A Dog Trainer's Thoughts on Behavior Change

[lylemcdonald]

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[Sassy_6]

Perfect timing for me! I've been slacking on my daily motivational self-talks. Which pretty much come down to convincing myself that being hungry and eating fairly monotonously are rewards.

I found 2 typos, business men don't question for their money. At the end of the "Timing of Reward or Punishment" section, 'lo9gically' appears.

[Joerilla]

Well, if we're editing then I would also point out "(with weeekly weigh-ins) " in the third to last paragraph.

Great read.

[lylemcdonald]

I tidied up a bunch of stuff but typos are required.

Only Allah can be perfect.

[david]

Interesting. Possibly useful to a degree. However...

An important point to remember is that dogs, like every other non-human animal, have no choice: they will ALWAYS behave like dogs. We, on the other hand, are beings of volitional consciousness. We can choose to act in ways in opposition to our own best interests. We can choose to be irrational. Makes applying principles of behaviorism, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, to people, somewhat problematic.

[lylemcdonald]

Originally Posted by david

Interesting. Possibly useful to a degree. However...

An important point to remember is that dogs, like every other non-human animal, have no choice: they will ALWAYS behave like dogs. We, on the other hand, are beings of volitional consciousness. We can choose to act in ways in opposition to our own best interests. We can choose to be irrational. Makes applying principles of behaviorism, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, to people, somewhat problematic.

I'm guessing you didn't see the part where I said, explicitly,

"While there is obviously more to it than that in humans, there is no doubt that these types of pathways play a role in human behavior."

Or pointed out the bizarre irrational chioces (i.e $10 now vs $1000 later, 1 marshallow now vs. later) that humans make.

Nevermind, clearly you didn't.

[david]

Originally Posted by lylemcdonald

I'm guessing you didn't see the part where I said, explicitly,

"While there is obviously more to it than that in humans, there is no doubt that these types of pathways play a role in human behavior."

Or pointed out the bizarre irrational chioces (i.e $10 now vs $1000 later, 1 marshallow now vs. later) that humans make.

Nevermind, clearly you didn't.

I stand by what I wrote. Because you expected me to actually read all your words, and that's just silly. And I didn't even point out your typos, so, I get points for that. Ergo, I win

[Magumi]

I really like the article and your focus on the psychological aspects of healthy lifestyle in the face of laziness and temptation. Consistency and adherence is really the key here, and the selection of a training or diet programme always comes second.

When I was young, I exercised for the fun of it, for the endorphine rush and for the pleasure of the feeling that thanks to the training my body always has spare or even excess power and endurance capacity, which made the regular daily activities seem very easy and effortless.

Now that I'm older, I no longer get the endorphines flowing in my brain from the exercise, and training makes me sore, tired and even beaten for a large part of the week. I stick to the lifestyle, but for different reasons now. The things that drive me include:

1) The realisation that to keep healthy, I have to keep at it until the end of my life. This helps immensely, because it does away with any stress over having to achieve my goals as soon as possible, as well as with any stress over any little failures to adhere to the diet or the training programme all the time. It makes me more patient, as it puts my goals in a broader perspective, so that I do not neglect the less exciting stuff like mobility and technique training. And since I know that there are limits to what I can achieve in each particular area of fitness, this approach makes me think about any other skills that I might want master in future and helps me look forward to it.

2) The decision to set for myself performance and skill-based goals, short and long-term rather than focusing just on how I look naked.

3) The decision to train and diet in cycles, according to a plan. When I train to improve strength, I do not stress about eating too much and gaining a little fat, and save my willpower for training hard, when I diet to get back to my weight class, I pay much more attention to how I eat, and stress less about my performance in the gym. I try to stick to the plan exactly, because I know that I only have 12 or 16 weeks to achieve that goal, and since the plans tend to be difficult to complete, it forces me to pay attention to proper recovery.

4) After several years of training alone, I found a great training partner. We do not compete with each other, but simply knowing that he will be in the gym early in the morning forces me to get up and go; and when I see him completing a gruelling set, I have the motivation to give it my best and all too.

5) My training supports my diet adherence and vice versa. When I want to get stronger, I know that I will have to eat properly to recover and grow. And when I want to get leaner, I do not want to "throw away" all the effort I put into my training by doing silly stuff or by failing to get to the weight class in which I can be competitive.