When To Put The Throttle To The Floor

There’s always something crazy going on in this industry. At any moment, there’s a maniac in a weight room taking a dangerous lift and a shady businessman in an office finding a way to turn dirty profits. The posts you find here in my log are the musings of a mashed-up meathead — the reactions I have as I spend my whole life watching this industry. I will share my thoughts with you here, unedited, uncensored, unfiltered, and Under The Bar. If you are offended by profanity - do not read this. 


My Training Log, Columns & Articles 

In many of my last Under the Bar Posts that I've made, they may come across as being a little harsh, possibly negative and contain too many references to adversity and overcoming adversity but that's part of business. When I first started writing the book Under the Bar, the concept was, and still is with these columns today, is to take the things that I learned in the gym and apply them to business. In the gym, most of what we do is overcome resistance, overcome adversity. It's part of the process. It's how we become stronger. That's how we become better. That's how we become more confident. That's how we grow. It's part of the process. Growth can't happen without strain and adversity.

After reviewing several of my last posts, , it's not always a fight. It's not always a battle. Just as in the gym, you have training cycles and you'll have periods of training cycles where everything is just awesome. Everything's working and moving forward exactly the way that you plan it to be. A lot of times it's moving forward at a rate that's actually exceeding your expectations. That's also part of the process. That's a reward of all the fights and all the adversity and everything that you're dealing with.

Something that I see a lot of times in training that you really shouldn't do, is when things are working and when they're clicking and when they're moving forward, you don't want to back it down. You don't want to take time off during that phase. You want to ride that phase.

Me, personally, I found it more effective to be able to actually push even harder during those phases and take advantage of what's going on because everything's working. Recovery is rock solid. The process is exceeding expectations. If you don't put your foot on the throttle, instead of getting a 20 pound PR that you're looking for, if you put your foot on the throttle and you take advantage of the opportunity that's in front of you, you might end up with a 40, 50, 60 pound PR. You don't want to leave that 40, 60, pound PR on the table just because you didn't put your foot on the throttle when things were going well.

Business is exactly the same way. When things are going great, everything's on par, put your foot on the throttle and try to get as much out of it as you possibly can. The reality is, these times are rare. They don't come around all the time.

Unlike training, in business, you actually really have to put your foot on the throttle as hard as you possibly can and keep throttling down until something actually breaks. You need to find out what breaks. That's your ceiling. That's what's going to stop you from being able to go any higher.

Training's a little different. You don't want to do that. You don't want to keep putting the foot down on the throttle and end up getting an injury and not be able to compete. There has to be a certain point in time where you're going to pull back a little bit. In business you've got to find out where that glass ceiling is so you can be able to bust through it to keep moving forward.

The take away from this is, there are going to be times that everything's going well. Don't think for a minute that you're always going to be in these battles, but do understand there will be more battles than you think. There's no doubt. You will grow from those. During the times that are going well, don't just kick back think that, "Hey, now I can rest. Now I can take my finger off of the trigger and not work as hard and just slide through." That will creep up and kick you in the ass. When things are going well, full throttle until you can find a breaking point, not a severe breaking point, but a breaking point to where you know you need to change a system to be able to grow and to able to keep pressing forward.

Understand that sometimes those systems that you're going to have to change are going to take some assessment. Not every system change is just a matter of a change in policy or writing some new operational directive. Some system changes can be huge and they can be extremely expensive and they're going to require a little bit more thought and strategic thinking than just saying, "We need to change this and making the investment and getting it done." Think of it the same way as if you have been using the same training program for 10, 15 years and it's no longer working. If you want to switch over to an entirely different training program, that's going to take a big decision. That's going to take a lot more strategic thought. It's going to take a ... Potentially changing strategic partners. It's going to take finding advisors to be able to help guide you through this big system change.

There's a lot of factors that play into that which go far beyond just saying, "We have to change this," and making a simple change. In training and in business those things are going to come around. Before you invest and make a significant, giant change like that, you have to step back and you have to really analyze to make sure if the cost involved in that system change can be absorbed without having a negative effect or too much of a negative effect on your business.

Most of the times, this would be true in training as well, most of the times when you're dealing with a huge systematic change, you are going to have to take a step backwards to be able to take multiple steps forward. That needs to be understood beforehand. You need to analyze the risk involved in that. Try to figure out how many steps backwards it's actually going to take and systemically project how many step forwards it's going to end up in the long run and how long it's going to take to get there.

It's not all bad, It's not all good but it does all require systematic thinking, short and long term projections and risk.

Just like training to beat you best in the weight room. The better you become the more important these factors are.

Many people in the strength and fitness industry will lead you to believe the rules to business do not apply, they have the answers and short cuts that can having you sucking down drinks on your own private jet after one year of making millions because of X.  If built a training program and told you it would take you from a 250 pound bench press to a 650 pound bench press AND put 60 pounds of muscle on you within 16 weeks would you believe it? I hope not because that is almost as far fetched as some of the claims many of these fit pro marketers are making. If it sounds too good to be true - it is.

Remember this - if everyone had all these private jets these jack off marketers claim we would be reading about plane crashes every day. When is the last time you heard of a private jet crashing?