4% of your day

This is a “repost” of a rant I had on my Instagram account (@MrCoreBlend if you want to be one of literally DOZENS of happy followers) after I saw a sign from another gym that said “A Workout is only 4% of your day”. And MAN, do I hate that. I hate trivializing an hour of someone else’s day just because your time doesn’t have much value. The same is true when people offer out unhelpful “advice” like, “it’s just about priorities”. Sure, it is about priorities, but maybe their priority is providing for their family and spending time with their family and they don’t know yet how to condense exercise into shorter, more efficient sessions where they can be MORE productive and have MORE energy for their family. But that’s not how those messages go. It’s just “it’s only 4% of your day, how DON'T you have time for it?” Or, “it’s just about priorities….and yours are wrong because you don’t spend 8 hours a week in the gym like me.”

Dang, I’m doing it again. Anyway, here’s my original post:

Why do we celebrate every small victory for our clients? Why do we cheer every time you walk in the door? Because we know that despite what some condescending posts on IG say, your workout is a LOT more than 4% of your day.

“A one hour workout is four percent of your day.”

I’ve seen this trite, patronizing workout ‘motivation’ shared multiple times and it always bothers me. Trainers, gym people, etc. fail to get people to work out and change their lives for the better because they lack empathy and understanding. It’s why every January they see a massive rush of members that will be gone by March. They came to you last year hoping you’d understand, hoping that you’d help, and you failed them. So go ahead, 23 year old personal trainer with no responsibilities except for paying your rent on time, tell that working parent that ‘a workout is only 4% of their day’. I’m sure that you dividing 1/24 is all they needed to hear and now they’re going to do it every day. But they do need to sleep right? 8 hours a night? So now that workout is 1/16 or 6.25% right? And they work all day, so now it’s 1/8 or 12.5%. And they have to take their kids to soccer practice and get them up in the morning. That takes 3 hours. So now we’re down to 1/5 or 20%. And maybe they want to cook dinner for their family, eat and then clean up afterwards. And let’s say they’re a super parent and get that done in an hour. We’re now down to 1/4 or 25%.

So MAYBE the reason that every January is a revolving door is because you don’t know who you’re talking to. Yes, it is 4% of YOUR day, but you’re asking them for 25% of theirs. And maybe you’d work harder during that hour if you realized they were giving 25% of their time up, not 4%. And maybe instead of throwing your hands up in frustration when your client is 5 minutes late, you’d celebrate that they’re making the time for it at all.

That was it. Thank you for reading. If you ever struggle with making time for your wellness, reach out to me at Corey@coreblendtraining.com and I’ll give some of my best time saving advice to you.

-Corey