After 777, I’ve found I don’t have any major fitness goals coming up. I don’t have any ultras on the timeline immediately, I’m not trying to achieve any specific aesthetic goals (yet), and I’m not trying to set any new PRs (again, yet).
However, I have noticed that I want to raise my level of general fitness up and work on some new bodyweight skills.
And I’ve been standing in my own way.
The last few months of 2017, I found myself overthinking things wayyy too much.
It sounds a bit weird – for a guy who writes about mindset and fitness all the time to not write his own workouts or have an outside system to get him in the gym, and I thought so too.
But, I realized I was running into planning overload:
- As a fitness coach, I’ll do programming for clients and programs.
- As a nutrition researcher, I have to plan nutrition programs for our paleo business.
- As a business owner, I plot out the vision for the company for our team.
- As an entrepreneur, I have to plan out my individual days.
- As part of my #impossiblelist, I’m trying to I try to plan out my entire life – including where to live and what to do.
So I was burning out on planning things. When it came down to it, I found I was planning so many other things in my own life that I was letting the planning of my fitness workouts get in the way of actually doing them.
So I’ve given up and I’ve gone back to cutting my ego in half.
For a long time, I’ve said, I like Crossfit, but not the workouts – but I decided to go back.
I have enough things to plan.
Like I said, my current goal is to get my current level of fitness way back up across the board – not just ultras, but everything and Crossfit is a good baseline for that.
So, when I head to the gym, I throw my brain in a jar (along with my phone) when I walk into a gym.
For one hour in the middle of my day, I let it all go.
- I know nothing.
- I don’t try to be smart.
- I don’t try to be fancy.
- I just do what they say.
- I do the work. Then I go home.
It turns out, I end up doing a lot more workouts that I’d rather avoid if I was planning them myself and working on a lot of weaknesses and blindspots that are easy for me to miss when I’m doing my own programming.
Not only that, but I waste less time while I’m there and I’m more likely to show up every day (because I don’t have to plan anything while I’m there).
All I have to do is show up at 12pm Monday/Wednesday/Friday. That’s the battle I have to fight and win (and it turns out it’s pretty easy when you don’t have to do the planning behind it). There’s a reason elite athletes all have coaches. No matter how good, smart, strong or fast they get, they still have to do the work and any time you’re THINKING about the work, the less effort you can put into actually DOING the work.
If you’re curious, my current workout regimen is as follows:
- Monday/Wednesday/Friday 12pm – WOD (no excuses)
- Mobility Work – 10 Minutes Every Day
- Massage – Once every (other) week.
- Basketball – Conditioning / Coordination / Fun
Any other workout days are bonuses, but I’ll ratchet it up as my general fitness level rises.
Yes, you can create your own workouts. But, if you find that doing your own programming is too much or you just want to turn your brain off, stop trying to be smart. Stop trying to be fancy.
Get a coach. Get a program. Just show up. And Do the work.
If you need help, here’s a few resources to help:
I have a new program coming soon as well. If you want to get notified when it’s live, just sign up at the form below.
FITNESS
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