Grit
Boost Results By Add “Building Grit” to Your Goals
Written By Kyle Ligon - MovementLink.FIT Head Coach
This article is part of MovementLink’s Goal Setting Article Series.
Your fitness journey is going to present you with plenty of situations that challenge your resolve. You do not need to be perfect, but following through on what you want yourself to do is going to be one of the main factors that will determine your success. Someone who adheres to a poor program is likely to outperform someone who has a perfect program, but a low adherence level. Luckily, your mental toughness, your girt, your ability to follow through on what you wish you would do can be developed!
Inspired by two books I loved reading and highly recommend, Grit - The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth and Mindset by Carol Dwek, in this article I am going to discuss grit, its role in your fitness and health journey, and how you can be sure to develop your grit and take advantage of its extreme power.
One of my favorite educational moments from the book Mindset, was a study performed on children that looked at the effects of praising their intelligence vs praising their effort. The intelligent praise reinforced a fixed mindset with the group of children being told things like, “You’re so smart.” In the fixed mindset, qualities like being smart can become mistakenly ingrained into people’s identity, causing them to act in ways that protect their identity. The effort praise group reinforced a growth mindset as the children were told things like, “You’re improving so much because you’re putting in a lot of effort.” This type of praise puts the emphasis on things that are directly in the children’s control, their effort. In a growth mindset, qualities like being smart are viewed as things that can be developed through effort and this perspective of “potential gain” vs “you are who you are” drives different actions and compounds in enormous ways across our life.
After receiving one of the two styles of praise, the children were given a challenging puzzle to see how they would react, and the results were profound. Children who were praised for their intelligence tended to try and avoid the puzzle when it got challenging, fearing that the mere fact they were being challenged signified that they may not be as smart as everyone seemed to think. If they were smart, shouldn’t it be easy? And what happens if they do try hard, but fail? Not trying hard is the optimal approach in a fixed mindset as they can protect their identity by falling back on, “I could have done it if I really tried.” The other children, who were praised for their effort, were more likely to dig in deeper as they got challenged. That willingness to be challenged is an attribute of the growth mindset and sets the stage for grit.
By adding “building grit” as one of your fitness goals, you can shift yourself towards a growth mindset. Grit is built through exposure to challenge and since everyone who is looking to improve their life will be challenged, those actively focused on embracing challenge and building grit can look at being challenged not as proof of some inherent weakness inside them, but as opportunity. As we navigate challenge after challenge, our grit builds and we become more capable of navigating adversity.
Grit = Passion + Perseverance
Passion is knowing what you want and why you want it. I think Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”
is relevant to not just life, but almost everything and the more I embrace really getting to the root of why I want myself to do things, the easier it is act like the person I want to be. Without a strong “why”, or passion, there are no roots to hold you up under stress.
Sometimes people think passion will drive motivation (which it does) which will make putting in effort easy (which most of the time it doesn’t). Passion drives my motivation to strategize, plan, and commit to the efforts that I think will give me the best chance of success, but, in the moment, passion does not make me want to do everything or doing things easy. But, that passion and a clearly defined Why can quickly remind me of why I’m willing to put forth effort, even when I don’t feel like it.
Passion is our “why” and perseverance is our “how”. Especially along a fitness journey, how do you succeed? It’s simple, be honest with yourself, put forth the required effort, and don’t give up. Perseverance is an ability to follow-through and act on what you want yourself to do, even when it’s the harder choice, consistently over long periods of time. It is about being willing to work hard for things that matter to you and accept that the obstacles and challenges along the way are just part of the process. It’s about being ready for results to not happen as fast as you would like and accept that sometimes the way past the obstacles is not going to be immediately clear…it’s all just part of the process.
Perseverance is so powerful because effort is at the core of success. The more effort you put towards something, the more likely you are to succeed. But, it doesn’t stop there! Effort compounds exponentially on top of itself. The more effort towards improving something over time, the higher skill you will develop. Not only is that effort pushing you forward, but the higher skill makes your effort go even further. Effort is the key. It is what is in our control. A growth mindset, a challenge is enhancing mindset, and grit, all drive effort.
You’ve likely heard Malcom Gladwell’s theory that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is generally what makes an expert. It’s important to emphasize that the 10,000 hours is not just about accumulating a lot of time doing something, it’s 10,000 hours of deliberately trying to improve that distinguishes those who eventually become experts. Look at how many poor drivers there are on the roads - many have accumulated 10,000 hours, but how many people have actually spent 10,000 hours actively trying to improve their driving skills?
At the gym, I am exposed to the stark difference between those who just show up and go through the motions vs those who workout with the added deliberate intent. This is especially evident when out-of-town drop-ins visit our gym, many of whom have been CrossFitting for 10+ years. It is surprisingly and disappointingly rare to see one of these “experienced” drop-ins actually have good technique. Oftentimes, even our newer members will have better technique than these 10+ year drop-ins. While most of these drop-ins have accumulated a ton of time working out for scores and checking the boxes, at MovementLink we are performing the majority of our workouts For Intent, Intensity, and Technique (F.I.I.T). Consistently working out across a long period of time is a prerequisite for results, but not sufficient for all the results we are looking for.
By layering in a focus on technique development under stress, we are not just accumulating training years, we are accumulating quality training years, which produces results that diverge in extraordinarily positive ways from those who just focus on scores every day.
When the workouts get hard, this type of focus sets a higher bar which is harder to adhere to. Grit helps us hang in there during those big, blockbuster moments where something is hard and we push on, but, often overlooked, grit is probably most impactful in the more mundane, foundational, day in and day out efforts and choices it takes to accumulate the necessary, quality effort across long timespans. The extra attention and mental energy it takes to put your ego aside and workout F.I.I.T. takes more grit than simply going hard and getting it done. Oftentimes, things like practicing skills when it’s more fun just to play the game is the more boring choice, but is also the choice that will produce the most results. Delayed gratification is required to consistently choose the right option over what we feel like doing in the moment.
When we understand why we are choosing that option - because it’s the option that leads to the most growth and to the life we want to live - our grit allows us to put in the required amounts and the right types of effort.
So, how do you develop grit?
It is actually very simple.
First, understand the anchor that is a fixed mindset, and choose to instead adopt a growth mindset and a stress is enhancing mindset and start identifying as someone who is willing to hang in there when challenging things arise.
Second, define what you want your life to be, so you understand why you may need to make the harder choice sometimes - Modern Goal Setting.
Third, at every opportunity, start following through on what you want yourself to do instead of what you feel like doing.
Fourth, proactively develop grit by manufacturing opportunities for you to solidify your gritty identity.
Manufactured challenges not only allow us to practice adversity at lower stakes, but a lack of being challenged in our life can actually shrink an important brain region, the Anterior Midcingulate Cortex, central to grit - How to Increase Your Willpower.
To build our grit, there are many challenging things that we could take on, and in the spirit of spillover benefits, we want to make choices that not only build our grit, but additionally push forward our careers, relationships, fitness, and health! Hard workouts F.I.I.T. are a perfect fit as we get to build grit alongside our Non-Negotiable Fitness Goals. Does public speaking scare you? Join Toastmasters! You can build your grit and improve your public speaking skills, boosting your career! There are countless examples of choosing difficult things that also push your life in the direction you want it to go.
Here’re my final thoughts:
Along with choosing an effective, real world approach, The MovementLink Method, if you add “Building Grit” to your goals, your fitness journey’s chances of success will skyrocket. Challenges along the way are inevitable and when a goal of yours is to build grit, then every challenge becomes not just something you need to overcome, but an opportunity to build your grit. Hard, difficult, etc. is normal and it’s important to remember that if you are struggling with something, you are not alone and there is nothing inherent about you that will stop you from pushing the needle in the right direction. Simply put in the right types of efforts and hang in there long enough and you will succeed in your fitness journey.
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