Two Major Principles for Life and Working Out

For those of us who pursue long term goals, there are two tightly linked principles that IMHO are extremely important to remember as we embark on various projects in fitness and in other parts of our lives.

1. People always overestimate how much they can accomplish in one day and underestimate how much they can accomplish in a month.
2. If you have no plan, your plan is to fail.

It is almost clich to see people show enormous enthusiasm when beginning a new project or workout program. This enthusiasm produces a flurry of intense work on the first day.

By the third or fourth day the enthusiasm may have waned to near zero and the program forgotten.

At that point the person reverts to their previous behavior patterns.

This happens in workouts, daily schedule management, business, school and almost any area of life where success requires long term commitment to new practices.

The fact remains that serious and important progress can only come from changes in a long term practice.

Even though our old default routine was keeping us stuck far short of where we wanted to be, we regressed back to our old ways and the changes we sought never happened.

 

 

How to beat the default setting

Even though we really want to make a change, the forces of old habits and the comfort of old routines is extremely powerful and unrelenting.

Any time one ventures out of the familiar zone anxiety levels elevate almost at once.

Even modest changes activate an irrational concern.

This anxiety response will pop up when you try a new diet, workout program, or something more long term such as learning a new language, computer programming, etc.

The little voice in your head (and mine too) keeps telling you that venturing outside the known and safe limits of what you do all the time is dangerous.

How do you persevere and keep on task?

Being motivated, determined and disciplined is essential. However, these alone are not usually enough to get past the constant internal pressure to return to your old ways.

Each of us needs a detailed plan for how we intend to accomplish something that is out of our familiar zone.

I first heard this gem of wisdom from the legendary powerlifter Bull Stewart. If you have no plan, your plan is to fail!

Your plan is the roadmap for how you intend to do what you want to accomplish.

This plan must include the following elements:

• What you will do each day of the month
• What you intend to accomplish in a month
• What measures you will use to track your activity
• How you will deal with days when you don’t do your work as planned
• How you will get back on track if you don’t do what you planned
• How you will prevent abandoning the plan if you mess up a week

You are no doubt aware that people are great at making plans. Executing plans is another thing.

Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling laid out a peerless strategy for actually doing what you intend to do in their book 4 Disciplines of Execution.

One of the first things to control is the chaos of your daily life. If everything else gets in the way of working on your project goals, then you have no chance to reach them.

One of the most important things to do is focus on what the authors call lead measures. These are the actions that indicate you are actually following the steps in your plan.

Examples:

• Improving squats: 2 weekly training sessions that included key assistance exercises.
• Writing a book: write 5000 words per week minimum
• Losing 15 pounds: Keeping food journal every day each week

The lead measures track the actions you must do to keep on track regardless of the other things going on in your life space.

 

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

Becoming skilled at accomplishing things you want to do is a rare ability. Most of us are pretty good at it, but not really skilled.

Using the monthly planning template while employing your own lead measures can help you build a powerful skill set that transfers from fitness training to other parts of your life.

Lift Big!

Richard