your best not to get disturbed physically write down your answers to the questions and i promise you this could be one of the most powerful things you can do just to help with your training over the long term it may sound simple.

[9:26] But i promise you it will make a massive difference so if you haven't been doing this type of thing if you haven't been doing any type of self-reflection give this a go put in your calendar, make it happen, and I promise you it'll serve you well. So thank you for listening. I hope this helps a few people. I really do hope a few people put this into action. And I really do think it'll make a major difference for a lot of people if they do. So thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye.

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