Coach Roc Hardwood Tells You...

Can you get TOTALLY fit in just 100 days?

Tough question, and I don't need the "guy" answer to that one with lots of grunts and testosterone speaking.

Think about where you are now in your fitness life and goals, and think about where you want to be, 100 days from now. Then all you have to do is find the "yellow brick road" between those two points and you're there. Easy, right? Why's nobody chiming up?

Why 100 Days and not 30 days?

The answer to that is simple: psychology and physiology tells us that it takes about three weeks (21 days) to both break an old habit and create a new one. Ever wonder why it is that when folks on Intervention get shipped off for rehab, they need to stay under tight control for at LEAST the first thirty days? That's when it's the hardest to do: you get bored with it, you get tired and achy, and (worse!) your hormones start kicking around because you're body is doing something different for once! Three weeks to set that new plan in action.

That's all well and good with drug rehab, but in the case of body re-shaping, you're not going to see significant RESULTS in the mirror in that first month (figure you're safely losing 2 pounds/week) so if you put your sights on just that first month, you have a BIG chance of disappointment because you can't SEE significan change, even though your body is going through a lot of positive transformation.

So when you start a big fitness, health, wellness plan like this - look a bit farther down the calendar and give it 100 days. Just between 3 and 4 months. You should start to see some shape-shifting in your body, your skin tone will change, you'll be over the aches of your initial startup, and your hunger pangs will be very well under control.

So I don't care what your final outcome is planned to be: my job is to get you started on that journey and keep you moving at a good pace. If it's to lose weight, if it's to shape up in the gym, if it's to pay down your credit cards and get that credit score up to the house-buying range, ALL of those you can attack with a 100 day plan. I've even made it easy for you by including a sample copy of my 100 Days Fit calendar here. (Note that this is a MS WORD document so you'll need that on your computer to make it work.)

In this case, the "fit" that I'm doing now runs from January 1st into (guess what!) Tax Day - April 15th. 100 days. I'll be needing a treat about then anyway, trust me. Print this calendar out BIG and put it someplace you can see it every day. Mine is printed on 11x17 "tabloid" size paper, and taped to the wall in my office right beside my desk.

Pick the day you're going to start and label that "Day 1" and continue forward on the blocks as I've done, to "Day 100." Then fill in the blanks EVERY day, even the "cheat" and "skip" days. All that is just as important, when you look back and wonder why you had a sucky week. Well - you'll know: too many skips and too many cheats gets you off-track.

I do it the Kindergarten way and went to Target and bought a bunch of those teacher stickers in the school supplies section (have you ever noticed that those stickers are all positive? There's never one that says "You SUCK!" or "What a screwup!") I use "Red" stickers for cardio days, "Green" stickers for muscle/workout days, "Blue" stickers for mind/meditation/yoga days, and "purple" stickers for rest days. If it's a ship, I "X" that day with a thick black Sharpie. I weigh in and measure once a week (Saturdays is my day - just choose one and stick with it) cause more than that is wasting good workout time AND obsessing on a number when what you're going for is overall heatlh and good looks (or good credit scores or whatever.) DON'T be married to the scale! Do it once a week, write it down, get to work on the next week!

Beyond this poster with stickers on it (your friends will think you're back in the second grade again but you look better than they do in a Speedo anyway, so screw them) you can (and should!) journal as much as you want to keep very good detail on what you did/what worked well, what didn't work/what failed. Probably one of the best long-term workout journalists I've read is Bob Paris, who writes about his lifetime of workout journals in his book, Prime. (it's out of print not but you can probably find used copies at Amazon:

 Of course what you want to do next is move on to the next 100 days (updated goal) and so on, for as many YEARS as you want to carry this along. The secret is - break down that BIG thing that you need to do, into what you can do Every Day for 100 days, to move you toward accomplishing it. You'll get there.

Now get down on the floor and give me 50.