Ever have one of those times in your life where things seem to be hitting on all cylinders?
That’s kind of where I’m at right now. Things are going really well in virtually every facet of my life, so I figured I’d share a little bit of personal information with this post.
I get a lot of questions regarding how I’m training, what I do for recovery, how I get work done, etc. In this post, I’m going to outline the next month of my life and what I plan to do with it.
Obviously, long-term goals are great – you need to have that long-term vision of where you want to go. But I also feel like shorter term items work well not only in training, but in life as well.
Anyway, I’m not sure if you’ll like this post but hopefully you’ll take something away from it! At the very least, I hope you don’t think I’m some crazy egomaniac 🙂
Training
Training has been going really well as of late. I’m hitting my first month of 5-3-1, and I feel it’s exactly what I need at this point in time.
I know some of you may think, “why not just write your own program?” And that’s a very valid question.
One problem is that I can write anywhere between 40 and 70 programs in any given month, so writing my own creative work isn’t always fun.
Plus, I’m pulled in a lot of directions, so it’s nice to not have to think that much about my own lifting. I know exactly what I need to hit on any given day from a lifting perspective. I just plug and chug in my Excel spreadsheet and my big lifts are filled in. All I have to do is determine what lifts I need from an accessory/supplemental standpoint, and the program is ready to rock.
Plus, I just vibe with the long-term focus of the program in general. You don’t get strong in one week or one training program – you do it over the course of an entire training career.
I’ve also been very diligent about incorporating the PRI corrective exercises into my routine as well. I feel at this point in time, I’m probably moving as well as I ever have. The next step is to start laying some strength on top of that movement quality.
We’ll see how it goes 😉
Finally, we’re slowly building a kick-ass training crew at IFAST. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I can have anywhere between 3 and 6 other motivated individuals, which really helps. Nothing sucks worse than consistently training by yourself.
I have no doubt if we can keep this crew intact, we’re all going to set some PR’s in the coming months/years.
Recovery
As training intensity/volume is going up, I need to balance that with recovery work. Luckily, this is something that I’ve always bought into, so it’s really just a matter of reincorporating a lot of the stuff that I’ve done in the past.
Sleep is a huge component of my personal recovery routine. When I was training/coaching clients at 6 am, this often fell by the wayside, and my training suffered as a result.
I’m lucky now that I don’t have any 6 am mornings, so I can get pretty consistent sleep. If you’re interested in improving sleep quality or sleep in general, be sure to check out my Sleep 101 blog.
One thing that I’ve started doing in the past 7 months is some weekly meditation. I don’t always get to do it as often as I’d like, but I’m pretty good about getting this in somewhere between 3 and 5 times per week. As I continue to do more of this and learn more about it, you may see some blogs covering the topic in a bit more depth.
Finally, I’m a huge believer in soft-tissue work to help expedite recovery, improve movement quality, and just feel good in general. I’m back on a fairly consistent routine in this regard, and I think I’ve talked Bill into dropping some ART bombs on me on a regular basis to keep things moving along.
Professional
Now, let’s get to the stuff I’m sure you’re most interested in 🙂
I’m going to make a big, hairy, audacious goal here (a BHAG, if you will): I’m going to take the next 30 days and try to complete my low back care manual.
Ludicrous, right? That’s what I think, too. But I’m going to give this an honest to goodness shot.
I’ve only started going through all the responses to my survey, and I think this is a product that people legitimately need. I’ve gotten amazing feedback from Bulletproof Knees, and I feel like this product could potentially be even bigger.
The thing I have to remind myself is that everyone will not like it, and it won’t help everybody. But I think I have a pretty tried-and-true system that will help a lot of people get healthy and restore lost function.
I’m getting excited just thinking about it, to be quite honest!
But as the saying goes, before you add something, you need to figure out what you’re going to take away. A smart guy by the name of Brett Jones told me that last weekend, actually!
To help me achieve this goal, I’ve already started cutting back on my e-mails. This is one of those things has a tendency to spiral out of control if you let it. I’d often find myself checking e-mail simply because I had nothing else to do, which isn’t a good habit to fall into.
My goal is to check and respond to e-mail once per day, twice in a worst-case scenario.
Along those same lines, I’m cutting back on checking my blog/RSS feed as well. This is one of those things that can spiral out of control as well. Next thing you know, you’re checking your RSS feed 10 times per day just to see if there’s any new content.
So e-mail 1-2x/day, and RSS feed 1x/day or every other day. This alone should make a huge difference.
Finally, it’s already time to start prepping for my seminar in Vancouver this December. I’m sure some people think you just show up and present, but I’m a little anal-retentive in this regard.
When you are developing two full days worth of content, it takes a while just to develop all of the PowerPoint slides and material. THEN, you actually need to take time to rehearse the material so you don’t look like a moron in front of 80-100 total strangers.
Needless to say, it’s a big endeavor, but I’m really excited.
Summary
So that’s what I’ve got going on, and the goals I’ve set for myself for the next month.
What are you guys hoping to achieve this month? Any specific goals?
Or maybe more importantly, a big, hairy, audacious goal you’d like to share with the group?
I’ll be looking forward to your feedback below. Have a great holiday weekend!
All the best
Mike