Striving for Goals - part 2 & Excellence Through Variety

God bless you all. Hope this finds you all well, at peace in the spirit, sharp in the mind, and exploding out of your clothes with new muscle (or falling out of them from trimming down, whichever your case may call for), and using up all of your gym's weights with the new PR's in strength.

Well as we continue to work into the New Year, let's stay on the topic we've been talking about for the last couple of newsletters, which is setting, defining and achieving your goals. This time let's talk about formulating your plans to achieve your goals. Some steps to take in doing that and some pitfalls to avoid. All this will continue to lead us closer to achieving what we really want by working toward it in a specific, achievable, logical way.

Smart planning is probably the only, and is definitely the best way to achieve difficult goals. If you're not stretching in your goals then you haven't been paying attention to what we've been saying. But if a goal is a real challenge for you then you had better have a thorough understanding of what it takes to achieve it and plan the steps necessary to get there. Here are some thoughts on planning for your goals.

1. Understanding what you need to achieve them. It's going to be quite difficult to get to the top of your personal Mt. Everest without a full understanding of what you're undertaking. Read, study, learn, figure out what those people who've come before you did right and wrong in their struggle. Learn from them. Be a student of your endeavor. Most everyone who is great at something, especially if they've struggled to attain that greatness is a scholar of their arena.

2. Think of all you need. When you consider what it takes to get to the top of Mt. Everest it is a massive technical and material undertaking. This applies to whatever else you wish to achieve, not just climbing that mountain. It doesn't mean that you need the latest high tech gadgets or the shiniest new lifting equipment, but you do need to fully understand everything that is necessary to get there. Be it the physical implement, or the new training knowledge or whatever.

3. Time tabling. Planning is essentially breaking down the steps necessary to get to a goal and if you're serious it means also putting them on a timetable. Most goals are better achieved with specific timed increments set for their achievement. Breaking goals down into smaller sub-goals and planning your steps in daily, weekly, monthly, etc., increments helps keep you on track.

4. Over planning. Whenever you talk about goals it comes off as if you're making plans to take over a small country. I fully realize that most people don't take most of their goals with that level of obsessive importance. And I don't mean that everybody should or that every part of your plan should be so detailed that you're bogged down in it. Simplicity is the name of the game here. Simple steps make the mountain climbable.

5. Unrealistic planning. This really has to do with being honest with yourself and being practical. Everybody wants to get bigger (well most everybody and for the illustration of this goal that will suffice). But to fall into the snake oil trap and believe and literally plan for yourself to do three hour workouts, six days a week is ridiculous. Almost no one can survive such a schedule let alone have the time or commitment it takes to train like that on any type of long term basis. Start with what you can handle and work up.

6. The 80/20 rule. This rule states that if you boil basically any activity down you get 80% of the results from 20% of the work involved. This is probably even more true of physical culture. If you're doing heavy squats and giving them justice there isn't much point in 16 other leg exercises. Because there is so much to choose form in the exercise world and in the other worlds we touch it's easy to get bogged down with the shot gun approach trying to do everything possible instead of the simplest most effective thing.

7. All work and no play. It's a mistake to get caught up in the purely hyper achievement side of planning to achieve your goals and not build in the other realistic necessary factors. You're going to need some rest, some downtime and some time to have fun. You're going to need to build in some way to not drive yourself into the ground. Your body, mind, family, and actual accomplishments will thank you for it.

TWO NEW WEBSITES YOU NEED TO CHECK OUT!

Two friends of mine who happen to be a couple of the strongest guys walking around in the US and the world have great new web sites. They're both good guys who are crazy strong and train really hard. You need to check their stuff out.

Jesse Marunde, one of the youngest World's Strongest Man competitors ever, has a website called www.marunde-muscle.com Lots of great articles, videos, training information, some really cool stuff on healthy real food, grass fed beef and a ton of real food recipes. Hopefully you'll see some of my articles there soon and maybe some of Jesse's on mine. Check out the video of Jesse doing 20 rep squats. It's AWESOME! There's also other great video of him doing some very serious pulling. Try 600lb repetition Romanian deadlifts. He also pretty casually closes an Iron Mind No. 3 gripper and might be one of the fastest strongmen ever. Hope he doesn't get mad when I tease him for being the prettiest strongman ever. LOL

John Wood is an insider pick as one of the top couple of hand strength guys in the world. He was closing an Iron Mind No.3 gripper in high school. Lifting the Inch Dumbbell, the Millennium Dumbbell, etc. He was a terror on the college football field. I happened to be privileged to see a little insider video on that and you wouldn't believe the guys he was tossing around. His dad is strength training legend, Kim Wood. But John is also one of the most knowledgeable guys on training around. He has plans for some of the most interesting, logical and detailed hand training courses ever written. And is fast becoming known as a go-to guy for hand care knowledge. He also has a newsletter on his website you should sign up for as well as checking out his great products. Don't think he's just hand strength either. Try 140lb one-arm dumbbell snatches and dropping into a back bridge while you close monster grippers and lift kettlebells. Check him out at www.fuctionalhandstrength.com

PRAYER REQUEST

Last week a long time close friend of my wife's family died. The family has dealt with much recently and even though JoAnne had been diagnosed with cancer a year and a half ago and had been undergoing chemotherapy, she was doing quite well and her death was very unexpected. There is no way to prepare for the loss of loved one and if you have any faith questions they will definitely be strained in these situations. They also always force family and friends to deal with depression and mortality issues. Let's please pray for the Hunter family and my wife's family and their friends as well. In Jesus name, may God bless and comfort them. Thank you Lord.

Thank you all for your prayers.

TRAINING TIP

The Advantages of Variety in Conditioning

Everybody has their pet exercises and every strength or conditioning guru will tell you that theirs' are the best and will have legitimate sounding reasons to back them up. To some extent, that's me included. And I would definitely tell you those particular things as it refers to high-level strength, but in my continuing quest to grow as an athlete, I've changed my mind as it refers to conditioning. At one time I would have advocated a pretty strict regimen of a couple of bodyweight exercises and set and rep schemes as the ultimate in conditioning. But I think that I've grown past that. Now I wish to and believe in and embrace a style of conditioning rather than a specific type of conditioning as the best.

You will find it definitely said in my other interviews and literature that endurance training ought to have a muscular and aerobic component. Without the combination they are incomplete. Endurance training should also follow what I call a natural interval, which means that everything the body does functions on a work-rest cycle. So in understanding and taking advantage of these things, we come to what I term, "Alternative conditioning." That means anything that's out of the normal or run of the mill aerobic endurance training. Many modalities fit this bill. Bodyweight exercises, kettlebells, Indian clubs, sledgehammer and mace swinging, cable exercises, sprinting, hill running, intervals on cardio machines, heavy bag work, jump roping, light odd implement or barbell and dumbbell conditioning, etc.

Now if a man uses any one of these training styles or any mix of them, but works hard, drives his hart rate high and maintains it as well as working his muscular endurance is their any reason to believe that any one of these tools will create a better athlete or man? I don't think so. In fact I think to create the best athlete you should use all of these implements or any at your disposal that qualify under the conditioning standards.

Why?

Because in doing this you can gain all the advantages of doing this type of conditioning and avoid the pitfalls. All conditioning falls under the same movements of the body that strength does. Pushing, pulling, squatting, etc. work for the leg, back, upper body muscles. But conditioning by its nature requires higher repetitions and volumes of work to create the aerobic and muscular response. By using the natural interval you get the best of both worlds while creating the least conflict with you maximum strength. By using a significant variety of conditioning implements you work the body from many angles, creating better balance, less likelihood of muscular weakness or imbalance and overuse injuries. You also stay creative and interested in your training with constantly new stimulus and challenges. Yet you are consistent by following the conditioning standard set out above. You simply rotate the implements you practice it with. Unless you are training for a specific feat within one of the conditioning styles (GS competition, running or biking competition, ultra high repetition bodyweight or club feats), you'll get just as much in your conditioning without the staleness created by limited work. And you don't over-groove the body in any particular movement forcing it to over adapt and take away from your other goals.

Most of the movements within the alternative conditioning styles are simple enough that you can learn them well enough for practical use without the intense learning curve and technical practice necessary for heavy lifting. You can constantly challenge yourself with new feats in each style so that your conditioning constantly increases. You can concentrate on a particular conditioning style until you achieve your goal there an simply move on to another style or you can liberally m ix the styles using your heart rate and sports performance as your measuring stick or you can split them down the middle by using a dedicated workout to a particular style alternating with a variety of workouts. Plus as a strongman I want to be as good at as many feats as possible. I want to be up for whatever challenge. This style of training gives me more thorough preparation. I think it will for you too.

The above training tip is part of the reason that we created the videos in our Alternative Conditioning series and our Odd Object Lifting series. These videos are meant to open your mind to the possibilities of strength and conditioning with multiple different implements and give you the foundation of knowledge necessary to apply them to whatever your goals are. If you want strength work we show you how to do it with these implements as well as endurance work, whole body work, specific body part work, and exercises for just about whatever your goals athletically might be. That's why there are so many exercises both basic and unusual in these tapes.

Be sure to check them out on our site.
Alternative Conditioning
Odd Object Lifting Conditioning

P.S. There are more tapes coming in both of these series, but you won't find anything else as complete in its coverage of any of these exercises anywhere else on the net.