Five Essential Success Skills

Five Essential Success Skills

By Joe Garcia

1.  Challenge

We take risks not to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping us.

2.  Potential

Our true potential surfaces when we dare to be the best.

3.  Commitment

Only those who are willing to risk all in pursuit of a goal have any certainty of achieving it.

4.  Effort

Many aspire to reach the top but few are willing to make the climb.

5.  Discipline

Discipline is doing what you have to, whether you want to or not.

These five issues represent just a few of the many challenges that must be faced in life.  With respect to fitness training, they must be practiced and maintained by anyone who desires to achieve success. Every client or athlete at any level of fitness who has reached a goal in fitness or life has embraced, embodied, and enforced these characteristics daily and to the last letter. In the course of my career I have designed hundreds of fitness programs for athletes and/or general population clients who were interested in goals ranging from weight loss to post-rehabilitating injuries. The success rate of these clients under the integrated and systematic approach used at Arena Fitness sky-rocketed only when they were introduced to strategies that improved the quality of “daily life.” When the client/athlete takes these responsibilities on, the trainer-client relationship becomes more affective; unified, under these core principles.

“Two heads are better than one.” In the process of my personal fitness career I have seen trainers who are famous, highly educated, and have experienced countless hours of expensive seminars. Yet, despite all the fame and experience, these trainers still failed with clients and have had inconsistent results. Was it the trainer’s fault? Maybe. In the course of my own career I have witnessed a high success rate among a small percentage of trainers that implemented success principles into the design of their fitness programs as a motivational tool to enhance their clients physical performances.

At an International Fitness Conference I attended recently they released data on client success rates that the average Personal Trainer would experience over the course of their career. They stated that from the goals set out “by the client” only 3% of the clients would have successful, undeniable results working with their trainer.

What does this mean? Were they unrealistic goals? Did the client fail to commit or did the trainer fail to execute? Assuming you’re working with a qualified and professional trainer, it means that the clients are ultimately responsible for their own results, not the trainer! Don’t misinterpret what I am saying! Before you start emailing me, hear me out. A fitness program with a Personal Trainer is only 30% of what is necessary to achieve your goals. A Trainer should never be looked at as the magical solution to all your fitness needs. He or She is more of a guide, almost like a torch in a very dark cave. You the client still have to walk out of that cave. Here is a National organization stating this fact, not to say that their program doesn’t work, but to illustrate that “results” in any fitness program are a two-part process. A comprehensive, systematic, integrated approach as well as a client/athlete dedicated to overcoming challenges, finding their true potential, creating true commitment of oneself, overcoming and embracing effort, and understanding what true discipline is.

Joe Garcia is the owner of Arena Fitness in Encino, California.

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