Making Progress If You Don’t Know What to Do

Making progress in our training is our persistent quest. Often we find ourselves stymied or out of answers about what to do to move ahead.

The mainstream media and the endless number of influencers offer us mountains of often conflicting information.

Frequently the information we are offered is thinly disguised as the opportunity to buy a new gadget or a carload of supplements.

 

What do you really want to accomplish?

What are your priorities given where you think you want to go?

Now comes the fun part.

Take a hard introspective look at your own training approach and ruthlessly evaluate how likely it is that what you are doing will get you where you want to go.

IMHO too many people do a workout because:

• This is what I know how to do (this is what I have always done therefore…..)
• My gym bro said it would work
• My personal trainer said it was great
• I saw a YouTube video and they promised me this technique would work miracles!

 

Start Looking for Blind Spots

When seeking to make serios progress in any area Ray Dalio said it is critical to look for your blind spots. There are some parts of your training where you are well aware of what you dont know.

Blind spots are areas where you don’t know what you don’t know.

They are also areas where you believe you know how things work but your assumption is 90% wrong!

 

Misleading Yourself

All of us have the potential to mislead ourselves by assuming we know what we are doing when in fact we may be lost as lambs in the jungle.

One of my personal flops in this regard happened many years ago when I fell for a sophisticated sales pitch from a supplement company.

Every day I washed down handfuls of harmless compounds that did nothing for my actual lifting performance but boosted the part of my ego that convinced me I was on the cutting edge of sports nutrition.

The only detectable impact was that my wallet was about $150 lighter each month.

What I chose not to examine for a while was whether there was any basis for believing the marketing hype and pseudo scientific jargon that surrounded this product.

Eventually I wised up to the con job and quit taking the stuff.

I noticed exactly zero change in my performance.

I carefully avoided asking questions I should have asked: why would this work, how will I know if it works, and is this just a slick marketing job?

 

Your Objectives

IMHO each of us must become the worlds leading expert on what training and recovery regimen works for US.

Each of us is a bit unique and we all have our specific set of requirements.

So, .look hard and find the blind spots, holes in your game, or training that works or does not

.FOR YOU.

One excellent way to do this is find someone who has accomplished what you want to do and seek their advice and criticism.

You must learn to evaluate the criticism in terms of how it might work for you.

Sometimes the truth hurts. Other times it is like a wake-up call.

Also, it can be off the mark.

The key is to keep building your own knowledge base about what works for you and why. Also regularly look for information that might modify your knowledge base.

The only way to keep moving forward is to grow.

Coda

Some people are able to build a solid knowledge base over their careers while others accumulate vast amounts of ignorance.

Keep systematically questioning your practices to see if you can modify them to produce better results.

After all, you are the main beneficiary of your hard work and discipline.

Lift Big!

Richard