Settling in

When you start a run aiming to keep a target pace, it’s really hard to hit that pace in the first minute or so. It’s really easy to go a little bit too fast, or a bit too slow. Your pace jumps all over the place because you’ve just started.

As you get further into the run, it settles down. Time above the target pace and time below it cancels out. And after a few minutes in you’ve built a baseline that means going a little bit too fast or too slow doesn’t have a big effect on your average pace any more.

I had a great first couple of weeks in my new PT job, picking up plenty of new clients, and was really happy in the hope that this would be my trend. But then this last week hasn’t gone quite so well with attracting clients and it’s hard not to feel a bit sad about that.

And it’s like the pace run. When you’re new to something, you’re oversensitive to changes. Good weeks feel brilliant and bad weeks can be demoralising. You’ve not worked out a baseline to put it all into context, so those small chance fluctuations feel bigger than they are.

And the more you get carried away and excited by the ups, the harder the lows hit you. I recognise now that I got a bit overexcited by how well things were going in the good weeks and I’m naturally feeling disappointed that that trend didn’t continue.

So now I need to remind myself not to get carried away either by the highs or the lows, and try to see through the variations to the overall trend.

Looking across the last weeks it is overall positive – clients are choosing to sign up with me and we’re making progress together. Even where clients haven’t booked in with me, I’ve made sure their taster sessions gave them each some useful insights and tips, and maybe in the future they’ll be able to commit to a block of PT sessions. I’m making a difference in a way that goes beyond how many clients I have on my books.

The same applies to weight management, to athletic performance, to work achievements. Look at the long term trend, not the small ups and downs – it’s a much firmer basis for assessing your progress and helps you stay consistent, falling out of the traps of overconfidence on one side and demotivation on the other.

What is your long term trend, and what blips might be making it harder to see?