Striving for Goals - part 3 & The True Strongman

Well here we are trekking along in our New Year almost finished with the first month. Doesn't seem possible that time moves as quickly as it does. That's why it's important to stay focused and motivated about your goals. As any of you who are married or have families can attest to, once you hit a certain phase in life time seems to move at twice the pace you are used to. If you don't keep your head together about accomplishing your goals you will get bogged down in the day to day necessities of life and forget about them. If anyone's life is a testimony to the fact that we're not promised tomorrow, then mine is and even with the experiences that I've had and the second chances I've been given, sometimes its hard for me to stay on task with a certain goal.

Here are some tips for staying focused and motivated on your goals:

1. Real Goals. Most everybody when given a choice would choose to accomplish a lot of things in many different areas. Very few have the real desire to do what it takes to accomplish a vast array of spread out goals. Why? Because the truth is there are certain things that you REALLY want. Those are the things that your goals should be centered around. The rest of those things can go in the nice-if-it-happens-but-I'm-not-going-to-cry-over-it pile. Focus on sorting out what you truly want. This will make it easy to stay focused and motivated on those things.

2. Small Steps. You've heard the expression a journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step? Well that applies to whatever your goals are be they 1,000 miles long or not. Planned, logical, simple, orderly steps are easy to achieve. Continue putting one foot in front of the other and stop worrying about the fact that its going to take you 1,000 miles to where you're going. Focus on the next small, simple step.

3. Achievement. By focusing on the small steps you will set up a pattern of consistently achieving small goals. This is probably the most motivating tool in anyone's box. Things that you hate to do suddenly become likeable when you see that you are actually accomplishing something. If you hate squats and right now can squat 150 pounds, but you know that you need to do them and get up to 500 pounds to accomplish your goals, it can seem like a daunting and impossible task. But if you set up your program so that you are doing maybe 155 next week instead of your normal weight, you have a quantifiable step made towards your goal. Pile up a few of those steps and suddenly you're having fun and the ultimate goal doesn't seem as far off and you're motivated because you're consistently seeing progress.

4. Balance In Life. It's easy to stay motivated at a high-level about a very difficult goal for a very short period of time. It's much more difficult to keep up a burning desire for something very hard to do for a long period of time. This happens to everybody. Much as I love strength and can stay fired up about it, if it's the only thing in the world I think about for a period of time, I get burned out. You will too. Learn to stay focused, but at the same time do the other things in life that help you to be a complete person. Have fun, love someone, and be spiritual. Ultimately these will help you achieve your goals, not distract from them.

5. Do it your way. If your goal is to lift "X" amount of weight then there are probably several roads you can travel to get there. You will have to experiment as to what works best for you, but you'll also have to experiment as to what you like the best. This plays out to many other areas of life as well. If you're using a style that you enjoy its much easier to stay on task accomplishing whatever you want.

6. Dates/Competing/Rewards. Many people find it easiest to use smaller day to day tricks and games to make themselves stay on a goal. Setting specific dates you want things achieved by helps some people to stay focused. Training for a competition or simply competing for fun with other people or yourself helps many people to stay focused and have fun in training. Rewarding yourself when you accomplish a goal can be motivating to some people and can also help you to solidify the achievement of that goal and can also help to prepare you in going to the next step.


KILLER NEW BOOK BY PAVEL

Pavel Tsatsouline's newest book has just come out. "BEYOND BODYBUILDING." It is a massive (365 pages), compilation of all of his writing from the past several years. Covering just about any physical topic you could think of. It's one of those books that will speed you toward your goals by giving you the knowledge to remove training obstacles that it would take you forever to learn how to do on your own. This is a book I wish I would've had when I started training. Pavel is one of those few people who can really deal in the science-meets-real world training area. They are running a discount special for the first releasing of the book. I would jump on it if I were you. You really need this book. To get the savings you have to buy it by 11:55pm PST, Tuesday, February 1, 2005.

www.dragondoor.com/b31.html

Here's an excerpt from Pavel's book that talks about progressive movement training.

www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode3/296/


NEW ARTICLES UP ON OUR SITE

We have a new article up on our site right now entitled, "An Advancing Definition of Strength."

www.strongerman.com/advancing_definition.html

It is an excerpt from my book, "50 Power Points." I think it will really help everyone understand where I'm coming from in defining and training for strength. You really need to decide what specifically you're training for to give direction to your training. This will help you broaden your horizons and maybe decide what you really want to train for.

There will also be three new articles up on our site in the next few days (an excerpt from "Twisted Conditioning," and an excerpt from "How To Squat 900lbs," and a new original article), as well as a new kettlebell training article that will be up soon over at Dragon Door and a new article over at the Diesel Crew website.


TRAINING TIP

REAL Strongmen!

Heather, Noah and I all went out to eat Sunday night. Now Noah is a very outgoing little boy most of the time. He tends to monopolize waitresses when we eat at restaurants. He will talk their ear off especially if he's really excited about something or is in the mood. So he proceeds to tell this waitress that, "Daddy is a strongman and I do shows with him sometimes and I lifted triple my body weight and I bent a spoon into a cobra." and a lot of other little fun things that aren't really germane to this topic. ****(He really did do a hand and thigh/quarter deadlift type movement with a 365lb barbell. He's 8 years old and weighs 110. He really did bend a spoon into the shape of a cobra. It's done by coiling the handle of the spoon around tightly several times and turning the cup inward so that it sits up looking like a coiled up cobra with its hood spread. Dennis Rogers showed him that. We don't generally let him train heavy, he just sort of walked up and did it.)

So the waitress thinks he's hilarious and he's charming her and she says to him, "Oh are you going to be a bodybuilder when you grow up?" Now he's heard so much of this particular term around my house for so long, that he was a little affronted by the term, "Bodybuilder." We stopped him before he started to explain the difference to her. But here's the point that I want you to see about this little anecdote:

People just don't know the difference on average between bodybuilders, powerlifters, strongmen, all around lifters, kettlebell lifters, wrestlers, or anything else that has to do with strength. It is the proliferation of information that is available to the general public that basically only informs them about bodybuilding. Here's what I want you to see about that. If you look at the way people have always treated the term, "strongman," it has always been applied to one with overwhelming physical ability. "Bodybuilder" has become the modern term in America, but the term strongman or whatever synonym is used for it has always lumped us all together. And in the old days of physical culture, men did strive to be good at every area and accomplished it. We should be doing the same thing. Now how you look is going to be to certain extent, geared by your genetics and diet and I'm not overly interested in looks-only based training. But most of us are going to gain enough muscle to be noticeable to the average person. I think that in doing so we ought to be prepared to physically back up our look with whatever challenge is presented to us.

So when you train, prepare to accept any challenge you can think of. Prepare yourself to truly be able to work hard. If your strength only applies to limited movements or barbells alone, then you're doing something wrong. Now there is something to be said for repetitive specificity for the general workman in being good at what he does, but your training should give you the ability to step into just about any physical situation and have some competence. Yeah, you're not going to outrun a marathon runner or beat an Olympian at his or her particular sport, but you should be looking to build the physical vitality to play in anybody's arena and make a decent showing for yourself.

Is your training addressing all of these areas?
Are you getting maximum strength, speed, power, flexibility, endurance, ability to move with weight?
If not, you're missing the boat. Step back and examine what you're doing and if it's getting you the results that you want and if it's giving you physical competency and vitality in every area of your life.

Some steps to take in this area:

Lift something heavy on a regular basis that doesn't exhaust you.
Master your own bodyweight.
Build up your lungs.
Do something that requires you to move fast.
Do something that requires you to move in a long range of motion.
Do something that requires you to pick up something odd and move around with it.
Do something that makes your hands stronger.

These are just a few of the things to think about. If your program is not addressing all of them, then can you really call yourself a strongman?