Making Fitness a Priority with Chad Austin

Ingrained & Balanced

Motivation can be an excellent tool for positive change - until it wears away. Once your fitness motivation is gone, you're left making excuses to avoid workouts and cancel exercise plans. But while your short-term motivation may be fleeting, long-term accountability can help you prioritize your fitness and maintain positive results for the long haul!

Ingrained & Balanced is a podcast about health, fitness, and a well-balanced lifestyle. On this episode, hosts Lonnie and Marty are joined by Chad Austin, a fitness trainer who helps people improve their quality of life through fitness and win the struggle against their excuses. He is a best-selling and award-winning author of the book series "Make Fitness A Priority." Chad joins the episode to discuss how people can establish ongoing fitness plans through accountability.

Listen to Lonnie, Marty, and Chad discuss the importance of prioritization and discipline in maintaining long-term fitness.

Introducing Chad Austin (0:05)

This episode begins by introducing the show's special guest speaker Chad Austin. Chad started his professional fitness journey as a PE teacher and coach before entering the world of personal training. He created his book series as his personal training career evolved. In realizing that people who begin training are often fueled by short-term motivation, he learned that this short-term motivation leads to short-term success. But for people to make fitness a long-term part of their life, they must prioritize it in order to improve their quality of life.

Prioritizing fitness (3:17)

Chad explains his ideology on motivation and excuses concerning fitness. In his personal training work, he noticed that one thing that causes people to return to their fitness plans is the loss of their physical results. Life's unexpected changes can cause us to drop off track with our fitness, as people need to improve at adapting to fitness and prioritizing it throughout times of change. He believes that accountability is necessary for fitness success. He advises his clients to consider the improvements that fitness can provide to motivate themselves and set themself up for long-term success.

How much accountability do you need? (6:40)

Chad believes the more important something is to you, the more accountability you should seek. While our motivation can fluctuate throughout the year, holding yourself accountable can keep you working out. He shares his methods for ensuring accountability in his fitness, from participating in obstacle courses or race events to exercising with a friend. By considering how much accountability he needs based on his motivation and being honest with himself, he can determine how to incorporate it into his exercise.

Accountability setups in your life (10:16)

Lonnie, Marty, and Chad share their thoughts on accountability, commitment, and discipline. Of course, everyone has accountability setups in different areas of their lives, as they ensure that we get things done that are important to us. But when some people lack easy access to gyms or fitness environments, prioritizing fitness can be challenging. But through Chad's website courses, they can access workout programs to set themselves up with long-term fitness, regardless of their lifestyle or current fitness level.

How to convert motivation into discipline (17:12)

Changing habits and enforcing discipline can help people maintain their workout routines throughout lapses in motivation. So how can people convert short-term motivation into long-term fitness? Chad explains that this is a learned behavior we already apply to our priorities. He recommends that people be mindful of why fitness is important to them, so they can remember why they're making those sacrifices. He then describes how he does goal setting with his clients to give them more fuel to push them to get those workouts done so they can overcome obstacles and resistance to working out.

Getting to your authentic reason (22:54)

People can identify their authentic reason for pursuing fitness to find success in meeting their goals and maintaining a long-term routine. This can help them build the desire to do those workouts when they don't want to. Lonnie, Marty, and Chad discuss this concept and their authentic reasons for pursuing fitness and prioritizing fitness as an essential part of their lives.

The importance of making fitness a priority (28:08)

Chad speaks on how his ideologies on fitness relate to his books. He explains that every obstacle can be overcome or turned into an excuse. While obstacles will always arise and cannot be controlled, we can consider our fitness history and determine ways to overcome them when we experience them. Making new plans to overcome fitness obstacles can make it easier to maintain workout plans and prioritize fitness. Chad also shares the fitness habit he practices daily and how he psychologically programmed himself to make this habit into an on-going wellness routine.

Links mentioned:

This Episode’s #HealthyHabit - Practice Accountability. To learn more about the benefits - CLICK HERE

Chad’s Website:

https://makefitnessapriority.com/

Chad’s Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/make.fitness.a.priority/?hl=en

Make Fitness A Priority Book Series:

https://www.amazon.com/Make-Fitness-Priority-Six-Week-Course/dp/1701661179