029 Ben Reale - Small Habits, Big Results: How to Make Running a Habit

Episode Summary

Ben Reale is the Founder of the personal training group, Condition One Fitness & Nutrition. He’s a Marathon runner, licensed attorney, and a former Marine Officer who has led more than 6,000 one-on-one training sessions and 600 small group classes. He is an expert in thoroughly evaluating someone to determine their ‘movement baseline,’ incorporating individualized corrective strategies into specific training programs as needed. Today, Whitney and Ben talk about making exercise a habit and how to overcome and work around all the potential life obstacles that can get in the way of making running a habit. They touch on rewards, ‘gaming your brain,’ and everything that supports making running a habit, like good eating, good sleeping, rest days, and strength training.

Episode Sponsor

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Key Takeaways

01:00 – Whitney Heins welcomes Ben Reale to the show who shares his unique career trajectory, including his time as a personal trainer and a Marine

09:44 – Habit formation and making sustainable changes by taking it slow

15:39 – The power of consistency and overcoming life obstacles

20:35 – Finding your ‘Why,’ outcome-based goals, and behavior-based goals

32:00 – The effectiveness of rewards and ‘gaming your brain’

40:16 – Bright spots and other tools for making running a habit

46:41 – Whitney thanks Ben for joining the show and lets listeners know where they can connect with him

Tweetable Quotes

“I think that the big takeaway is that if people are in that situation and they’ve come up with a Plan A and a Plan B, and they gotta get thirty minutes in, or whatever they’re trying to accomplish for a run, if it’s consistently not happening, then it’s like, ‘Hey, that’s ok. It’s just feedback that you have to change your plan because it’s not working.’ And I think that’s a powerful piece too because being able to break away and almost from a 30,000 foot view just look down on it and say, ‘Well this is not working so I need to change it’ is important.” (16:32) (Ben)

“I think at the end of the day, if it is a priority to you, you’re gonna find a way to get it done in some way, shape or form.” (19:50) (Ben)

“So a lot of times we’ll break things down in terms of outcome-based or behavior-based goals. And so, if your outcome is to run the NYC Marathon, that’s great. We can delve into why you want to do that, but then we also want to take into account the behavior-based goals that are gonna be required to ultimately get you to your outcome.” (24:45) (Ben)

“I think the rewards can be the most effective when you have intention behind them and some specificity.” (32:23) (Ben)

“Maybe you’re training for a race, maybe you’ve got a nagging injury, maybe you’re trying to institute strength training into your program. Looking at your bright spots on either a weekly or monthly basis and then picking out what went really well that’s specifically related to something that’s difficult and then asking. ‘how can I do more of that,’ is key.” (40:30) (Ben)

“I think, generally speaking, if you’re trying to change something, whether it be lifestyle, nutrition, fitness, if you’re trying to get started with running, break things down as small as possible and think about what you can do on your worst day.” (44:28) (Ben)