Preparation Time

If you've attended my ZUMBA classes and wondered how in the world do I have so much energy, well, I'll tell you my secret: I spend the entire day preparing for this class.

As hard as my ZUMBA class is, if I prep well, then that class won't feel like much of a work-out for me. Yes, there are times when I'm struggling in class, but overall, I'm able to do everything in class that I planned to do. There are no exercises in that class that are too hard for me to do, all because I spent the entire day prepping for the class.

Now, you think, "Wait a minute, your class is only 45 minutes long! Don't you think spending an entire day prepping for a 45-minute class is overkill?" And yes, it seems like overkill. When you start your day, you don't think much about my fitness class. You have other things to worry about. If you're truly committed, you MIGHT spend two hours prepping for class. But most of you probably spend no more than 15 to 30 minutes prepping for my class, and that time is probably spent on eating a light snack, drinking an energy beverage, or just simply getting your clothes ready for class.

For the entire day, I may eat no more than TWO (yes, TWO) things: a protein salad and oatmeal, and maybe I might have a banana or two. I take a multivitamin supplement and a chlorophyll supplement. I drink a juice that I made in my juicer that consists of beets, apples, red cabbage, and a couple of other veggies. Then I drink a cold brew coffee  3 hours before class. If I feel for some reason that my sugar is a bit low, I would have a quick sugary drink right before class. In addition, I do no other work outs before class. The goal is to get my body to direct as much energy to my cardiovascular system and my skeletal muscular system as possible, and when done right, my preparation would make my highly intense class seem ALMOST like a breeze.

Now again, you're wondering, "But your class is only 45 minutes! Why would you waste your entire day for just one 45-minute class?" Well, here's the answer: those 45 minutes may be the most important 45 minutes for YOU, or for someone else. I've been told that my classes are the highlights for the week for some people. My classes might be the only things some people look forward to each week, so I want those 45 minutes to be the BEST 45 minutes that such people could experience.

But you know what? Life works the same way. Preparation time is always significantly much longer than show time. Back in high school and college, I participated in theatre, and in college I was briefly a theatre major. A typical show would run no longer than 2 hours. But guess how long the prep times are for just ONE show? MONTHS! Plus, you spend almost EVERYDAY rehearsing for that show, that short, two-hour show, and you might have a small part to play. But no matter how small your part is, you're still spending almost everyday rehearsing with the rest of the cast.

But all that prep time would pay off during show time. The audience would get a great experience and nobody would ask for their money back due to a bad performance. Yes, preparation time was short, but the end results were well worth it.

Success in anything in life requires long preparation time. You might feel at times that you're spending way too long preparing for something, but really, the longer you spend on preparation, the better the impact would be during show time.

Whenever I'm asked to deliver a short talk in church, I would spend a week preparing for it. Every time I give a short talk, I would have people express how much my words meant to them. That short, 5-minute delivery may have had a life-long impact on one person. And when you think about it, one week of preparation doesn't compare to a life-time of positive changes.

Just recently, a regular ZUMBA participant experienced chronic foot pain that came on and off for years and years and years. No doctor was able to figured out what was wrong. Then when she came to me and described the pain and how it came on and off, I immediately thought that something she was eating triggered it, and that it could be wheat. So, on the next day, she reduced her wheat consumption. Then on the day after that, her foot pain went away. She only spent a few minutes talking with me about her problem, but it took me YEARS of study to come to my conclusion of food being a trigger for her foot issue (and it was just in ONE foot). That very short conversation we had would lead to a lifetime of relief from foot pain.

Show time is always short. Preparation is always long. But as long as you're prepping for the right thing, then your show performance would ALWAYS have a lasting impact on somebody.

My daughter has recently taken an interest in animation. She has an app on an iPad that allows her to draw pictures and animate them as if she was making a cartoon. She definitely has the potential in doing some serious work with this app, but her main problem is that she doesn't spend enough time on her work. So, when she would show me her end product, it would be good at first, but then as the show continues, things looked rushed and the overall story line (which I am BIG on) wouldn't make much sense. So, I'm teaching her that if you want to do good work, you need to spend TIME on it. All serious artists spend hours and hours (if not DAYS and WEEKS) on their art. She needs to significantly increase her prep time so that her show time would blow me away.

Before she showed me any of her art work, she would prep me by saying, "I worked really hard on this." But I would tell her that simply saying "I worked really hard on this" means nothing. I want to know how much time you spent on your work. If you spent only an hour doing your work and then you want to spend the rest of the day doing something else, then you didn't work hard on it at all. Yes, I'm tough on her and on my son, but only because I see potential in them, and the older they get, the more of a push they need to be the best at what they do.

If YOU want to be best at anything, then you need to prep, prep, prep, and prep some more. I just have a very lowly title of personal trainer. With that title, you don't expect me to know much about anything that doesn't deal with exercise. But if you've ever talked with me, you would know that I know quite a bit about the medical side of things. When I'm not teaching a fitness class, I'm studying my books. My goal is to be that go-to person in all things related to health. I even have a drug reference app on my phone so I could quickly look up any drug on the market and know almost anything I want to know about those drugs. Why do I, just a lowly personal trainer, need to know about drugs? Because I want to be that guy who knows everything that relates to health. Plus, if someone is having trouble losing weight, I could ask them what drugs they are taking and look it up on my phone app to see if slow weight loss is a side effect.

You could always perform without much (or any) preparation. But you could NEVER perform WELL without significant prep time. Meat cooked in a smoker tastes much better than meat cooked in a microwave. A tomato that ripens slowly tastes better than a tomato that has been forced to ripen as they do on commercial farms. A house built in a year is better than a house built in a day. When the prep time is there, the end product would leave a significant impact on your life.

Don't live your life rushed. Spend some quality time on something, because when you do, life would become richer for you.