This week I thought I would be a little different and share with you a day in the life of a Sheffield Personal Trainer.

Sporadically, over the next few months I plan to share with you exactly what goes on during the week of running LEP Fitness. The ups, the downs, the work, what I do, how I cope, how I stay motivated, what I read, what I have learned, what I need to improve etc, etc.

Diaries of a Sheffield Personal Trainer : New Testimonial Video 

Around 6 months ago, after listening to the Paul Mort podcast, I was inspired to design a testimonial video for LEP Fitness. I sat down and tried to come up with a plan of action.

BUT . . . At that time I failed miserably! Writers block!

It was one of those times where your mind tricks you into believing you can’t do it and churns out phrases like . . . It will not work! No one will help! You can’ do it! Just stick to what you do best . . . being a Sheffield personal trainer ! All of these negative thoughts and strange emotions streamed into my consciousness whilst trying so desperately to concentrate and make some sort of progress.

So what did I do?

Like so many of us I put it to the back of my mind and continued on with life without seeking further exploration. If I forgot, well . . . it did not matter. I had not failed because I did not try.

Feel familiar?

So many of us are afraid to fail! We fear attempting new projects, and fail to live out our dreams because we fear they may not happen. It sucks but it is so very true.

Time To Make It Happen! 

I cannot remember exactly what provoked me to take action with the video, but something triggered just after Christmas. There was a new found belief that I could do it, I just had to try harder and find away to make it happen.

Arghhh! I did not know where to start, so I spent the day looking at other testimonial video’s online, spending a couple of hours calling businesses, finding out information. There were businesses that  would come and do the video for you. No effort.  Fantastic! Great! or was it?

Although I was happy to pay a company I realised that it would not teach me anything. What would I learn? compared with if I did it myself.

I plan on doing plenty of videos in the future and I need better skills in order to do that, I therefore made a conscious decision to carry out this task myself.

Sign From The Godzzzz!

Randomly I received a phone call from a t-shirt company, offering a deal of 25 t-shirts for 160.00 (GBP). I decided this was a great opportunity to take action and get the pendulum swinging for the video! Each client that participated would receive an LEP t-shirt.

I asked clients if they would be willing to help with video, providing they had been with LEP Fitness for longer than 3 months, and most said yes! Progress was slowly starting to happen. Ka-ching!

Er ok! now what? I had a bunch of willing people, 25 t-shirts and an I pad! how can I pull this all together? as always throughout any endeavour your thoughts will try and put you off. You cannot control your thoughts but you can control how you deal with them and whether or not you chose to believe them! Your brain will try to trick you. I did not fight the thoughts, I accepted them and continued on anyway.

Take The Leap Of Faith! 

I planned out a couple of questions and scenes and decided to just go for it, I would adapt and learn along the way.

The video took the best part of 3 weeks to make, we collected over 15 minutes worth of footage, with 19 different LEP members. It was a great laugh!

This weekend I went back to my home town, Manchester and with the help of my Dad spent 20hrs piecing together the video. It was long, it was tiring, it took us 2hrs just to get to grips with the editing program. I also realised I made the mistake of shooting the videos in portrait mode, meaning that we were limited when it came to editing. Damn!!!

Again, I had thoughts such as. . . . this is not going to work! back to the drawing board! You suck! Nice try! Maybe next time!

There were many such moments like this throughout the day, moments where I felt flustered, frustrated, lacked answers and made little or 0 progress.

If at first you don’t succeed, Try, try, try again!

We stuck together and worked hard, slowly but surely the video started coming together, it was starting to look cool. We could do it!

After a long couple of days, both giving up the full weekend, we finally completed the video! I felt a warm fuzzy feeling in my stomach, and a surge of endorphins rushed to my brain. After the final run through we both got up shook hands and gave each other a BIG hug. We had done it!

What’s the point of the story?

The point is that there are things that we want to achieve but we don’t because we are scared to fail. When starting endeavours we can be quick to give up at the first hurdle and anticipate obstacles in the way, which prevent us from moving further. There will always be obstacles in the way of any great challenge, there will always be self doubt, this is normal.

Look at any successful person and they have failed many times, lacked belief at some point and faced adversity. The true winners do not look for excuses. True winners are the ones that find away and say . . . how can I make this happen? Even if the answer is unknown or unclear to start with.

The testimonial video is no Jurassic Park, or fancy block buster. But to me this is a small achievement, a host of ideas brought together to make something unique. No matter what your goals, BIG or small if they feel important to you then you can make it happen.

With each new goal you build strength, character (just wrote a blog on this here!) and most importunity learn a ton of lessons to help you in the future.

The most important thing is to carry out what you want to achieve and make it happen. As I have shared with you many times in this post, there will always be moments of self doubt, moments when you feel like giving in, you are not good enough. But ultimately it is you that has the power to either give up or keep going.

Muchos Love,

Nick !

P.S Oh and make-sure to check out my other blogzzz here! The Ronaldo Workout was a BIG hit last week reaching  2,841 people!