A few months back, my dad tells me he wants to ski in Hokkaido to celebrate his 60th birthday this year. You would think as his son I would be super supportive and telling him, "Heck yes pops, go for it!" But I wasn't too delighted to hear this and in fact had way more concern conjuring up in my mind than excitement for him. This is because my dad is out of shape. I mean someone who sees him for the first time would probably think he looks healthy, he's not overweight, physically he looks great for someone about to turn 60 this year, but I'm his son, and as an athlete I know he is nowhere near fit enough to all of sudden go skiing when his most intense exercise for the past few years has been going up less than 20 stairs to our house coming home from work. But I don't really mention this to him, because my mom and I have been trying to get him to exercise regularly and get him on a regimen but my dad has never been able to maintain consistency and so my mom and I kind of gave up.

However, a month or so ago I asked him, "Dad, be honest with me, with your work schedule right now, how many days a week can you workout and stay consistent without fail, realistically speaking?" and he answered, "Realistically I can do once a week." And so it was decided that I would put my full focus and effort into training my dad once a week. And today we finished week 3.

See until that moment, the way both my mom and I approached trying to get my dad to workout was to just either put him in some class at the local gym, or get him to do 2 or 3 days of working out at home, or more recently have him try and follow a routine via an app.

Now there were two main issues with my previous attempts to get my dad to workout consistently.

One was that he had a lack of inner drive and motivation to regularly workout, and I've since realized that at the end of the day if the person doesn't have the willingness to change from within forcing change on someone will always end up being futile. But this isn't to say my dad has no interest in staying healthy, he does, he just didn't know where to start, so in that sense because I have become more knowledgeable in terms of optimizing health, I have been able to help him bridge that gap in knowledge. I've been able to teach him how to start taking control of his health and life through dietary choices, exercise, sleeping, and recently even Bitcoin (yes he asks for the rent I pay him in bitcoin lol), and the drive to change and improve his health is beginning to develop within him at an internal level.

And the other reason was simply the fact that I never asked him what would be manageable in terms of weekly exercise according to his schedule, I just wrote a regimen I selfishly thought would work for him.

Which leads me to the whole point of this post. When it comes to exercise and any sort of positive change you want to make in your life, it's okay to start small, in fact you're probably better off starting small. We often want to do everything at once, change our diet, exercise everyday, do this and that, but then end up not being able to stay consistent and then frustratingly find ourselves back where we started. It's the whole yo-yo diet psychology that occurs when embarking on drastic diets. You may lose weight rapidly due to the extreme challenge, but inevitably, you end up rebounding because the stress and abrupt change prove to be unsustainable in the long term. Same goes for exercise, it's all about being able to do something that you know you can do consistently, without fail, and gradually build that momentum over a long period of time. Like how in investment we say, 'It's not about timing the market, it's about time in the market.' Exercise, diet, and health is the same in that we want to be in 'the market' for as long as possible, making adjustments along the way, but maintaining consistency and discipline.

Thus for my dad, his sweet spot seems to be once a week and as of week 3 his momentum and confidence is already building. And because it's only once a week I'm able to accompany and guide him through his whole session, which at the moment consists of basic body weight exercises, isometrics, resistance band exercises, and some interval training for cardio.

We still have time until he puts those skis on in December, and now I'm much more optimistic and excited for my dad to go out and enjoy himself!

So if you're having a difficult time staying consistent with exercise start small, get some momentum, and gradually build from there. You may be surprised how much you can improve your health just by putting aside a focused hour per week and sticking to it for a meaningful amount of time.