First Step in Building a Bulletproof Body

Wants vs. Needs – The road to building a bulletproof body.

Posted on 18. Nov, 2008 by Keith Scott in Back to Health, Fitness, Motivation

The road to building a bulletproof body starts when you begin taking care of yourself. You cannot achieve the strength necessary to fight off injury and pain, when you are already living with pain and dysfunction. You will never reach your physical potential with a painful lower back, or with an injured shoulder. Yet, many people just “blow off” their pain and injury and really have not truly wanted to get better.

When clients come to see me, many tell me that they need to lose weight. Others need to gain muscle and strength, and some need to perform better at their sport or activity.

Very few come to see me when they need to feel better. They know they need to work on their weak points, but few do. When people are in pain, most wait. They know they need to get rid of their pain and need to work on their physical problems, but still, they wait. People know when they need to lose weight, or when they need to work on their issues, but many still do not do anything about it.

The distinction here is that when it comes to actually feeling better, dealing with pain, and improving your life, people tend to wait, ignore the problems, until that need becomes an absolute need and want. Think about that for a minute.

To better illustrate this point, I recently started a fat loss boot camp. It filled up in 2 days. People will do anything to look better. When the people showed up for the boot camp, I was a little surprised at how many of the participants really were not over weight. In fact, the majority of them were in great shape. When asked, they all said they wanted to look better, lose some weight and tone up. Most did not need to lose weight, and most of them looked great. They committed to the boot camp because of their desire to look better. Basically it came down to them wanting it, not just needing to.

It is a small distinction, but an important one. When someone finally wants to feel better, he or she will find a way to do so. Needing to… is not enough I have found. Think about how long you have waited to go to the doctor when you did not feel well. Usually it takes a lot of pain for people to make that decision. It then becomes a want.

I think it probably is best when you combine your needs and wants together. If you have low back pain, you need to get it fixed. Wanting to get it fixed is the missing motivation to actually do something about it.

Too many people wait to come to me when their physical problems and pain reach a breaking point. Although their issues can be fixed in most cases, it is much tougher to deal with these issues after weeks of waiting.

The question always is, “why wait?”

If you have pain, or physical problems, teach yourself to want to get better. You need to allow yourself to want to feel good again. Needing to is never enough. People tend to hate doing what they need to do, but most will do what they want to do.

On the road to physical invincibility, the first step is learning to fix yourself. Everyone has physical problems and everyone can feel better than they do right now. People have various problems such as back pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, and various other problems. Many ignore them and go through life knowing that they need to eventually do something about it. The smart people want to get better and want to feel great again.

You will never reach all of your fitness goals and become invincible until you finally want to feel good and do something about it.

If you are hurting, or have issues, take the first step now and do something about it.