Stop Working Yourself Out
Don’t confuse exhaustion with progress.
Why do you exhaust yourself in the gym day after day? Why do you plan your working out as work, from Monday to Friday, for two hours no matter what? If you are trying to compete in a professional environment, it makes perfect sense. Are you?
Maybe that is how you always got results, in bursts of efforts that leave you exhausted, almost hating the achievement due to all the things you had to do to get it. Maybe the workouts you are following are not good for you right now, but no one tells you that because the narrative is “no pain, no gain.” Yeah, maybe for those that do weight lifting every day, but I don’t want to feel tired every day while I’m doing my actual job, or enjoying my hobbies. And, I’m pretty sure, you don’t want to feel tired either.
5 masteries
Using the 10.000 hours mastery rule, you get around 5 areas to master in your lifetime and some other 5 areas in which you can be an amateur. Unfortunately, this is the time you, I, and all others have. You can get further if you have a good head start, but you still need to put in the hours.
This might feel discouraging at first, but ultimately is liberating. Truly acknowledging that you have some limitations is one of the best things you can do for yourself. It means you stop trying to impress, and you start doing less busy work and more of the work that gets you results.
Let’s see a practical example. There are dozens of running variations, slower, faster, with heavy vests, uphill, downhill, sideways, obstacles, among many others, but ultimately there are only two that will yield most of the results: moderate running and sprints. The same goes for the kettlebell swings, if you open up YouTube and search for the kettlebell swing, you will see almost circus level variations that look great if you try to impress someone. But ultimately build nothing for you.
A Solution
When I first made the mental switch, I acknowledged that I will never look like the person on the cover of the magazine, I felt like I was freed from a shackle. This doesn’t mean you are allowed to half-ass your exercises. It means you start doing half the time, half the variations, use half the equipment, all the effort concentrated on a small subset of exercises. This is the practice.
The practice allows you to schedule it whenever you have time, for as long as you can, as hard as you can but requires all your attention.
The practice has no time requirements, maybe you can only do 20 minutes one day and 35 minutes another day, what matters is that you do it almost daily.
The practice has no schedule requirements. There is no path to follow for ultimate success, you can practice 3 days and take 2 off and then go for 5 consecutive days, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that you do it almost daily.
The practice doesn’t need 120% effort for results, somedays you feel like you can take on heavier weights, great; some days you can only do “the bare minimum”, great; ultimately what matters is that you do it almost daily.
The only requirement for the practice is that while you are at it, for those 15 minutes, 25 minutes, whatever minutes; is that you are fully focused on the practice, no phone, no social media, no chats. Just you and the exercise you are doing.
If you are interested in practicing with kettlebells, check out the PowerBell app. I built it based on the principles explained above, so you can forget the planning and just practice.
