What does Happiness have to do with Fitness? (Spoiler Alert: EVERYTHING...)

This is the third, and shortest, blog post is a part of a mini-series defining our 3 objectives of what we're trying to create for our members in our PEAK Gyms: Happiness, Health & Fitness!

The last couple of weeks we have defined what we consider being healthy levels of fitness, and in reverse: fit levels of health, (read below) which we in this blog will tie together with one of our main focuses: making our members HAPPY.

• What is True Fitness?
• What is a Healthy Fitness Level?

And now in this blog we'll talk about how, in a world that is filled with stress, illness, and many other "problems" we want our gyms to be a place where we don't only combat those - but also allow our members to kind of "forget about the outside world" for a while as they're getting their training in!

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Why is being HAPPY in the gym important?

Well in short: making your gym your Happy Place means that you will be likely to come back more often, and by now we know that CONSISTENCY is the (not so) "secret ingredient" to RESULTS.

So, by focusing on making our PEAK Gyms a place where our members can be Happy, we know that we are also creating the results that they were looking for when they first came to us.

There are a few other reasons why we focus on Happiness:

• If we do our job right, our members have something to look forward to every day (their classes with us). 
• 1 hour in the gym can carry over to many hours of Happiness outside of the gym = we're also effecting our members real life. 
• Being Happy IS being Healthy!*
  *We have heard many times over in our individual 1-on-1 sessions with our members that by going to the gym they have managed to reduce for instance their dependence on anti depressive medication, and/or found a better balance in their nutrition because they no longer "comfort eat" when feeling stressed.

Ok, that sounds cool but what does that have to do with Fitness?

Well we kind of covered it above, but if you are training in a space where you are HAPPY, we believe that you can focus on being HEALTHY first, and then FIT comes almost as a side effect.

Now that then also means that YOU must chose to make the gym your happy place. Remind yourself that you GET to do this on a daily basis, and remind yourself why you got into the gym from day 1 - likely you were trying to achieve one of the below things:

• Lose weight. 
• Gain strength.
• Become more confident.
• Find a supportive social environment where you could be yourself.
• Get away from pains & aches. 
• Look better naked (remember last week's note about this being a very common reason for joining us).

We believe that one of the best ways to stay HAPPY in the Gym is to remember WHY you started. It's easy to start comparing yourself with others, staring yourself blind at "PB's", or forgetting that "being good at CrossFit (or other training form)" is highly unlikely to be the reason you signed up for a gym from the very beginning..?

I get it, but how can I(!) ensure that I create a Happiness within my fitness routine?

There are some ways to re-focus your mind to help you achieve exactly the above:

• Instead of focusing only on "how much I lifted", or "how fast I went", focus on the fact that you SHOWED UP.
• Instead of focusing on the person that "beat you", give yourself a high five for pushing YOURSELF.
• Instead of focusing on if you got that PB or not, be proud if you MOVED BETTER.

You see, if you choose to SHOW UP on a 3-5x times per week basis and you constantly PUSH YOURSELF, while also prioritising MOVING WELL, well then we know that you will actually keep on improving your fitness levels forever.

So in summary: we believe that if you focus on the Happy & Healthy first, you can easily get the Fitness Results we're looking at as well! 

Happy, Healthy & Fit. 

Yes, this last Blog might seem quite self explanatory but we believe that too many human beings out there forget about one of the key components within the Health & Fitness sphere: HAPPINESS.

If we start by focusing on creating spaces where human beings can be happy first, we then gain their trusts to help and guide them towards a healthy lifestyle, and then (and only then) should we start pushing towards an increased fitness level.

You see, we don't believe that happiness comes from being fit, but we do believe that fitness can come out of being happy with what you do training wise - focus on your happiness for the week ahead and we bet that you'll be amazed by how healthy & fit you feel as well!

Your Team at PEAK