A Leaf Knows When to Change... Do You?
Never-ending, perpetual, ceaseless improvement. To reach your peak and then get better… and better, and better.
We expect nothing less from ourselves, our children and even our favorite teams and athletes.
Do you feel this pull? Where each new peak in fitness instantly becomes your new baseline?
It seems like a good idea, like a healthy drive but it’s nothing of the sort. It’s truly an obsession that may very well be preventing you from reaching the very peak you’re aiming for—and most certainly is robbing you of the moment to moment joy of living.
How did we get trapped in this demanding, self-defeating, unattainable infinite loop?
Certainly, we live in a success and superiority obsessed culture where “good enough” never is. I have to wonder how deeply this paradigm of “constant improvement” is set into our subconscious minds during our formative years in school.
Think about the K-12 experience where with each passing semester we’re all expected to get better, smarter, faster… to leap, and leap and leap again. Dare a child plateau or God forbid, take a step back.
As for our favorite athletes, we just don’t see when they’re off peak performance—because it’s off season! When Lance is 15 lbs. heavier, in no shape to race, we don’t see him. He’s not racing. When the stars of the NFL are off season, they’re off peak. But we don’t see them hence we don’t think about it. They come back in shape and we assume that’s how it is—as if they are always on, like you and I.
So, how do we break this unhealthy, self-destructive cycle so that we can be free to enjoy the ride and to truly find new and higher peaks each year? That’s the question I set forth to answer in “Book Four” of Strength for LIFE, “Week 13 & Beyond.”
What follows is the answer, the real deal, leveraging my own decades of experience and the proven formula employed by the world’s top athletes. And as you’ll find in this short excerpt, it’s wonderfully simple, although for many equally challenging. Truly getting better and better requires breaking out of the limiting, “foot to floor” mind-trap and taking “one step back to get two forward.”
What’s especially uber-cool about this proven path to your peak is that it is the very secret to staying strong, fit and lean for life.
How to Stay Fit and Strong for LIFE
One of my favorite sporting events of the year is the pinnacle of bike racing—the Tour De France. Several years ago, up before the early July sun, I found myself enthralled in the live television coverage as Lance Armstrong continued his domination on the way to winning his record breaking 7th Tour. Lance’s dedication to this one cycling event each year is legendary. He trained exclusively to win the race that defines cycling accepting nothing less than his absolute best. The results of his focus on this one peak performance per year speak for themselves.
As I watched Lance pull away on a hill climb, I had an epiphany: the clarity and focus of this annual peaking ritual was actually the secret to sustaining fitness for life. The answer to the question of how you stay strong and fit for life had become abundantly clear. You don’t. Instead, you get in your absolute best shape once a year, year after year. The key to staying in shape for life is giving your life shape: clearly defined, meaningful peaks when you aim beyond your best. It’s in pushing the bounds of the possible that you expand your limits.
If you recall from chapter two, The Shape of Your Life, the Transformation Training Camp is a finely tuned peak phase for transforming your body. It works like a booster rocket, breaking you free from the gravity of health and elevating you towards a life of strength. Like all training camps, it comes to an end. Athletes don’t spend 365 days a year in their peak physical condition, instead they organize their lives and performance around seasons. They know when to peak, when to maintain and when to recharge their bodies and minds.
The Tour provided a rhythm, focus and motivating deadline to Lance’s training. Just like the Tour was his single organizing event of the year, I want you to think of the TTC as your organizing event—your peak season. The TTC provides rhythm, focus and structure to your 12 month plan that has you reaching new levels of strength and fitness each year—while fueling your off-peak training. The new challenges that each season brings inspires renewed energy and commitment, keeping you fresh and focused.
The logic is sound: get in your best shape one time each year and you’ll be in shape for life.
I was thinking about this today as we’re seeing the season change here in Colorado.
I may well have done my last big [bike] ride this weekend, for fall is upon us and the winter near behind. And now I’m rounding the bend into a Season of Strength to put some muscle on, lean out a little more and then get this shoulder fixed.
More on the shoulder next time…
Plan your peaks and know how and when to pull back. That’s about creating your own seasons, being your performance coach.
What season are you in? Still chasing the beachbody or embracing the new challenge, changing with the seasons, with your mind wide open?
| Meet The Author, Shawn | |
 | Known as "The Fitness Philosopher," for his deep, clear approach to the cutting through the fitness conundrum, Shawn is a 20+ year veteran in the field of Lifestyle Fitness and Peak Performance. Author of several best-selling book, with one of the most photographed physiques in history, Shawn, with his brother, Bill Phillips (Body for LIFE) catapulted EAS sports nutrition into the world leader and Muscle Media magazine and the documentary movie, Body of Work. He created the first computerized training system in PowerBuilding and the popular Variable Split System for Muscle Mass. Now, in his 40's, a husband and father of two young children, Shawn is passionate about helping busy, high-achieving "men in the middle" enjoy vibrant, energized, amazing, Full Strength lives! He has recently created the World’s 1st and only true premium nutrition shake for men, Full Strength — clinically proven to build muscle, burn fat and boost energy. His most recent book, Strength for LIFE is the "how to" guide to a Lifestyle of Fitness Freedom. |
12. October 2010 at 11:07 am
This is great advice Shawn. So many people go through the process of obsessive overtraining, then quickly burn out on exercise and go back to old habits. I think focusing on different peaks at various times in the year is a great way to look at it. For example, I would really like to loose that extra weight this winter, so I can better train for and compete in next years Triathlon season. So, I will focus on nutrition and building lean muscle, so that by the time early spring hits, I can focus on improving my swim/bike/run times. At least that’s the plan…
12. October 2010 at 12:17 pm
Shawn:
I wonder about your shoulder and thought I’d share something you may find interesting about the problem I was having with mine.
For over 3 years, I would experience great pain. The neck, pec and back muscles all played into it, which is another story. Anyway, I recently attended a T Harv Eker event where he had a shaman type person do a very interesting process. I have been free of chronic shoulder pain since. I know their is a tendency still there, but the strong non-stop pain is gone and I’m delighted.
12. October 2010 at 5:02 pm
Shawn,
Great post, what you are talking about is the probably the biggest most overlooked aspect of personal performance and lifestyle (and training for that matter).
Peak performance and most people’s desire to live at or near their ideal weight all year round cannot and will not be achieved, by performing or trying to achieve all the time.
That’s a form of performance addiction and it opposes living in balance, with vibrant health…
Since few people are helping people develop their lifestyle, the bias is program, after program, after program, and it never ends. It drives people crazy, because the marketing never stops and the guilt and tension to “take action” and perform better are always there.
It is the age of better, (what I call the age of achievement), the downside is that there are no boundaries any more and in reality it’s easy to see; you just can’t keep getting better and better. It just doesn’t work that way.
You’ve got to take steps back to take two steps forward. This lifestyle is sure fire and proven.
We all it periodization, and when you have a periodized pattern in your life, you are no longer susceptible to the “pin ball pull”, of everyone elses’ plan for you. You have your own lifestyle plan, unique to your circumstances and you fit in what works for you, or adjust to make it fit.
But if you are addicted to performance or achievement and “getting better’ you are on a sure fire path for overwhelm and that’s a big reasons why people are addicted to better. They never just get there and live “better”.
14. October 2010 at 7:40 pm
Hey Shawn,
Thank you for being a great advocate for ffitness all these years. Continue to bring it.
26. October 2010 at 2:40 am
This is a great post Shawn!
A timely reminder that I can’t do it all, be it all, or have it all at once. Not in the sense that I should give up and walk away from the goals I’ve achieved over the past year, far from! But an acceptance that not everything has to happen at once.
Winter is coming quickly here in the UK, the days are drawing in and the sun rises slower in the mornings. That means most cyclists are putting away the road bike for the season, but I don’t want to – I want to continue riding as much as I did when I first bought my bike at the start of August. But is it sustainable? That’s the question!
Figuring out where best my Season of Strength lies is critical, I have to get off my butt and plan it out!