Hello everyone. I was in Florida last week and attended the Annika Sorenstam Golf School. I was fortunate to have worked with Charlotta Sorenstam, Annika’s sister and past player on the LPGA. I spent three days of intense work on my golf swing, learning how to transfer my weight through my hips, to increase power in the swing. It was frustrating. When you have a swing that works 70% of the time, then trying to change what you do, mechanically, is hard. By the third day, I finally felt the weight transfer that needed to happen. But I am hours and hours of practice away from getting it to happen naturally.

These past few days got me thinking of how this relates to fitness and habits. For example: how we built habits throughout our life then decide to make a healthy change and find it so difficult to make it stick. Charlotta explained that time is needed to invest in change. Things just don’t happen over night. How many of us try and clean up our eating and then in a few days expect to get on the scale and see weight loss? You might see a few pounds, but we all know that is just water.

True change needs time and repetition. A tip that I recommend with my clients is implementing one change every two weeks. For example, maybe your first change is – drinking more water. For two weeks, all you are going to focus on is drinking more water. The benefit of increasing water will be noticeable in 4 days. At 14 days it slowly is becoming a habit and you are FEELING the change.

Once that change gets ingrained in your every day habits, we implement another change. They are small, but manageable. By the end of the second 14 days, your first change(water drinking) has become a habit and your second change is half way there.

If professional golfers needs hours and hours of practice and repetition to get a repeatable golf swing, we shouldn’t expect change to happen in only a few days. I also think that we are really hard on ourselves. If we don’t see that change we get discouraged and maybe fall off the wagon. We should really allow ourselves a little forgiveness. It takes time for change and results to happen.

If you are interested in bringing some change into your life, from a fitness and wellness perspective. Send me a note, and lets work together.

Michelle