Stop Justifying Your Excuses

Excuses - Why difficulty is not the same as the absence of choice

There is a growing belief in fitness and coaching that understanding someone’s

circumstances means lowering what we expect of them. Missed sessions are

explained by stress, abandoned nutrition by a busy week, and stalled progress by a

life that is simply too full. Each explanation is offered as a reason to stop expecting

anything different, and too often coaches accept it because challenging it feels

unkind.

I disagree with that belief, and not because everyone starts with the same

opportunities. They don’t. Some people carry far heavier loads than others, and

pretending otherwise is both inaccurate and arrogant. I disagree because we do

people real harm when we teach them that the presence of difficulty means the

absence of choice.

So the question worth asking is this: if you genuinely cared about someone’s

progress, would you accept every reason they gave you for not making any?

Difficulty Is Not the Absence of Choice

Your work hours, finances, health, family responsibilities, and history all shape what is

realistically possible for you. None of that is controversial. The problem starts when

those circumstances are treated as proof that nothing can be done.

Take someone working sixty-hour weeks who can’t follow a five-day training

programme. That limitation is real, and it tells us the five-day programme is off the

table. It tells us nothing about whether three sessions, two sessions or forty-minute

sessions are possible, yet most people stop thinking the moment they identify the

obstacle. They prove their preferred plan won’t work and never ask what would.

This is the first habit to break. When you notice yourself explaining why something

can’t happen, finish the thought. The obstacle has removed one option, and your job

is to find out which ones it left behind.

"Less Control" Is Not The Same As "No Control"

Epictetus opened the Enchiridion with a distinction that has outlasted almost two

thousand years of self-help: some things are up to us, and some things are not. We

can’t dictate external events, guarantee outcomes, or control how other people

behave. We can direct our own judgements, intentions and decisions.

In coaching, I find it useful to add a third category between control and no control,

which is influence. You can’t control how well you sleep tonight, but you influence

your bedroom, your evening routine and when you put your phone down. You can’t

control your working hours, but you influence how you organise the hours that

remain. You can’t guarantee a rate of fat loss, but you control the behaviours that

create and sustain an energy deficit.

Nobody is claiming you have absolute control over your life. The claim is narrower

and harder to escape: lacking total control doesn’t mean you have none. Attention is

finite, and every hour spent on what you can’t change is an hour taken from what

you can.

A Reason Is Not a Justification

This is where most of the damage is done. People identify a legitimate reason for

difficulty and then use it to justify an entirely separate decision.

“I’m busy” may be true, and it can explain why you couldn’t complete your full

programme. It does not explain why you did no training at all. “I’m tired” may be true,

and it can justify reducing training volume this week. It does not justify every food

decision you made after 7 pm. “It was a stressful week” might mean you need more

support and a simpler plan, but it doesn’t mean every standard you set should quietly

disappear.

A reason explains what happened. A justification claims your response was the only

one available. Sometimes it was, but far more often the reason was real, and the

response was a choice you’d rather not examine.

The practical test is simple. Write down the excuse, then split it into two columns: the

circumstance, and the decision you made in response to it. You’ll usually find the

circumstance was outside your control and the decision wasn’t. That second column

is where your progress lives.

Your Physique Is a Record of Ordinary Decisions

People overestimate what transformation requires. They picture perfect nutrition, six

sessions a week and a life rebuilt from scratch, and because that picture feels

unachievable, they do nothing.

Your physique is shaped far more by ordinary decisions repeated over time: what

you eat, whether you track it, how often you order takeaway, how much you drink,

whether you prepare meals ahead, whether you walk when you could, how late you

stay on your phone, and whether you adjust your programme when life gets busy or

abandon it entirely. None of these require heroic discipline, and individually none of

them look important. Compounded over months and years, they become the body

you see in the mirror.

Not everyone has the same menu of options. Someone working two jobs or caring

for a sick parent has fewer decisions available than someone with a flexible schedule

and no dependents. The standard isn’t that everyone makes identical choices. The

standard is that you identify and exercise the choices that are genuinely yours,

because you don’t need to change everything to start changing something.

What Adversity Actually Teaches

I didn’t arrive at this through reading. When my father was battling cancer, I watched

him keep making his way to the gym to preserve his muscle. His capacity was

reduced and his priorities had changed, but where he could still act, he did.

Later, I was hit by a car. There were things I simply couldn’t do, and carrying on as

before wasn’t an option. What I could still decide was how I approached my

recovery, so I practised yoga and changed my nutrition because those behaviours

were helping me at the time.

I’m not offering either story as a prescription. Illness and injury vary enormously, and

what’s appropriate for one person can be harmful for another, which is why those

decisions belong with your medical team. The lesson is not that you should push

through everything. It’s that when circumstances change dramatically, the right

response is to reassess what remains possible rather than surrender every intention

you had before. Adversity rarely removes all of your choices; it changes which ones

are left.

Compassion Without Standards Is Just Comfort

Somewhere along the way, accountability became confused with insensitivity, as

though caring for someone requires agreeing with every explanation and never

challenging the behaviours keeping them stuck. I don’t believe that’s care. I believe

it’s conflict avoidance dressed up as kindness.

I can empathise with a client going through the hardest period of their life,

acknowledge their limitations and understand why certain behaviours have slipped,

and still believe they are capable of a different decision. Those positions aren’t in

tension. Compassion lets me understand the person, and accountability lets me

address the behaviour. Remove compassion and accountability becomes rigid and

blind to reality. Remove accountability and compassion becomes reassurance that

goes nowhere.

In practice, a good coach sometimes reduces training demands, sometimes

simplifies the plan, and sometimes tells a client their goal needs to change because

their life has. It also means asking the question nobody else will: does this obstacle

actually prevent action, or has the action simply not been prioritised? My job isn’t to

make every conversation comfortable. It’s to make every conversation useful.

Ownership Is Not Blame

Accountability is often resisted because it feels like blame, but the two do different

jobs. Blame looks backwards and assigns fault. Ownership looks forward and

decides what happens next.

You may not be responsible for the illness, injury, financial strain, or loss that created

your current situation, and ownership doesn’t ask you to accept fault for any of it. It

asks you to separate who caused your circumstances from who decides what you do

within them, because only one of those questions can still be answered by you.

When you feel stuck, replace “Why is this happening to me?” with a short audit.

What is still within my influence this week? What is the smallest action that moves

me towards the outcome I want? What support do I need, and have I asked for it?

These questions won’t remove adversity or guarantee results, but they will move

your attention from explaining the absence of progress to producing some.

The Skill We’ve Neglected

We have become exceptionally good at identifying what makes progress difficult. We

can name the stressors, the barriers, the time pressures and the history behind

every stalled goal, and much of that understanding is valuable. What we’ve

neglected is the equal and opposite skill of identifying what makes progress possible.

That skill doesn’t stay in the gym. The person who learns to find two training

sessions in a chaotic week is learning to find options in a struggling business, a

strained relationship or a stalled career. Every time you separate the circumstance

from the decision, you practise authoring your life rather than narrating it. Over time,

that practice becomes identity, and you stop being someone things happen to and

become someone who responds.

This is why the first question at Matter Athletica is “Could I be better?” It isn’t a

judgement of where you are. It’s a refusal to let where you are become the final

word. I will always work to understand your circumstances and accommodate

genuine limitations, but I won’t confuse believing in your potential with telling you that

what you’re doing now is enough.

Your circumstances matter, so do your decisions.

The Matter Mentality