Transcript: Consistency Beats Intensity: A 20-Year Trainer's Best Advice for Beginners
Full transcript for this episode of More Movement Please. For Donato’s structured summary, questions, quotes, and listening profile, go back to the episode page.
4 chapters — tap to expand the full text
Host Famous Ashley Grant introduces the episode and plays a brief voice message from 20-year personal trainer Chris Cooper, whose tip is 'consistency beats intensity' over sporadic intense workouts.
It's a quickie, but it's a goodie. What's up, you guys? Famous Ashley Grant here. Welcome to More Movement, Please, the podcast where I hope to inspire you to move your body more. Today, I have another quick voice message from you, and I gotta say, this is the quickest voice message I've received, but it works. Here it is. My name is Chris Cooper. I've been a personal trainer for 20 years, and my number one tip for success with a worker program is consistency beats intensity.
Building a sustainable, doable routine will work out better in the long run than sporadic intense workouts. OK, Chris, I got to say thank you so much for your quick message. And it's a good one because it's just the truth, right? Consistency really does beat intensity every single time. And I have found this definitely this week. I've had kind of a little bit of a rough week in terms of mental health, but yet I kept showing up.
Ashley reflects on her own difficult week with mental health struggles, noting she kept showing up even when her workouts weren't intense, and uses this as a personal example of why just showing up matters.
I wasn't as intense with my workouts as I normally am. But the fact that I kept showing up, at least I still kept getting it done. And so I guess that's the big message today that I want to share with you is if you are. starting your fitness journey and you're concerned about the fact that you're not going hard it's okay just keep showing up that's the most important thing keep consistently showing up every single day and you will see results over time if you move your body more than you've moved it before that is a win if you start just adding in some extra you know movement you will see a difference. Even if it's something as simple as taking a 10 minute walk a day, whenever you used to never take a walk, you will see a difference. You will feel a difference.
And the other thing is one of the great things about if you just start doing 10 minutes a day, I think you'll notice that you start doing more than that, or you start wanting to do more than that. And so that's really what I want to just drive home is that if you are thinking about working out and you think you have to like go really intense. No, you don't. Just get started. That is the most important. That is the key thing that I really want to share. And so I'm amused that Chris's message was only like 19 seconds, but that's all it needed to be, right? It just, it was a good message. And it's something that I think too many of us get a little too hung up on is thinking that we have to do it a certain way in order for it to count. And that's just really not true. The biggest thing is that you show up consistently. If you're listening to this and you're not moving your body, start.
Ashley argues that small additions like a 10-minute daily walk count as wins, and that starting small tends to naturally lead to doing more over time.
You don't have to go hard, but you do have to start and you do have to show up and you do have to come every day. And I think that once you start showing up every day, you're going to start showing up more regularly, more, you know, putting in more reps, putting in more time and. You know, you owe this to yourself. I mean, I saw this thing on Facebook that was going around and it basically said an hour of your day is 4 % of your day. And yeah, I know it's easy for someone who works from home to say something like that.
But if you start looking at things just a little bit differently, I bet you could find an hour somewhere in your day that you could get some movement in. Whether it's, you know, when you get home from work, taking just 10 minutes to walk around the block. Or while you're cooking dinner, start doing some squats. Or, you know, there's so many different ways that you can move your body. And we've talked about it. in different episodes and I can share some more resources in the show notes of different things that you can do to add movement into your life every day.
But just you owe this to yourself. You are worth an hour. You're worth more than that. But if you only have a little bit of time, you're at least worth putting it in. Put in the time because that's the one thing that we can't get back is time. And the truth is, we are the only people who can take care of our own health. Yeah, I know you could go to the doctor and you can get all these pills and all these things. But if you want to have sustainable lifestyle change, it starts with you. It starts with you. I'm going to say it one more time. It starts with you.
Ashley references a Facebook post about an hour being 4% of your day, offers practical examples of sneaking movement in, and closes with the argument that sustainable health change starts with the individual.
No one's coming to save us. We've got to save ourselves. We've got to take care of our bodies. We have to take care of our bodies. If we want to. live as long a life as possible with a good quality of life, we have to move our bodies. So you heard it from Chris. Consistency beats intensity every single time. I want you to be consistent. I want you to start showing up. Start today. Get your body moving. Onwards and upwards, my friends. Have you worked out today?