Press Reset Today

I once worked for someone who savored Daylight Savings Time in the spring when he could move his clocks forward an hour and be given a “free” hour. I’m not sure why, but the meaning he got from that one extra hour has always stuck with me. I think we all enjoy getting that extra hour added to our day, but c’mon, this is the thing you look forward to every year?

Well, apparently, this was an extremely important day for him. He explained to me that it made him feel like he was able to operate within his day more well rested and with lots of time to spare. In just that one hour he felt he was able to reset (and reorganize) his life.

Today is Labor Day and most of us have the great fortune of having a day off from work. It’s traditional to have a barbeque and visit the pool one last time. Of course, while we’re all anticipating the shift from summer to fall and quickly into winter, it’s worthwhile to reflect on the status of your work and non-work lives. 

The origin of Labor Day stems from the need to help workers get more time off from their jobs. When this concept was introduced, it was commonplace for factory workers to put in 70 hours a week. 

Like many areas of life, I find I must diligently continue to prune ineffective uses of my time to help me maintain a reasonable balance between my work life and my home life and to ensure I’m still on track for my immediate and long-term goals.

Days like today are perfect for taking a stepback, doing some introspective thinking, and pressing the reset button on your life.

Here is an easy 3 step process that will help you maximize today for the benefit of your future:

1. Set/check goals: what are you working towards? 

2. Get organized: what systems need to be in place for you to be successful? Or rather, to make success more automatic? Automatic success sounds good doesn’t it? Well, get organized.

3. Execute: once you have your systems defined, it just becomes a matter of execution.

I’ll give you a couple examples of some simple processes I put in place over the past year that help automatically keep me working towards my long-term goals:

Example #1: More Time with My Family

Step 1 - Set the Goal: Not coaching during hours when my children are not in school. So, this means evenings and weekends. 

Step 2 - Get Organized: Make sure the SAPT coaches are fully trained and ready to run the show for sessions.

Step 3 - Execute: If the first two steps are done correctly, step 3 becomes a piece of cake. In this case, it’s been almost a year since moving to this system and it has had an enormously positive impact on my home life. Plus, the coaches continue to get the experience they need as they develop.

Example #2: Financial Diversification

Step 1 - Set the Goal: Amplify my savings plan and future returns.

Step 2 - Get Organized: Set up my investment account for automatic purchases each month.

Step 3 - Execute: This is about as automatic as it gets.

I’m sure you’re not here for my basic thoughts on how I am managing my home and financial life. So, what about making your health and fitness automatic? Well, it’s truly easier than you may think, but you need to press the reset button and really think about goals.

Improving your overall health

Step 1 - Set the Goal: what, specifically, do you want to measure? In my examples above I measure hours at home and returns on my investments. To be successful, you MUST measure something specific! 

Take a good, hard look at yourself and the direction you’re currently heading.

This can really be anything, but it must be meaningful to YOU.

Common measurables in the health category include: blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, body fat, and even something like servings of vegetables in a day. All of these will work, but only pick one (of define another that is important to you).

Step 2 - Get Organized: Overall health improvement almost always depends upon foundational habits. So, making sure you are feeding yourself nutritious meals at each meal, every day and ensuring you get at least 30-min of easy aerobic exercise daily (an evening walk will do the trick nicely).

How do you make those things happen? Meal prep on Sundays for the week leads to easy grab ‘n go for meals and setting an alarm for that evening walk are just a couple of ideas.

Step 3 - Execute: Time to put rubber to the road and follow your plan. Of course, if you feel you are lacking the proper knowledge or support to achieve your goal, hiring someone to guide and support you in this journey is always a very good idea.

Improving fitness or hitting a new strength record will require a different 3-steps, but in each case it is critically important that you choose meaningful goals that contribute to the things in your life that matter most.

One final note: plans often go astray. But continuing to take days like today to reassess and even reset will eventually, as haphazard as it may seem, get you further than if you had no goals and no plans.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

Thank you! SAPT

Strength as a Foundation

On March 15, 2013 I became a regular person - well my perception of regular anyway - and I love it!

Why did I have to relinquish my super-hero status? I’ll leave it at this: I saw my dreams not just faltering, but failing. So, to get back on track, I stopped working two full-time jobs... which I had been doing for years for "fun" versus necessity. I took a break from my love-affair with iron. I also sit more than I have in about 15 years... that's a mega regular person activity!

Well, if we fast forward to today, my big dreams in life are properly realigned and effectively back within reach. But, I want to talk about what has happened to my physical foundation over that time.

SAPT’s methodology is based on the approach of Strength as a Foundation. We use various examples to explain why this is the best approach for building speed and explosiveness, but my favorite is “imagine shooting a cannon out of a canoe” sounds silly, right? Well that’s because it is. Never having operated an actual cannon myself, I can still easily imagine how ineffective and potentially dangerous it would be to try to shoot the thing out of a canoe.

The same concept holds true for performance training. If Strength as a Foundation is ignored, you’ve effectively set yourself or your child up for ineffective and potentially dangerous training.

Okay, so getting back to my little story: since becoming proudly “regular,” I’ve been working out at home and put a huge emphasis on improving my overall fitness. “Fitness” in this case meant I wanted to put a big focus on improving my cardiovascular system's functioning and efficiency. My exercise of choice? Running. And because of time limits I have only been lifting an average of 20-minutes, twice a week... but my running workouts stick around 60-90 minutes, 4-5 days a week.

Do you see where this is heading...?

I've let my foundation crack. My strength foundation. It sort of sucks. But, I planned for this to happen... I guess I just didn't know what it would feel like once I arrived. I've been lifting consistently since I was 19 years old. The longest break I’ve ever taken (up until this year) would have been a MAXIMUM of one week off from lifting. Crazy, but this 20-min/2x per week lifting has been going on for almost 4-months. With several weeks in there taken completely off from lifting.

I’ve been trying to shoot a cannon out of an ever destabilizing canoe. Attempting to keep up such a high volume, frequency, and intensity of running without maintaining my strength foundation is trouble. I’m feeling it now.

My goals have been accomplished in terms of “fitness” but I’ve been surprised what a slippery slope running that much and lifting that little has been. It’s like the losses are compounded. My knees often ache and the muscle mass in my legs (read: glutes and hamstrings) has dropped significantly.

What’s the plan and what’s the lesson?

I need to build muscle and lift weights more frequently. That’s the plan. And the lesson? As advertised, running really is detrimental to strength levels. I’m undecided about how I feel about this. Where I am in my life, running really lines up well with my mentality and goals. I can’t even begin to tell you how many excellent ideas I’ve had while running... SAPT was actually conceived during a run 6-years ago(!). But, I need to prioritize more prehab exercises to keep myself on the trails. In terms of the biggie compound lifts, eh, I’ll probably continue to take a break. 13 years straight of weight training means I’m certain the lure of the iron will pull me back when the time is right. In the meantime, I’ll continue setting a laser focus on building an amazing business and embracing my “regular” side.

Last week I attended a workshop on marketing for the small business owner. It was amazing and led by John Jantsch who is *tha guy* when it comes to this topic. As much as I believe the experience has already had a permanent and positive change on SAPT, I will try to exercise some self-control and stay on-topic. I do mention the experience for good reason: the first - and most tangible - impact from this workshop for our readers is in how we deliver content on the blog. Here are the changes you can look forward to:

1. Each month will have a theme that each primary (MWF) post will address. This month's theme: Give Me Strength!
2. We will be attempting to up our quality from an internal standpoint by actually editing posts ahead of time.
3. All this requires *gasp* planning, so posts should be more reliable with few, if any, missed posts.

Please engage if you like or hate or even have no feeling about what you read here!

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