Part of growing up in life is learning what you like and what you don’t. This is an important aspect of getting older because it helps you choose which roads to head down and which ones to avoid. It helps you make important decisions in your career, in your relationships, and in your recreational time. As important as this is, it can become a very slippery slope, especially when you consider that modern society is built around one thing—comfort.
From the layout of our houses to the cars we drive, from the chair you’re probably sitting in right now to the shape of the last water bottle you held in your hands, everything that surrounds us these days is created in a way to make your life “comfortable.” By its very definition, “comfort” means affording or enjoying contentment and security. As you get older and your responsibilities increase (family, career), it’s perfectly natural to seek out these things. However, as the saying goes, unless you go beyond what you’ve already mastered, you won’t grow. Whether it is a more secure financial standing for you and your family, an improvement in physical health, or any other ambition you may have, the paradox of growth is that you most likely will have to risk many of those things that you covet to see that success.
Don’t misread what I’m saying. This isn’t a green light to start running around with reckless abandon, risking life and limb in the name of progress. In studying successful entrepreneurs and other world leaders, one thing has held true in the majority of the risks they’ve taken—they’re calculated. Even the most precarious of moves have had tremendous reasoning behind them. This comes down to the simple task of doing your homework.
If you want to take a new direction in your training, business, or life, you can’t just wing it and hope to be successful. Failing to plan is planning to fail. Seek out those who have succeeded in whatever it is you want to do and study them. Embrace the areas that are out of your typical scope. If you’re a trainer, open a business book. If you’re an athlete, break away from training articles and read something about leadership. If you’re venturing out into a certain type of business, study up on some of the fringe aspects of what it is you’re getting into. Knowledge is power but don’t be afraid to expand your mind. Not only can this potentially open up doors that you never knew existed, but it can help you decide which avenues are worth continuing down and which aren’t worth your time and effort.
By now you’re probably thinking, “Now that’s all well and good, but what the hell does this have to do with training?” The short answer—everything. Just like our house, car, and route to work evolve into the same standardized comfortable routine, training can end up there just as easily. Whether a competitive athlete or not, you need to get out of your comfort zone and “embrace awkward.” Don’t be afraid to change things up. Rotate your lifts or find a facility friendly to the Strongman events and train there once or twice a week. Better yet, get away from the gym and go for a hike or bike ride or even rent a kayak and get to some water. Not only will this help keep you sane, but it’s going to give your body a break from some of the repetitive stress you’re most likely putting it through. Again, this doesn’t mean throw away your current program. Do what I call lateral shifts.
Don’t stop squatting or deadlifting. Just flip your squat and deadlift days. Take a few weeks and get aggressive with your overhead pressing and use your bench more as a supplemental lift. Stagger your deload weeks. If you typically train three weeks hard, take a week to lighten it up. Start your heavy, lower body work on week one and your heavy, upper body work on week two.
Following this scheme, your heavy lower body training would be on weeks one, two, and three with a deload on week four and then weeks five, six, and seven with a deload on week eight. Your heavy upper body training would start with a deload on week one and then you’d be on for weeks two, three, and four with a deload on week five and back on weeks six, seven, and eight. After doing this for three or four cycles, take an overall deload week and restart. Whatever it is you decide to do, don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Stop treating the gym as a ‘paint by numbers’ project and utilize it as what it should be—a blank canvas for you to create your own personal masterpiece.
Whether in training or business, it doesn’t matter how well thought out your new plan may be. If you don’t act on it, you aren’t going to get anywhere beyond where you currently are. One of my own coaches over the last year said it best: “Don’t plan on planning.” To shamelessly rip off Nike, just do it. Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. Get the framework together because you don’t want to go in blind but then get after it. I guarantee that once you take that leap, whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish will be dead in your sights in no time.