đź‘‹ Hey. Welcome to issue #173 of The Everyday Athlete Newsletter.
Here are my 3 favourite ideas, learns and resources to help you improve your performance this week (4 min read):
🪜 How to climb out of the mediocrity trap this january
Have you heard of the mediocrity trap?
Are you, perhaps, living in it?
Often most prevalent with one's health.
Where you're not sick. But also not thriving.
Just.. fine.
Your body, how you look, how you feel… It’s not bad enough to do something about. But it’s also not where you want it to be.
So you kick on as is.
The drama?
Health doesn’t usually fall off a cliff.
It erodes.
Until one day, the body that was “fine” can’t do the things it loves anymore.
The funny thing about the mediocrity trap is that things would actually be better if the situation was worse.
That’s the mediocrity trap. And it’s where a heap of us live. A place that I, myself (whether it’s my health, relationships, job, life) am scared sh*tless by.
But here’s the good stuff:
January gives us a surge of motivation. A window to act.
To climb out of the mediocrity hole and into a life where our health and fitness make life electric.
Most people just use the motivation of January wrong (and why 90% of new year resolutions fail).
We get hyped. Add 5 new habits to an already-full life. And ride the motivational wave (usually a sucky shorey)… until it crashes.
Then, without this motivation helping increase our capacity to do all the things.. something’s gotta fall off the edge.
And it’s usually the new stuff that’s just been added to the plate. The gym membership. The diet. The change we were trynna make.
So here’s a better approach:
Step 1: 🗑️ Before you add, subtract.
Make room.
One easy way? Download the OneSec app.
It puts friction between you and your most addictive apps.
So instead of burning 12 minutes in Instagram’s vortex, you’ve got a quality lunch for tomorrow loaded in the fridge. F*ck yeah.
Then we can add.
But..
None of this shoot for the moon, motivational poster, unrealistic as hell stuff.
Instead...
Step 2: 🎯 Set the bar so low it’s hard to fail.
Examples:
- 🚶 One 10-minute walk a day
- 🏋️ 5 minutes of pushups and lunges, 3x/week
- 🍎 One day a week: no junk food
- 🧑‍🍳 One night a week: cook instead of ordering
These are our building blocks.
Tiny actions. That we can sustain. That lead to big results.
Then once our building blocks feel easy, level up (maybe 8k steps, 30 min training, etc).
But that doesn’t mean demo-ing the building blocks. They become our safety nets to fall back on when life inevitably gets busy again.
Because it’s not what you start. But what sticks.
🏋️ The latest way to test your fitness
Lifetime Games is a new hybrid fitness competition.
(Kinda like Hyrox) it tests strength, endurance and heart.
One race. 17 stations. Classic stuff: running, rowing, lifting, bodyweight work, etc.
With one key difference to most other popular fitness comps..
You've got freedom to choose weights/reps based on your strengths.
E.g. Would you rather load your barbell deadlift with 50kgs for 100 reps or 200kgs for 25 reps?
So there's a bitta strategy too.
The LT Games launched in October in Minneapolis and sold out. Might be next big thing.
I've never really been drawn to these kinda comps.
But I do like the idea of having to use your brain too.
🏋️ Compensation training: the gains that cost you
Our nervous systems are most plastic (“teachable”) under high stress/load.
Which - in strength training - is usually the last few reps of a set. When it’s hardest.
And if we’re regularly losing form in those last few reps, that’s the movement pattern our bodies are remembering.
We’re essentially learning how to compensate.
The shoulder shifts to grind out the last reps.
The back arch creeps in.
Repeat it often enough… and it becomes the new pattern.
And they don’t stay in the gym.
- 👧 The way you deadlift becomes the way you pick up your kid
- đźš— The way you hinge under fatigue becomes the way you load groceries into the car
The movement pattern transfers.
Sure, we might build more strength and muscle grinding it out.
But it’s a short-term game.
Because we’re building it on a crook foundation.
Eventually, that foundation gives way.
A niggle becomes a pain. A tweak becomes a tear.
Bang. We’re on the sideline.
But don’t we want to go close to failure?
Yes, we do.
But rarely at the expense of form.
By all means, go heavy.
And in the last few reps, the bar will slow.
But in terms of technique, the first rep should look like the last.
And we’ll get better long-term results that way.
That's it!
Enjoy the holidays 🤙
Matt
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The Everyday Athlete Newsletter is not a licensed health service nor a substitute for professional health advice, treatment or assessment. The information shared in this email is general and written for a specific audience. If you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional.
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