Consistency and Accountability in Your Training

To improve in anything that you attempt, whether that be sport, music, fitness or any other activity you are undertaking, you need to be consistent in your effort over a period of time to achieve your goals. You need to be consistently doing the things that you need to do to improve. I will use fitness as an example below.

A lot of golfers want to improve their flexibility to make a better golf swing so they decide that they will do some stretching to help with this goal. They might spend twenty minutes one day doing some stretches and this is great. The problem arises when that same person doesn’t do any more stretching for the next week. They might then do some more stretching once a week for the following few weeks and be frustrated because they have not improved. They might come to the conclusion that stretching isn’t for them and they won’t ever be flexible. The problem that this person is having is not that stretching doesn’t work for them or they will never be flexible, it is the fact that they were not consistent in their attempt to gain more flexibility.

So, this leads us to the question, how do you be more consistent in your efforts? The simple answer to this is to me more accountable in your training and I will outline some simple strategies below to help you with this.

Use A Training Partner

The simplest way to be accountable is to have someone else help you be accountable. If you train with a partner, which might be a personal trainer or just a friend, you are much more likely to train on a consistent basis. If you make a time to train with someone you will make that appointment and be much less likely to miss a training session.

Training Log

Keeping a record of your training sessions is a great way to make you accountable as well as keeping you motivated as you see your results improve. There are several training apps on the market that you can use or you can use a simple spreadsheet like this one to keep track of your training. As you can see in the spreadsheet you can use this for tracking your golf and fitness training.

Reporting to Your Coach

As a golf coach, I like nothing more than receiving an email or text message from a student letting me know that they have just completed a training session. This lets me know that they are putting into practice the things we have been working on. This helps me as a coach know that they are motivated to improve and it helps the student stay accountable for their training. To me, this is a win-win situation.

These are just a few simple ideas and I would love to hear your suggestions in the comments below.

Until next time,

Brent Davis