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FHP 443 – 5 Sucky Truths You Need To Embrace For Success

FHP 443 – 5 Sucky Truths You Need To Embrace For Success

by | Oct 25, 2022 | podcast

Honestly succeeding at anything in my opinion is hard. It often means doing things we don’t like.

Sticking with things even when there doesn’t seem to be progress.

Not only putting up with failures but embracing them and learning from them…

There is lots of not so fun things along the road to success…but you have to find ways to embrace these things if you want to see results and maintain them.

That’s why I wanted to share some “truths” I’ve found that I think taking ownership of is key if you want to see long-term success….

1: You’ll Always Have Doubts – Everyone Does

We will always doubt our own progress, doubt if something is working.

We will always doubt OURSELVES and our abilities.

Doubt isn’t bad.

As long as we see it as a chance to productively question and learn over dooming ourselves with doubt.

And I think the first step in embracing doubt to use it constructively is to realize that EVERYONE has doubts.

2: It’s Always A Balancing ACT

You’re never going to be perfect with your habits, with your plan.

We always will get caught in the immediate at times over the long term.

The key is realizing that there will be swings in our balance at times and that it is OK to sometimes go off track.

The key is always learning from it to see how we can keep creating something more balanced for ourselves.

Heck it is even at times realizing that a swing one way, while unbalanced, is needed to restore focus and balance.

Sometimes we need to let things slide a bit, say during the holidays, to be as dialed in as we want at other times of the year.

Embracing and learning about yourself through these ebbs and flows is key.

And realize your balance may change over time as your priorities shift!

3: There Will Always Be Steps Back

Progress is never linear. And the more successful you become at anything, the more you will realize your weak links or issues that snuck in there that you hadn’t noticed.

So the more you’ll even WANT to embrace and preemptively even take steps back.

Regress to progress is one of my favorite sayings and with good reason.

We are never above dialing in those basics.

We can always use those reminders.

We can all use at times being that beginner and taking ourselves back to that learning phase.

Sometimes we will take steps back consciously and other times we will be forced to. But the key is always seeing it as an opportunity to use these times to ultimately move forward faster.

Don’t let your ego slow you down because you’re unwilling to step back.

4: Stop The “Why Didn’t I Do This Sooner?!”

We’ve all thought this…we’ve all fought a habit because it felt overwhelming or hard to start only to finally do it and realize “Holy moly…this is the best thing ever!”

And then we’d wished we’d done it sooner.

You can’t ever fully avoid that. We don’t like change.

HOWEVER, I think knowing that what feels natural and instinctual and sustainable to start is just what we’ve always done and that no change will ever feel that way until we give it time…

We can catch and stop ourselves from avoiding doing the hard and having that thought after of why didn’t I do this sooner.

When you feel yourself wanting to shy away from the new, assess why.

Assess why something doesn’t feel sustainable and realize it may be just because it isn’t what you’ve always done.

And even if you think it won’t be sustainable long term, it is at times key you experiment with an end date! Maybe you just at least try it out because you know it will kickstart things.

Moving forward and doing a bit more at times to get the ball rolling can help you ease back to something more moderate but help you even make some changes you wouldn’t have embraced if you hadn’t done MORE to start.

5: Realize You’ll Never Be Done.

The curse of wanting more is you’ll always want more.

There will always be things to improve, to make more efficient, to make better.

However you have to find the balance of enjoying your success and being ENOUGH while still wanting to always strive to grow and learn.

Life is never standing still and we never have to say enough is enough BUT we can’t gloss over what we’ve achieved or we will always be searching for something to make us happy.

No amount of achievements will make you happy if you aren’t enjoying the learning process to some extent.

So realize it is ok to always want more but you can’t gloss over your victories along the way!

Weight Training For Fat Loss (5 Simple Tips)

Weight Training For Fat Loss (5 Simple Tips)

by | Oct 23, 2022 | Blog, Exercises, Workouts

Don’t waste your time commenting that diet is key for fat loss.

Yup. 100% it is.

BUT the best results always come when we dial in our overall lifestyle as a system to work together.

And too often we turn to cardio when we want to lose fat.

We think we even need MORE cardio to improve our results.

But not only do workouts NOT have to be just cardio or just strength, but you could technically see BETTER results by dialing in your strength training over simply adding in more cardio type workouts.

That’s why I wanted to share 5 tips to get better fat loss results from your strength workouts.

But before I do, I want to highlight why strength training and building muscle is so key if we want to look leaner and KEEP the fat off…

Why Strength Training Is Key:

 

To build muscle, we need to challenge our body to grow stronger.

While you can 100% lose weight without working out by just adjusting your diet, you need the challenge of training to help you build that muscle.

Not to mention a consistent workout routine can make it so much easier to lose fat faster and maintain those results long term.

Working out though isn’t just about burning more calories. And weight training especially improves your hormone levels for easier fat loss and a better body composition. 

Weight training, and increasing muscle mass, can even increase insulin sensitivity for better fat burning benefits and a higher metabolic rate.

And that is why paying attention to your workouts and not just your diet is so key.

Through your strength training, and creating progression in your workouts, you can build lean muscle.

While we often think about creating progression through using heavier loads, progression can also occur by adding in instability, using variations of movements, changes in tempos and even changing up the range of motion you’re performing during movements.

But we need that clear challenge to create the change no matter how we create it.

We can’t just see our workouts as a time to burn more calories, and do MORE, which is why we often turn to cardio.

We have to also recognize that cardio can be catabolic to muscle tissue and, when combined with a calorie deficit for fat loss, can actually lead to us losing more muscle mass over the course of our weight loss journey.

It’s why strength training is so key.

It helps us do what we can to increase lean muscle mass and at least preserve even the muscle we have.

And we want to do everything in our power to preserve our lean muscle mass to make sure the weight we are losing is as much fat as possible to look our leanest.

While, especially if we have more weight to lose, some muscle mass loss will occur, the leaner we get, the more we want to do what we can to avoid more muscle loss than necessary.

Because muscle is metabolically costly.

What this means is it requires more calories to maintain more muscle on your body.

More muscle therefore means a higher metabolic rate and more calories burned at rest.

So if you’re looking to lose more fat faster, you want to retain and even add muscle.

Focusing on strength training to build and retain lean muscle will help you avoid some of the metabolic adaptations that often occur with weight loss and allow you to eat more as you lean down.

Muscle will then make it easier to maintain your weight loss long term not to mention actually LOOK LEANER because you truly will have lost fat in the process!

Now…What Are 5 Tips To Help You Dial In Your Strength Training For Better Fat Loss Results?

#1: Focus on compound moves.

Compound moves or moves that work multiple joints and muscle groups at once allow you to move heavy loads and build lean muscle efficiently.

They are a perfect way to work more areas in less time, which is key if you are trying to create efficient workouts to match your busy schedule.

And while we don’t want our training to just be about burning calories, compound moves will help you burn more calories during your sessions than isolation exercises will.

You are working large muscle groups and more muscles at once, which means your body needs to utilize more energy to perform these lifts.

You may find you get more out of breath and see your heart rate increase more when focusing your workouts on compound movements, especially when you challenge yourself with heavy loads.

Working muscles require increased blood flow to deliver glucose, oxygen and other nutrients to muscles, which will increase your heart rate to match these demands aka you’ll burn more calories.

And not only will you burn more calories during your sessions but these muscles that have been worked during your session will require more energy to support the healing process so they can grow stronger.

Especially if you are in a slight calorie deficit, your body will need to utilize stored energy to fuel the repair and growth!

#2: Avoid body part splits.

You’ll see many bodybuilding splits working very focused areas of the body each session.

This often limits the large muscles you are actually targeting per session and decreases your training frequency for areas over the week.

Especially for stubborn areas, increasing training frequency may be helpful so you can more efficiently build that lean muscle.

This may mean full-body, anterior-posterior or even hemisphere splits may be more beneficial so you can target muscle groups more than once a week easily.

This will also allow you to hit more large muscle groups each and every session to more efficiently build strength and muscle.

Targeting more large muscle groups each and every session also allows you to ultimately create a more anabolic hormonal environment which can also assist you in burning more fat even at rest.

With these harder training sessions that focus on more large muscle groups each and every session you can elevate levels of growth hormone and testosterone and reap their fat burning benefits.

Besides initiating fat burning, growth hormone also facilitates protein synthesis for faster recovery and greater muscular development. 

Testosterone also is key to creating that anabolic environment which not only promotes fats burning but the development of lean mass.

Not to mention, again working those large muscle groups leads to more calories being burned not only during your sessions but even in the follow time as your body repairs and rebuilds!

#3: Use fewer single lift workout designs.

While you don’t want to turn every strength workout into a cardio session or that will fight against your muscle gains, you do want to use the cardio-strength spectrum to your advantage.

While single heavy lifts with longer rest periods can and should be included strategically, especially to build strength, they aren’t necessarily the most efficient for muscle hypertrophy.

Intense heavy lifting sessions with at times shorter rest periods, not no rest periods, can even better optimize those hormone levels.

By using more supersets, trisets and circuit type workout designs, you can allow areas to rest while still working other areas.

This often allows you to work more muscle groups in a shorter time frame and keep your body having to work harder to again, burn more calories to rebuild stronger.

The metabolic element to these sessions can also help you get cardiovascular benefits and stay in great conditioning shape, even improving your lifting.

Plus, by alternating areas worked, you can still get adequate rest to keep using those heavy loads to encourage muscle hypertrophy or growth!

#4: Mix up the tools you use.

Often when we think about building muscle, we think about lifting heavier and getting super sore.

While you may find at times during your fat loss phase, you do get more sore as you are in a slight calorie deficit, you also don’t want to try to make yourself sore after every session.

Soreness isn’t an indicator you worked hard enough. And it isn’t needed to build muscle.

While muscle tissue damage can lead to soreness, it isn’t the only driver of muscle growth either – there is also mechanical tension and metabolic stress.

That is why you want to consider not only adding heavier loads but different types of moves and resistances to your training routine!

Consider a barbell hip thruster but add in a mini band around your legs. Or even test out a double banded variation.

Don’t be afraid to use banded moves that change where and how tension is applied during a movement.

Don’t even avoid including some isolation work that does use bands to create that pump and burn to really target those stubborn areas!

These different tools and different moves help you use all three drivers of muscle growth to get the best results possible and even increase your training frequency over the week.

Not to mention they can make training fun, especially if you are finding your motivation at times fading. It can be fatiguing at times to keep trying to drive to lift more or do another rep.

And that is also why including progression through different tools and even the same but different can give you another way of progressing that mentally may be more fun and motivating!

#5: Do a proper warm up – Don’t skip the activation!

This tip is extremely unsexy but the one so many of us are guilty of doing…Especially when we think about designing workouts for weight loss and we’re short on time.

Our warm up is the first thing to go in our workouts so we can “get to the good stuff” and burn a ton of calories.

But if you want to get the most benefit from every training session and really make sure the correct muscles are working, you don’t want to skip your warm up, especially the activation.

Activation exercises not only create metabolic stress to drive muscle growth, but they can be used to establish that mind-body connection.

Through focused activation of one muscle they do also stretch the opposing muscle group as you go through the movement. A glute bridge, where you focus on those glutes will in turn stretch out those hip flexors!

And the more we are able to FEEL those correct muscles working in our training, the more those muscles are truly benefiting.

That ability to recruit muscles and feel them working, that activation, can improve our muscle hypertrophy.

For example, if you feel only your quads or hamstrings during a weighted glute bridge, your glutes aren’t getting the benefit they should. You want to feel them as the prime mover.

Doing glute activation in your warm up can help you establish that mind-body connection so you can better engage those glutes during your workout.

That way you’re not overloading muscles, which can lead to injury AND you’re also really truly using those muscles correctly so they get the full benefit of the workout lifts you’re including!

SUMMARY:

We want to be intentional with our training to get the best results possible.

The more we can use every tool in our toolbox to get results, the better and faster our results will be.

So if you’re really working to lose fat and have your diet dialed in, don’t ignore how beneficial strength training can be to building that lean, strong physique and even maintaining your results long-term!

Learn more about my 3-Step Recipe For Results…

FHP 441 – You Must Let Go To Move Forward

FHP 441 – You Must Let Go To Move Forward

by | Oct 18, 2022 | podcast

A psychology professor entered the classroom with half a glass of water in his hand. The students expected the old common question “was it half empty or half full?” But to the surprise, he asked them “How heavy is this glass of water?”

The answers given by the students ranged from 7 oz. To 25 oz. But the professor replied that the actual weight of the glass with water doesn’t always matter but how long you hold the glass is what matters.

If you hold the glass for a minute, you won’t feel much weight. But if you hold for 10 minutes, you will feel a little more weight and it gets heavier for you with hours.

If you hold it for the entire day, then your hands would go numb and pain.

That very light and small and MINOR glass of water will become increasingly heavy.

The same thing happens with our little slip ups and stresses.

The more we focus on them, the more we give them our attention and beat ourselves up over them and focus on them over just learning from them and moving forward, the bigger they become.

We need to learn to let go of the things we can’t change or control while not ignoring them. We have to recognize them, take ownership of them BUT not just dwell on what happened.

Because if we instead feel guilty, let it derail multiple days and throw us off…well the weight of that event adds up.

It gains more importance in our mind. It festers and builds to hold back progress.

It becomes WORSE than it really was.

Do not little mistakes that are mere light glasses of water become things you can barely hold up because you’ve let your mind stay focused on them.

Instead remember that those mistakes only hold weight if we allow ourselves to DWELL on them.

Basically the Moral: You should learn to let go of your stresses and setbacks. If you can do something about it, just do it. In the other case, just leave it and work towards your goals or else it just kills your productivity.

Now What Can You Do To Help Yourself Move Forward:

Consider WHY This Situation Impacts You So Much

Have you ever been in a situation that makes you feel guilty or dwell on it more than you feel you should?

Many of us have.

And at those times, try to step back and consider, even reflecting in hindsight weeks later if needed, as to why it had such an impact.

– Is it something you’re insecure about and it hit a nerve?
– Is it something that had far reaching impact?
– Is it something really outside your comfort zone?
– Did it come out of left field?

Take time to assess why this situation impacted you even more to see what you can change for next time or even use to seek out new guidance or knowledge.

Often when we feel guilty or dwell more on specific things, there is something ELSE going on we could address outside of what actually happened.

There may be an insecurity we haven’t addressed.

There may be outside issues we haven’t recognized.

By taking time to assess these things, we may be able to avoid other similar situations because of this increased self awareness.

Write Down 3 Things You Could Do Differently Next Time

Things happen outside of our control. All we can do is ultimately control our perspective and response.

So even if you reflect and there was nothing you could do to change or prevent the situation from happening, list out 3 things you’ve learned about how to better respond next time.

If you do think you could prevent the situation or reduce the impact in the future, list out those ideas.

The key is to focus on the actions or improvements you could make over the negative things you couldn’t control.

This will help you move forward but also improve.

This is embracing failures as the positive learning experiences they truly are.

They often teach us the most partly because of the EMOTION or PAIN they cause that we don’t want to repeat.

But use that as a chance to reflect over just brushing past them.

SUMMARY:

Failures, stresses, set backs WILL happen. The key is to learn from them and not let our attention be diverted to them longer than needed.

We don’t want to build them up and make them something that actually holds us back.

So focus on assessing why these things may have bothered you and then how you can learn from these experiences.

We have to recognize that not dwelling doesn’t mean IGNORING what happened either!

How to Build Muscle At Any Age (7 TIPS!)

How to Build Muscle At Any Age (7 TIPS!)

by | Oct 16, 2022 | Blog, Diet, Exercises, Functional Fitness, menopause-featured, Pain Relief

“I’m too old to gain muscle.”

Stop lying to yourself. Stop giving yourself an excuse to not work hard and move forward.

Because while our body, needs and goals do change as we get older, and yes it 100% becomes harder to build and retain lean muscle, we can achieve fabulous results and build muscle at any and every age.

And honestly, often the reason we don’t see the results we want as we get older is because we cling to improper dieting and workout practices that we may have “gotten away with” when we were younger.

But at every stage of life, we need to be adjusting our training and fueling. Nothing works forever.

Our body and lifestyle are constantly evolving and so should our diet and training habits to meet us where we are at currently so we can always move forward and be functional strong till our final day on this planet!

That’s why I want to share 7 tips to help you not only maintain your muscle mass but gain muscle as you get older.

Tip #1: Use It Or Lose It.

So often the reason we see more dramatic shifts in body composition and lose more muscle mass as we get older is because we’ve STOPPED doing what makes us fitter and stronger.

We accept decline and use age as an excuse instead of finding ways to really challenge ourselves.

Things do get harder. We may feel more awkward with balance moves. We may feel like we recover slower.

We may even dislike coordination moves because they are uncomfortable.

Even mainstream media tells people to stop doing what once kept them strong.

But if you don’t use it, you lose it.

If you want to maintain your muscle, you’ve got to challenge your body.

If you want to keep your mind-body connection strong, which can lead to better muscle hypertrophy as well, you’ve got to do moves that challenge your coordination.

And if you not only want to gain muscle but stay functionally strong and avoid falls, you’ve got to do those awkward balance moves.

Use it or lose it. Keep challenging yourself and training those movement patterns in the gym so you move better in every day life!

Tip #2: Stop Dieting.

Muscle helps keep our metabolic rate higher. It helps us burn more calories at rest and stay leaner.

And we get older we become less able to utilize protein as efficiently making it even harder to build and retain lean muscle mass.

But this is why it is even more key we stop the dieting and extreme deficits.

While it can feel harder and harder to lose any weight we’ve gained so we feel we need to turn to larger and larger calorie deficits, this ultimately sabotages our results.

It leads to more muscle being lost in the process of us trying to lose weight which only leads to metabolic adaptations and worse body composition.

It leads to us actually making it harder on ourselves to lose the weight and keep it off. Plus the metabolic adaptations mean we burn fewer calories at rest.

This leads to us then slashing our calories lower and lower to try to keep losing, perpetuating the horrible weight gaining cycle as we get older.

Instead we need to FUEL that lean muscle.

We need to focus on macros first and a very slight calorie deficit so we can help ourselves retain that lean muscle even as we want to lose fat.

Or we maybe even need to first retrain our body to eat more so we can build lean muscle with a small calorie surplus before we consider a slight deficit to lose!

Tip #3: Do Moves That Challenge You.

Many of us have heard that strength training is key to gaining muscle especially as we get older.

And it is.

By challenging our muscles, we force them to rebuild and grow stronger.

It’s why we don’t want to fear lifting heavy as we get older.

The key is recognizing what lifting heavy is for us.

It may mean bodyweight training starting out, especially if you haven’t trained before or trained consistently in awhile.

Or it may be using resistance bands or dumbbells over barbells.

The key is not fearing loads and truly challenging yourself instead of going lighter just because you’ve hit a certain age.

Fitness is about ability PERIOD.

We always have to meet ourselves where we are at.

This also means we can’t avoid awkward and uncomfortable moves that challenge our mind-body connection.

Neuromuscular efficiency, or the ability to recruit muscles quickly and in the right sequences to perform movements properly, is key to us moving well and even improving our reaction times and coordination in every day life.

Not to mention that ability to recruit muscles quickly, that muscle activation, will also IMPROVE our muscle hypertrophy.

So if you want to be able to gain more muscle, you want to improve that mind-body connection with moves that challenge your balance and your coordination while also challenging yourself with loads!

Tip #4: Increase Protein Portions Per Meal.

As we get older we can develop anabolic resistance and we are less able to utilize protein as efficiently.

This means we actually need to increase our protein intake, especially when we’re training hard and lifting to build muscle.

Because our muscles don’t respond by increasing muscle protein synthesis in the same way as when we were younger, increasing a portion of 20 grams of protein to 30 may be super key.

And if we’re training harder, you may see an even better benefit from 40 grams, especially after a hard training session.

However, the reason I don’t just say increase protein intake overall is because, as we get older, we can also often see a decline in our appetite.

This decline can be purely age related but also based on how we’ve trained our body to fuel when trying to lose weight in a more extreme deficit, which can make it hard to eat a ton of protein in one sitting, especially because it is so satiating and can make us feel fuller.

By increasing each meal over trying to get in a ton extra at one meal, and even adding in a pre and post workout snack that is protein-centric, we can break up our protein intake to see results.

You may even find that you can see added benefits from a BCAA supplement consumed DURING your workout as Leucine especially is so critical to stimulate muscle protein synthesis.

There can also be some benefits of breaking up your protein to keep a positive protein balance at multiple times a day to promote better muscle growth!

Tip #5: Do Your Mobility Work.

We can see changes in our recovery and aches and pains can feel like they’re adding up as we get older.

Too often we simply blame our age over recognizing the movement compensations, imbalances, overuse and overload that have been occurring for years that we haven’t addressed.

But whatever the reason, we can’t ignore these issues if we want to be able to train hard consistently to see results.

It’s why mobility work is so key.

It can help us move better and recover faster, even helping us better manage chronic inflammatory conditions that could fight our muscle gains, so we can train consistently and challenge ourselves to build that lean muscle.

Without proper recovery, we end up training to a point of diminishing returns where we are just constantly beating our body down over allowing for proper recovery and growth.

When we rest, we rebuild!

Here is a full body mobility routine with the complete 3-step prehab process to address common aches and pains.

But it is key we do this mobility work in every warm up so we can train to build that lean muscle more efficiently!

You’ll be surprised by how much even just 5-10 minutes of mobility work a day helps you train harder without needing extra days off to recover!

Tip #6: Be Strategic In Your Meal Timing.

I say this as a person who personally loves intermittent fasting as a meal timing…

Fasting can backfire when gaining muscle is your goal – especially if you are a hardgainer.

And as we get older, we have to realize that fasting and fasted training may hinder us from gaining muscle, as in a fasted state, your muscle protein balance is negative.

Basically you break down more muscle than you build.

So we put ourselves at greater risk for losing muscle the more we put ourselves in this negative protein balance.

Not to mention, when you train fasted, you don’t necessarily have the readily available stored fuel you need to truly push through a hard session or rebuild from the damage you’ve created.

So consider including a pre-workout meal with protein to have amino acids readily available in your system and even a carb source for immediate fuel to allow you to push harder in your session without fatigue.

This meal will help create a positive protein balance even before your session.

Then post workout, consider consuming another 40grams even of protein.

Studies have found that resistance exercise combined with amino acid ingestion elicits the greatest anabolic response and may assist the “elderly” in producing a ‘youthful’ muscle protein synthetic response provided sufficient protein is ingested following exercise.

This post workout protein consumption can also even help you improve your recovery so you can include more hard training sessions over the week.

Tip #7: Stay Active On Days Off.

Recovery and rest days don’t have to be “do nothing days.”

And the more we can actually use these days to prep our body to move better during our training sessions, the better off we will be.

Include 5-10 minute mobility routines.

Go for a long walk.

Honestly, walking is one of the most underutilized tools we have to stay functionally stronger and improve our body composition even as we get older.

Walking can help us avoid unwanted fat gain, keep our aerobic base strong and even recover from previous training sessions without being catabolic to our muscle mass unlike more intense forms of steady state cardio.

Walking can also be a great way to destress and help our body, and mind, rest!

So as much as it can be hard to take a day off, your body needs it. Your muscles repair and rebuild when you give them time to recover.

But to stay active, don’t be afraid to include light movement and mobility work on those days off!

You may be surprised by how much even this light activity helps you sleep better!

SUMMARY:

We can, and should, focus on building muscle at any and every age.

We are NEVER too old to see results.

And our workout routine and diet should always be based on our needs and goals, meeting us where we are at. But our age, that simple number, should never determine what we can or can’t do.

We have to remember that if we want to stay strong, it really is a case of use it or lose it.

So use these 7 tips to help you feel lean, strong and fabulous till your final day on this planet!

And for even more motivation to never say you’re too old, check out the Fitness Hacks Podcasts I’ve linked to below.

FHP S2:E7 – Can You Gain Muscle As You Get Older? If So, How!?

FHP S2: E46 – I’m too OLD!

MORE STUDIES:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22313809/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6582369/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15438627.2020.1770251
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/jappl.2000.88.2.386
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpendo.00488.2005

FHP 441 – Don’t work harder

FHP 441 – Don’t work harder

by | Oct 11, 2022 | podcast

One of the hardest things for me personally to do is PAUSE. Pause and assess. Pause and learn. Pause and reflect.

I like action.

Honestly I’m prone to working harder wasting effort to just DO something over slowing down to learn and assess.

But the secret to the best results in as short a time as possible isn’t hard work…

It’s efficiency of work.

And efficiency comes from constantly learning, constantly honing your skills. Constantly perfecting your tools and building your resources.

It doesn’t come from simply trying to do more.

Because too often when we try to just do more and work harder, we don’t find the best way to do something.

And we end up wasting a ton of effort.

A perfect example of this is the tale of two woodcutters.

Woodcutter A cuts wood all day, never pausing to rest.

Woodcutter B, on the other hand, at times throughout the day stops and sits down.

At the end of the day, Woodcutter B has cut 3 times more wood than Woodcutter A.

Woodcutter A incredulously asks, “How the heck have you cut so much more wood than me? You rested far more!”

Woodcutter B says, “I wasn’t resting, I was sharpening my saw.”

All too often we don’t want to take that step back to improve.

We don’t want to regress to progress.

We don’t want to slow down and learn something new.

It feels like we’re wasting time. Or slowing our momentum. Or taking a “break.”

But often that step back can lead to a huge leap forward.

Stop trying to rush results by just working harder.

Be willing to pause and sharpen your skills (hehe) and build your resources and knowledge to be more productive.

It will save you a ton of time, wasted effort and ultimately help you move forward faster in the end!

So how can you get yourself to pause at times and do the learning that is necessary to stop working harder and instead learn to be more efficient?

#1: Schedule it.

How often do you actually SCHEDULE that forced step back? Take a look at your workout logs, your food logs, your progress pictures and honestly make notes and compare?

How often do you take that step back and take that bird’s eye view of your habits and changes over the last month, last few months, heck last year?

Too often we don’t step back.

We get caught up in doing.

So schedule it. Every week schedule that weekly assessment.

Put it on your calendar for a specific time each month.

But force yourself to take that pause to assess so you can then make adjustments if they’re needed. Adjustments not out of emotion even but based on what the data is telling you.

#2: Force non-linear progression.

Sometimes it isn’t bad to do something preemptively. And forcing that pause can help you be more efficient.

If you know a time at work is busy, why not take that conscious step back before you’re forced to or before you become so overwhelmed you end up doing nothing?

If you’re starting to show the signs of overload occurring, why not do that de-load week before things truly accumulate and you end up injured?

Or if you’re finding mentally that you’re not as motivated, why not embrace the change of a new macro or going to minimums.

Often less is more.

And sometimes forcing ourselves to pause, even when we don’t feel we fully yet need to or want to, can actually help us jump forward faster. It can help us waste less effort because we just preemptively do something.

It can help us even learn where are weak points are to make them stronger. It can help us learn more about ourselves.

You don’t want to wait till you’re having to do more swings of the axe before sharpening it. You may want to even sharpen it before it fully gets dull.

Same thing goes for our healthy habits. Sometimes we may want to even take that step back before we’re fully “needing” that diet break or new workout progression or rehab. Sometimes we want to do something at the first signs or even potential signs so we can keep moving forward over getting to the point we’re frustrated or want to give up or even in a bad situation.

#3: Learn while doing.

If you’re finding things aren’t progressing like you’d like, why not take the time to learn as you stay consistent over just jumping ship and starting the first program you find?

Too often we get frustrated we aren’t where we want to be and we either just start adding in more, working harder or even completely jump ship to something new, over learning as we’re going to see if there are tweaks we can make or small adjustments.

Sometimes we need to slow down the rate at which we want to do more or put in more effort and instead stay the course as we simply assess.

Then we want to think “How can we exert the minimal amount of effort, make the smallest change, and see the biggest result?

The more we are constantly assessing and seeking to learn as we are doing, the more we can take little chances to adjust small things we’re doing to get a big outcome without having to work harder or work without a break!

SUMMARY:

Working harder can lead to a lot of wasted effort. And while action can feel good and make us feel like we are moving forward faster, sometimes that pause to assess can actually lead to us leaping ahead.

As hard as it can be to stop doing and embrace a bit of learning which can feel like we’re doing NOTHING, that may just be exactly what we need to see better results faster and with a routine that is actually sustainable and doesn’t wear us out!