Chasing Two Rabbits

Originally appeared on ssntl.com

If you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both.
– unknown

It’s true for fitness. It’s true for productivity. It’s true for mindfulness. More than one goal at a time reduces your efficiency dramatically. Focus on one goal and achieve it. Then move on.

Around March, I’d been focusing my training and nutrition on fat loss for a couple months as described in my earlier post. While I was mostly just following “the basics,” it was working pretty well.

Around the beginning of April, I started feeling a little “small,” as one will when one is getting smaller. As a card carrying member of the gain train, this frightened me (despite it being in total alignment with my goals). I decided to swap out my moderate intensity weight+bodyweight training program for a high-volume squat program on which I’d made good muscle gains in the past.

Two weeks later I was talking myself out of cardio to spare my legs for the 50 reps of squats scheduled for the following day, as well as upping my starchy-carb intake to facilitate recovery. The fuck? I had fallen into the classic “two rabbit” trap, and would soon be failing to achieve fat loss OR muscle growth.

I dropped the high-volume squat program to refocus (again) on my fat loss efforts. Lesson learned…at least until the next time I forget it.