Ritual - The 30-minute gym

Read Time: 2 mins

It’s often underestimated how much effort is actually required to foster and sustain positive change. In previous posts,we’ve talked about how the keys to success include creating sustainable habits and intentionally playing the long game. Today’s topic is an add-on to these, and the message is a little harsh, but often necessary: if you want change, it’s on you.

Let me explain. There are lots of services, products, gadgets, and people out there that offer ‘fitness’. Some services will help you stay accountable and create conducive training environments, and some feel cold, impersonal and uninviting. The former will likely make it easier for you to keep coming back, and the latter may require a little more effort. However, regardless of the type of service you choose, your progress is largely on you. Sure, you can choose a service that’s fun or that provides better training, but ultimately, the reality of it is that the best program in the world won’t be able to force you to show up if you just don’t want you to. Having access to the best service won’t bring you results unless you actually use it. Similarly, nobody is going to be able to get you to start eating broccoli and spinach if you don’t want to.

Positive change like improving your health and body composition requires you to take personal responsibility for your thoughts and actions. While this might sound obvious, our experience has shown us that people often take a couple of years to really get comfortable with this thought, and I’m hoping that reading this might help accelerate the acceptance process for you. The part that most people don’t realize is that to truly take personal responsibility, you often have to to adjust how you perceive things.

For example, you might be at a point where you know to aid your performance in the gym, you should start eating better quality food or getting better quality sleep. If you view this situation as restrictive and frustrating, it’s going to be really hard to stick to the new habit, especially when you’re tired at the end of the day and just want to eat something convenient. However, if you instead choose to view the change as something you want because you know it’ll give you cleaner, more regulated energy levels throughout the day and keep you in a better mood, on top of being able to do better at the gym, the task seems much more manageable and desirable. The whole thing feels more positive and encouraging because you’re choosing to focus on the good that will come with this new change. You put yourself in a position that’s better suited to playing the long game. Instead of feeling restricted, you’re setting yourself up to feel more liberated and empowered.

The same concept applies to the exercise you do. You can look at physical activity as torture, as something you have to force yourself to get through, but that will make it a struggle for you every time you think about exercise. Instead, you can choose to connect with your body, embrace the challenge, enjoy the feeling after a good session, and find strength in the fact that you aren’t afraid to push hard. If done right, you’ll find yourself trying to fit more of it into your week because it’s something you want to do.

It often takes people a couple of years to cross that line and fully realize that if they want change, it’s on them. The real life-changing stuff comes only after you’ve taken personal responsibility for your own health. It’s at that point that you really start getting what you want out of the fitness services you’ve chosen. My hope is that by reading this post, you’ll feel inspired you to start forming your unique version of “why I want this” and “what this means to me”, so you can start to make the changes you want.

Don’t be afraid to live the life and love the vegetables. Do it for a clear mind and a healthy body, and for your own deeper reasons why. Don’t work against yourself - work for yourself.

Be brave enough to take charge.

Fundamentals. 

Efficiency. 

Read time: 2 mins

Tiana has been a client for about a year and a half, and runs a cool health and wellness website, Tayste.sg, that showcases gut-friendly, gluten-, nut- and dairy-free, real, affordable eats and recipes for people with food intolerances or allergies. In this post, she talks about her inspiring journey to vibrant health. Enjoy!

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Patience, perseverance, endurance – those are three qualities I’ve never had especially when it comes to exercise. With exercise, I’ve mostly been a “let’s try something out for a few months”, or “let’s do that once or twice a week and see” type person - I was what you’d call a non-committal exerciser. This type of mentality about exercise never actually bore any fruit or brought any real results for me. So, when my husband lost a whopping six kilograms after his first year at Ritual (20 mins per workout, 3 times a week), I was stunned. Did he do anything extra? Was his diet plan sensible? All I knew was that Ritual was the only gym he was going to, and that he had one of their meal replacement shakes after each session.

Given the yo-yo type of exerciser I was, I thought perhaps Ritual was going to be the game changer I had been looking for. At that point, I was really out of shape, my second baby had just turned one and I was still trying to lose that last 5 kilograms that wouldn’t budge (I was using some cardiovascular workout videos and doing some Zumba on and off during this time). Mostly, I didn’t feel connected to the body I had. Emotionally, the pregnancy was difficult and I had gained a substantial amount of weight (over 20 kilograms!). I managed to lose most of it with diet plans, but I was unsure if I would ever see a remotely toned belly ever again.

And so my journey began. The plan was simple – go to Ritual 3 times a week. No procrastination, no excuses, rain or shine. As prepared as I was mentally for my body to obey my will, the going was tough! Ritual welcomed me to the world of burpees, mountain climbers, squats, and deadlifts. Every squat hurt. Each burpee wasn’t properly executed. Deadlifts - completely new territory. And the sets were often fast-paced and high intensity! I was hardly ever even a low intensity kind of girl, and I’m now doing high intensity stuff!? I struggled with every session at the start.

That being said, Ritual is the place where when you struggle, you get even more support from the coaches. You get taught the right ways to go about doing the exercises, especially when you’re struggling. Soon, you start to realise some of the benefits to training at a high intensity: it’s mind-clearing, stress-relieving and leaves you winded enough so you can’t think about anything else while you’re doing it!

I carried on this way for a while, tolerating the burn from week to week, and then one day, 8 months into having made Ritual a habit, I found that my muscles and body had finally gotten more used to the burn, and the sessions started to feel easier! Hurray, it was the first time I felt I had reached some kind of milestone and that in itself was a reward! It was at that point that I realised my transformation had really begun, because the thing that made me so uncomfortable from the outset, I really began to love – my Ritual workouts.

My focus shifted from my weight to my health and my personal best. Ritual became a cheerleader for my fitness goals, and a place where I found community, friends, inspiration, support and so much more.

Now, 1.5 years into my Ritual journey – I know my health and fitness is a constant work in progress. There aren't any shortcuts. I’ve lost the weight I set out to lose, but now instead of focusing on the scale I'm more interested in how well my body functions, what kind of exercises will make me stronger, and what other things I can do with my health that will keep me around for my family for a long, long time. Ritual got my fitness sorted and showed me what my body was capable of doing, and that changed my mind about how I felt about my body. I just wished this could have happened to me earlier in my life, so thank you Ritual for giving me a new lease of energy, reviving my once tired spirit and body, so I can now go pursue all the other things I enjoy!

Be Brave,

Scaled to your fitness level.