Are you the sort of person who is always socialising and generally likes to hang out with people or are you the person who feels more at home in complete solitude? I definitely feel like I sit in the second camp. How do I know? Two big reasons. After a days work, being nice to people and trying to always be helpful, I’m done. Mentally exhausted. Shot, caput! The other thing, even with my very close friends, I don’t always need to be with them. Sometimes when they call up an suggest a night out I’m like “nah, I’d prefer to just chill”.
Why do I talk about this?
By been objective about your own behaviours and moods it teaches you how to be. How to reenergise, how to avoid getting too exhausted mentally or physically. This objectivity can provide you insight in how best to recover from training, how to get in the right mindset for the important meeting at work or the next powerlifting or strongman meet you plan to compete in.
The way to improve this is to consciously become introspective and acknowledge what’s going on with you. On the one hand this helps you understand simple yet seemingly difficult things like what gives you energy or motivation? What drains you? What behaviours of others just destroys your positivity? What it also does is it helps you be more aware of your own behaviour. Do you act like a jerk when you are with a particular person? Does your mind wander under different circumstances? These insights into yourself allow you to be more productive
This concept applies to your weight training perfectly. Does your body respond better to multiple heavy sets of 5’s or to 3 x 15? The day or two after a heavy deadlift session take note of what you feel. Consider how you are, centrally (fatigue, came down with a cold) and peripherally (tight spinal erectors, tight hamstrings). Be consistent about this and you will begin to build an internal algorithm that will enable you to plan, execute and progress in your training to what is optimal for you. This doesn’t mean you can’t follow a prescribed plan like a 5/3/1 or Cube method. What it means though is you will optimise it. Perhaps your “4 day a week program” works best for you over an 8-9 day week cycle. Or perhaps you can go legs/ push / pull routine on 3 consecutive days with 1 rest day, in perpetuity hitting a higher frequency overall. Everyone responds differently. Just the same as everyone will respond differently to the same question in a boardroom. Some people get defensive. Others get aggressive. Others it doesn’t even phase them.
The ability to be objective and step out of what you’re immersed in is a critical skill. Without this skill you get lost in the day to day. You run the risk of falling deeper into a rabbit hole, that if you were objectively viewing, you would not be pursuing. You may have burnt months on a program that was never going to deliver the results you were hoping for. You could end up in a toxic situation in the workplace cause your lack of objectivity blinds you from the political games going on around you. Be objective. Observe and recalculate. Just as the great fighter pilot and eventual military strategist, John Boyd would preach in the OODA loop. Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. In order for this strategy to work, when you observe, it needs to be objective. See what is really there, not just what you want to be there.
Now get in that boardroom and weight room, be objective and "observe" others in your wake!