As the great Mike Tyson is credited with saying "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face". The truth is that you SHOULD have a plan. I help people build those plans and they're very helpful. However, very rarely does everything go perfectly and according to plan. The truth of the matter is that just as important as plans are, there's also a need for secondary plans and mitigation strategies. Here's what I mean.
I've been on a journey. For 31 straight weeks, 217 days, I've done some sort of outdoor cardio. Some days it was a run. Some days it was a walk. Some days it was a ruck. Some days have been hard, some have been easy. Some days have just been checking the box. It might not be a big thing, but honestly it's changed me and it's changed my life. I'm different. I'm better. And it's given me a lot of lessons. This podcast is a conversation and distillation of that process to help explain where I was, why I've been doing this, and how it's helped me. In turn, the lessons I've learned can help you.
The BeRelentless Podcast is back!
Look, lots of people have problems. As a matter of fact, everyone I know does. The difference, though, is how you respond to them.
Today I'm sharing a great little analogy that I heard from one of my mentors not just about how you're looking at problems, but what you can do to build from them.
Building Your Transformation Plan in Three Steps
It's common, especially as the weather gets nicer, to want to make a change in your physique. Losing fat, gaining muscle, shaping and toning, whatever you want to call it. It all comes down to making a transformation.
There's all kinds of media sources out there that will give you their idea of a plan, but I find they're usually lacking. Maybe they rely on wishful thinking. Maybe working out is the only answer. Maybe a super-special diet or supplement will do the trick. The thing is, there's some part of all of those in any successful physical transformation plan.
I've had the benefit of helping hundreds of people make tremendous transformations and the method they use is like traveling the journey by car. There are three key pieces to make the journey successful: 1. The car. 2. Fuel for the car. 3. A driver to direct the car. In this podcast, I'm going to get into those three pieces, why I chose that metaphor, and how to maximize each component to build a transformation plan that you'll actually be successful with.
You're blessed with the greatest battery ever!
Your life, your strength, your mental toughness, and your sheer capacity are like an old school battery in a lot of ways.
Batteries are meant to be used, just like your strength. If you don't use them, eventually they lose their flex and they fail. So what do you think happens to you?
Listenfor my thoughts!
Let's be honest, if you're spending time training then you want to get the most out of it, right? Even if you truly just enjoy training, which is awesome, then you still want to maximize progress.
In this podcast I cover five ways you can implement that will have a dramatic effect on the improvements you make from your fitness program, both in the short and long-term. I cover:
-How I start a workout to maximize muscle activation, improve athleticism, and get the most out of every set... and it's not just "warm up well".
-The three ways you can change things up to see continued progress and expand your limits.
-How to take a birds-eye view of your training and use that to maximize efficiency and keep from program hopping.
-The two types of workouts that you should be doing, and the right mix of both.
-The lesson in mental toughness, self-control, AND self-care I picked up and have implimented to great success. Give it a listen here!
Most of you know I've been on a fitness revamp of my own over the past weeks. Fighting depression, injury, and all of that other stuff. Today was 75 straight days of cardio. I've never done a streak like that and it's provided some insights. Mostly, I didn't realize how bad I felt or how much being out of shape was bleeding into other areas of my life: My business My relationship My friendships My overall health My self esteem My self image All of those were suffering and I basically ignored them. Working on this one thing has (with some real effort) led to a major improvement in all of those areas.
Walking Out of Comfortable Misery.
This is definitely the hardest podcast I've done in a while. However, I think that as a coach it's important to put things out there and share the lessons that I've learned from my experience, and boy, have I picked up some stuff. In this episode I give you kind of a quick and dirty version of:
-How I got into strength training in the first place.
-How that strength training saved me and became my "suit of armor"
-When that suit of armor stopped saving me and became a prison that I had locked myself into.
-The trigger that smashed it all home and left me in a state of comfortable misery.
-How I dealt with the "comfortable misery" that so many of us feel and what it drove me to.
-The simple thing that I did to start forging my way out of it.
-How this simple thing has transformed my life over the last few weeks.
-How you can implement it in your own life if you're battling.
Listen here!
There's something that's chewing away at us.
Something that is so common in our society that we don't even really notice it. I honestly think it might be our number one consistent threat, though.
More than war.
More than the stock market.
More than cancer, even... although the two have their relation points.
It's something that I think everyone senses, but few people are putting a name to.
It's hard to fight an enemy that you haven't identified.
That enemy doesn't have any problem fighting with you, but you can't create and implement a strategy against it. Even worse when it uses your own strengths against you.
That enemy? Listen to see!
One of my members was telling me about a friend who was going on and on to her about her new diet plan. She'd gone through her house, thrown out all of her old favorite foods, hit the grocery store with a list in hand, bought a bunch of food she didn't even know had existed, and rushed home to do a big meal prep with all of her new storage containers. She didn't know how to cook all of that stuff, but she was excited!
You know what? That's awesome. I'm glad she's made a change. But we all know how that often ends up. Here's where to go a different direction for more success.
"If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them"
-Jim Kwik
I heard Jim drop this quote on a podcast and I thought it was worth digging into a little bit. Here's the thing with limitations: Everyone has them. It's not necessarily a bad thing to recognize them, even. That gives you some points to build a strategy on.
Too many people, though, choose to hold on to and identify themselves by their limitations. They keep those limitations at the forefront of their mind, as opposed to simply observing them, gleaning the available knowledge, and forging onward.
There's a couple of reasons for this, beyond simple habit.
In this quick podcast, I get into some of those reasons and how you can start to combat them... leaving those limitations where they belong: In the rear view mirror.
If you spend any time in the fitness universe, it's not going to be long before you're assaulted by supplement ads.
Every time you turn around there's a loud advertisement in your face promising that this pill, powder, capsule, shake, cream, or whatever is going to be THE fix to whatever you have going on.
Just like the old traveling snake-oil selling "doctors" of yester-year, the supplement business is full of a lot of people talking loud, fast, and trying to sell you some questionable stuff.
Are there any supplements that are actually worth taking, though? Maybe. In this podcast I go into:
-WHEN you should consider taking supplements, and IF they are even a useful part of your plan.
-My "Basics": The supplements that, if you meet the above qualifications, probably would be your first go-tos.
-The "Next Level": The supplements that might be useful layered on top of the Basics.
-What to look for in a supplement and supplement company to make sure you've got a reputable company.
-The biggest thing that shady supplement companies do to mask the sneaky stuff they do that saves them money and takes it out of your pocket... with poor results to boot.
Want to get the down-low on the Supplement game? Give it a listen!
Some mistakes cross multiple domains:
Fitness
Business
Relationships
Life in general
Not building a firm base before upping the ante is definitely one of those. For example, this is the time of the NFL Combine, and so there's all kinds of really cool videos of future NFL athletes doing crazy training floating around.
I love those videos just as much as the next guy.
That doesn't mean, however, that every thirteen year-old kid who is three weeks into his training for football experience should be emulating these guys. At best, he's not going to get good results. At worst, he's going to get hurt. In the middle he'll just learn some bad habits because he's not ready to do those movements at that intensity yet... if ever.
It's not just sports training, though. Is there somewhere in your life where things aren't operating well but you're trying to just double on the intensity in hopes it'll work out? That's a unlikely. So what do you do instead?
Fitness, Nutrition, Mindset, everything is easier if you have a framework to go from.
That's why I developed the Relentless Success Pyramid to help the Relentless members frame their journeys and I'd like to share it with you. As you can see, there are four parts to the pyramid. In this podcast, I went over three of the first steps we take with almost all of our new clients to introduce them to the pyramid, get them making great progress, and build the foundation of their fitness journey.
Those four pieces are:
The Relentless Mindset We start with building the right mindset, because if the mind isn't in it, this whole fitness and life project you're on is starting from a weak foundation.
-I talk about the secret "bank account" you have with yourself, and if it's low, you'll struggle.
-We get into the mindset shift that has to happen to take you from "I'm X" to "how can I be Y"?
-I bring up the one question that I love to ask people when they're stuck on really nailing down their goals.
Supportive Nutrition Next I get into the basics of how we handle nutrition from a habit perspective, not micromanaging every gram of carbohydrate. That stuff has its place, but it's not the starting point for most.
-When it comes to nutrition, lots of people jump on a complicated diet... trying to run before they crawl. The result is the same as the metaphorical baby - They fall. Instead, here's where we start to help our family members avoid that stumble.
-Then we get into the BIG THREE that we address with pretty much everyone when it comes to nutrition. Controlling these three variables will have a greater effect on your physique and health than almost everything else combined.
-Next we get into the one missing link that many people seem to skip over that causes a lot of stumbling and back-sliding and how we avoid that.
Smart Training NOW, on a "fitness podcast" we get to training!
-Ok, so what's the foundation of training and where do most people screw it up? I get into it.
-Once you've built the foundation, what's the next layer? This is an often misunderstood one and I get into it here.
-Finally, I talk about the dial we turn to move the first two points up a notch.
Kaisen
-Aaaaand the last piece of the pyramid is the Kaisen principle: Making a small improvement every day and stacking those wins until you've created a masterpiece.
Interested in those points? Give it a listen!
One of my mentors regularly uses the phrase "Move the Chains" in our conversations and it's become a mantra that I've absorbed.
In the game of football, the idea is to keep moving the ball down the field to eventually score a touchdown. In a perfect world, you'd do it in one shot.
Just like in life, that rarely happens.
Instead, a football "drive", as it's called can often take eight, ten, or fifteen plays before there's a score. But you know what? It's still the same number of points on the board whether it's one play or fifteen.
Most people get the concept of driving down the field. Focusing on the small wins. Moving the marker chains with each play until eventually you score.
I think there's something else there, though. You see, every time you "move the chains" and get a new set of downs, that's four more chances to score or at least make a big play. That's four more chances for a big shot to open up for you. So moving the chains isn't just about keeping forward momentum, although that's a big deal.
Moving the chains is also about giving yourself more, and better, chances to make a big play. Instead of forcing an attempt at a big play, which often doesn't work, you're allowing the laws of progress to give you opportunities for the big play to open for you... so you can strike when your chances are better.
Whether you're playing football or talking about life, it's still the same: Move those chains.
A goal without a plan isn't really a goal, it's a wish. Most people spend too much time in the "wish" area and ultimately are unsatisfied because they never really nail down what they're trying to accomplish.
In this episode I'm going to fix that! This episode is the podcast version of the seminar I did for Relentless Members at the gym about Goal Setting, minus the pauses for writing time that we took throughout that workshop.
I'm going to share with you:
The old SMART Principle of Goal Setting, how it applies and where it doesn't.
The Three Big Exercises I have clients go over to work on their goals:
-The number one tool to take your current negative talk and turn it around.
-Your cue to be able to build better goal-setting sentences.
-Your number one exercise to clear the clutter from your brain and get your goals clear.
After that, I go into:
What do you do when you see a goal, but the way looks rocky?
How to anchor goals to achieve the greatest effect?
How to break up goals to turn them into daily wins that build up to a big one?
Ready to nail down your goals so you can start accomplishing them? Give it a listen!
"Keep the goal the goal"
-Dan John
Dan is one of my favorite fitness authors and he's well known for delivering simple but powerful messages. I am in agreement with him in that a lot of people get so caught up in their journey that they stray from the overall goal if they don't keep it in mind. However, I think a lot of that problem starts even before that: I think that they don't know how to measure their success because they never truly clarify what a Win is for them.
Not what the media says.
Not what the marketers say.
Not what Tammy down the street says.
Not what I say.
Not what your parents, spouse, (and almost certainly not) your kids say.
For you.
What is a Win and Success for you?
Stress. It's a word we here from all of the media around us. Clamoring. Shouting. Warning. Quite frankly, half the time we're stressed about stress. . The thing is, as humans we're really good at handling stressors. That's why we still exist, from a biology perspective. We have very good systems for handling stress, learning from it, and overcoming it. Stress makes us who we are. There are, though, limits to the stress that we can absorb and build from. We can basically be in some percentage of protection from stress and growth. It's kind of a percentage thing. . Just a little stress gives us stimulus and opens us up to lots of growth. Too much stress and we clamp down, afraid or unable to grow. From an evolutionary perspective, this heavy stress was brief, focused, and infrequent, so it gave lots of opportunity between bouts to grow. Now, though, we have lots of low-level, chronic stress: Mortgages, pollution, advertisements, screens, reports at work, etc. So we're always running around 30-40% (I am making that up, but you get the point) stressed. So when we do get a big stressor, we overload and don't grow. Instead we get fat, weak, and sick. Want to make the most progress? Reduce your low-level, chronic stress. Clear the clutter. Hydrate. Meditate. Get outside. Listen to or play music. Do cardio. Sleep more. My most successful clients are always the ones who manage their life stress the best.