I was taking a Session at RISE the other day.

Madness, I know!

And I was chatting to a member.

We’ll call her Clare.

You know the score – because that’s her name.

Clare was doing pull ups on the rings.

“I struggle with this” she said.

You probably gathered all this from the blog title to be honest.

“That’s good” I replied.

“That’s what we’re after”.

Struggling is something that often gets a bad rep.

It can be a good thing. ‘

In exercise, it’s kinda essential.

We don’t need to be eyes bulging out, not able to walk for days………

But if its easy, it’s probably not going to do much.

The body doesn’t adapt and change for no reason.

If it’s doing things it can comfortably do, there will be little to no adaptation.

It’s that sweet spot.

Goldilocks.

Not too easy.

Not too hard.

———— Apply now at www.myrise.co.uk/apply if you like the idea of a programme that isn’t too easy and isn’t too hard and gets great results because of that. You know the score, don’t miss the boat by leaving it till January————

Too easy is kinda pointless.

Too hard we won’t want to do again.

Just challenging enough.

If we’re not struggling a bit by the end of something, we’d benefit from making the next one so that we did.

Failing to complete the last bit isn’t a bad thing.

Failure in exercise is where the magic happens.

Stopping a bit earlier, when it’s still relatively easy, will produce a fraction of the results.

All reps are not created equally.

If you can just about get out 10 repetitions of something then most of the benefit will come in reps 8, 9 and 10.

5 reps wouldn’t give half the benefit – much less than that.

Again, goldilocks is key.

Not so hard that we don’t enjoy it.

But remembering that struggling and failure are both good things in exercise.

Much love,

Jon ‘So, Google tells me that the Goldilocks story was originally “about an ugly old woman who enters the house of three bachelor bears during their absence. She eats their food, breaks a chair, and sleeps in a bed. She runs away when discovered. In time, the three bachelor bears became Papa, Mama, and Baby Bear. The old woman became a little girl called Goldilocks”‘ Hall

P.S. Tomorrow I’m going to cover why we particularly “struggle” with exercises like press ups, pull ups and burpees.


Jon Hall
Jon Hall

When not helping people to transform their lives and bodies, Jon can usually be found either playing with his kids or taxi-ing them around. If you'd like to find out more about what we do at RISE then enter your details in the box to the right or bottom of this page or at myrise.co.uk - this is the same way every single one of the hundreds who've described this as "one of the best decisions I've ever made" took their first step.