All posts by: Chad Morris

When do you decide to stop a weight lifting exercise? Is it when you can say, “I don’t think I can do any/many more”?

That’s what many people seem to do. And it isn’t very satisfying.

I’ve found a way to conclude that gives me a much more satisfying sense of completion–and at the same time it helps me get more out of the exercise.

I think of this as a “full finish,” or “100% finish.”

Here’s how it goes…

Last week I wrote how to do a mental RPE (rated perceived exertion, 0-10 scale) assessment occasionally as you experience the “stair stepped progression” you can intend to create during an exercise.

For finding a satisfying conclusion of an exercise, I simply strive to hit what I’m absolutely convinced is a “10” on my RPE assessment.

Now, there are a couple of conditions to this:

First condition:
When I’m truly at a “10” in effort, the weight must be moving at a pace that would take it at least 20-30 seconds to complete the movement. Maybe it even comes to a complete halt after it’s been slowing down at this pace.

Now, I personally tend to never move much faster than 10 seconds lifting a weight–so when speed bogs down for me it goes pretty quickly to this level.

If I were to put my effort at a “10” and the weight shot up and completed in 1 second, or even 12 seconds, I’d consider that I’m not there yet–I haven’t hit my conditions yet. So, I’d keep going.

Second condition:
After I’ve hit what I’m convinced is a “10”, assuming the weight is moving very, very slowly and with complete control, as per above, then…

I strive to sustain at a “10” for at least 5 seconds.

If I’m new to an exercise, and just beginning to get to what feels like a “10”, sustaining for even 1 second feels like a huge accomplishment. But then I get motivated to go next time and go just a little bit longer.

Eventually, as I build up my tolerance and confidence, I can get to serenely pushing with all my might, and with complete control, for at least 5 seconds after the wight has slowed to a crawl or even a stop.

And then I feel a great sense of completion.

But beware, if–and when, as it will!–your mind shifts to the default mode of thinking you need to be moving, you’ll feel frustrated and discouraged. Everything I mentioned last week about changing this perspective applies, so you might want to review that.

If, and when, you do shift into that “performance” mode, just notice it–and know that next time you can try again. Eventually, you won’t even have to wait for the next time–you’ll be able to switch your focus this way right in the moment, during the exercise. But that will take a while.

If you keep at it, you’ll be able to experience a sense of real accomplishment and motivation as you hit the opportunity a full finish, instead of discouragement as you approach it. And it’s all about training your mind to align with the goal you’re actually creating, and that actually benefits you, instead of the inadequate and incomplete goal of just “moving.”

If you’ve never felt this, know that it does take most people quite a while. Any engagement with this goal is the only way to progress, and this is a worthy path of progress to pursue. It took me years to experience this…but I didn’t know it was something I could even shoot for. I just found it, and it made the whole experience of exercising suddenly feel much more “zen” and more fulfilling.

I highly recommend working to experience what you know is a true “full finish” at least once. It might change your whole experience of exercise in an intersting way.

A final note…

After each exercise I like to mentally note how close I was to hitting a “full finish” as I’ve just described it. I don’t expect to always be there. I find that questioning/assessing my efforts right after each exercise reinforces the goal, and when I didn’t hit it, I feel more motivated for next time.

For the final day in this series, I want to share an insight I’ve learned that has had the most value to me in my over 15 years of training myself, training clients, consulting with people, and studying and seeking out the best information I can find.

This valuable insight is: Doing more exercise can improve your results. But most people are sabotaging their results by trying to do more exercise the wrong way.

A story about London double-decker buses will help clarify what I’m talking about…

Double-decker buses and exercise

In the 1950s, a study that observed London transportation workers revealed that conductors on double-decker buses had half the heart disease mortality as the drivers of those buses. This study has sometimes been cited as the beginning of modern medical exercise science.

The standard explaination of this is that the conductors, who walked up and down stairs all day collecting fares, were far more active than the drivers; and their increased activity caused their health benefits.

Seems plausible, right? But what does more activity really mean?

The assumption was that “more activity” meant more volume of activity. After all, those double-decker bus conductors were more active for *hours* every day. So, the thinking goes, if you’re not seeing the desired results then you need to spend more time being active!

At least, that’s the conventional wisdom.

But, doing more activity could also mean something that is at odds with spending more time exercising.

If that doesn’t make sense at first, stay with me…this gets interesting.

First, think about the “sedentary” drivers in that study: they were active. They were turning the steering wheel, pressing the accelerator and brake pedals, talking to people, etc. In fact, they were more active than someone reading a book or watching TV. In this way, the drivers on these routes were actually doing increased activity for the exact same duration as the conductors. The bus conductors were doing the same total duration of activity, but their activity was more intense.

This suggests that we must look for answers to two separate issues:

1. How much should you increase your intensity beyond “average” or “sedentary”?

2. For how long do you need to maintain that intensity to achieve the exercise benefits you desire?

Note: an aspect of #2 above is: how often should you repeat this activity?

As we look for answers, this point is critical:

You can only increase or decrease the level of activity your body is doing. You cannot completely “do” or “not do” when it comes to your activity level. There are only degrees of doing.

Take, for example, this moment…

Right now you’re blinking your eyes and scrolling this email. If you’re standing, you’re experiencing a slightly higher intensity of activity than if you’re sitting. As long as you’re alive, you’re body is producing some degree of metabolic activity. For 24 hours a day you are already doing activity; you cannot increase your activity volume beyond 24 hours a day…so no more duration of activity is possible. And no less duration of activity is possible as long as you are alive.

What you can increase is the intensity of your body’s activity for some time during that 24 hours. We can think of intensity as roughly the amount of metabolic activity happening per second.

Every moment we exist somewhere on a continuum of activity level–of intensity. And again, two important questions to ask about exercise are:

1. How much should you increase your intensity beyond “average” or “sedentary”?

2. For how long do you need to maintain that intensity to achieve the exercise benefits you desire? (And how often should you repeat it?)

These questions are especially important because…

Your degree of increased intensity is at odds with how long you can sustain it.

Here’s a personal example: when I ran track I would run distance practices where I’d run continually for thirty minutes or longer. But when I ran my event, the 800 meter race, at the end of the race I was DONE. I would lie on the ground for several minutes afterwords and still feel utterly depleted for quite some time later. This was only around two minutes of activity, but because I was raising my intensity so high, there’s no way I could have continued for even three minutes…let alone thirty.

The higher your intensity level, the less duration you can sustain.

Most people assume that any above-sedentary-level activity is good–whether walking or swimming or cycling, or whatever; and they further assume that more of such activity must be better. But striving for more duration necessarily limits the intensity possible to us. If I wanted to be able to run for twenty minutes (or three minutes!) I would have to lower my intensity below the level of my 800 meter race effort. If I wanted to be able to exercise in the gym for longer than 20 minutes, I’d have to lower my intensity below what it normally is when I exercise–because my intensity does not permit me to exceed 20 minutes. In any challenging workout, we have to make a choice between duration of the workout and intensity of the workout.

You’ll often hear that you should increase your activity level for x hours per day or week. But would we be better served by thinking in terms of the intensity level, rather than the hours we spend? For example, “Increase your activity level to a high intensity that does not permit you to continue past 3 minutes”?

And as it turns out, there is some interesting evidence about the relationship of intensity and the duration an increased intensity is sustained.

Now that the questions are clear, lets look at the evidence about them.

First I’m going to repeat the two questions one more time because they’re so important:

1. How much increased intensity is desirable—above the sedentary level of activity we’ll already be doing?

2. For how much duration do we need to sustain this increased intensity to achieve the exercise benefits we desire?

A somewhat recent Harvard study on the relationship between exercise and heart disease looked at 12 years of data from 44,000 people who had engaged in a variety of activities and exercise routines. This study observed that there was no difference in heart disease risk when looking at how much or little time people spent per week exercising; but it did find that increased intensity of activity associated lowered heart disease risk independently of duration or frequency of activity. For example, people in the study who trained with weights for just 30 minutes per week had a lower risk than people who walked for 30 minutes every day. That’s presumably because the intensity of weight training was higher than in walking. Across all the various activities that were seen, the people who trained more intensely lowered their risk to a greater extent. And their volume and frequency of increased activity didn’t matter. The observed trend was that higher intensity mattered, and frequency and volume did not…all the way down to the lowest volumes of exercise measured.

The problem with these studies…

Both this Harvard study and the double-decker bus study are just observational studies. And there are many similar studies that show the same trends. This type of study is good for finding hypotheses to test more rigorously. But observational studies, even lots of them, just aren’t reliable for showing causation.

We need controlled studies to see whether these hypotheses hold up when they are isolated. Fortunately, such research exists…

Higher quality evidence…

At McMaster University, trials have recently been conducted to compare randomized groups of people assigned to do either traditional intense “cardio” training routine of 4 to 6 hours per week, or assigned to do only intense 30-second interval “sprints” for a total of 6 to 9 minutes per week. The outcome was that both exercise and muscle biopsy tests showed that the people doing the intense 6-9 minutes per week got equal “cardio” benefits to those who did “cardio training” for 4-6 hours. That’s a dramatic reduction in exercise time, with no loss of benefits.

These results shocked a lot of people in the exercise world. The researchers at McMaster were forced to do this study a couple of different ways because people didn’t believe there could be such impressive benefits from so little time invested. The results were consistently impressive, and all the more solid due to the additional study.

What this is all boiling down to: intensity matters—big time.

In fact, there’s much more upside potential to intense workouts than what we’ve seen so far…

First, the intensity involved in most of these studies is no where close to a typical high intensity training sessions. The actual cardiovascular benefits of precise, slow, and therefore more intense, exercise (like I do personally) may greater yet.

Second, the studies I’ve mentioned so far look only at cardiovascular benefits. But I haven’t even mentioned studies of other exercise benefits like strength and bone density improvements–which is where more intense training shines even brighter.

Now, you will still be confused by news reports on exercise–until you stop and think for a couple of seconds…

I have no doubt that in your daily life you will soon read or hear about studies that show benefits with high volumes of activity. But take notice of this: such reports often don’t mention the increase the intensity of the activity.

The reports usually focus on how many hours per week people exercise, so you have to be a detective and question what was happening with the intensity levels of the groups that are being compared. Based on what I’ve seen, whenever a group of people benefiting from a high volume of activity are compared to a group who does a higher intensity, but for much less time, the higher intensity group comes out at least equal, if not better.

The lesson here is the payoff to increasing exercise intensity is huge. One workout per week done very well may indeed be far more valuable than four or five workouts done moderately well. In fact, as intensity rises, working out less often becomes necessary–your body needs extra recovery time (that’s when you’re actually getting the benefits). Working out too frequently can lead to overtraining syndrome.

What about fat loss?

Okay, so you probably see a strong case here for using increased exercise intensity for cardiovascular health, strength, bone density, etc. But you might be wondering: don’t we need hours of activity to burn calories in order to lose fat and get lean?

There’s a lot of research about exercise and weight loss, and the evidence is solid that increased activity simply does not cause fat loss. There is interesting evidence that the calories burned through physical activity are nearly always compensated for by a combination of a lowered metabolism and increased hunger following exercise.

You might make weight loss progress in spite of increased durations of exercise, but not because of it.

Weight loss is almost completely about your diet. And, once again, intense exercise may confer some benefits to your weight loss goals, as well as providing muscle strength and definition that you probably want to have go along with your weight loss. But the strong scientific evidence is that large volumes of activity won’t help weight loss at all, as counterintuitive as that might sound. If you want more clarity about the fastest method to fat loss, you can look up things I’ve written previously, or we should talk to discuss how to make this work for you.

It’s been a fun 12 days of fitness, and I’ll talk to you soon.

To health and life,
Chad

52 checkmarks to improve your results by 500%

What gets measured gets done.

There’s an old saying that what gets measured gets done. If your fitness actions are being measured, they’re much more likely to get done.

What should you measure?

I track workout consistency. I track every week that I meet my workout goal for the week–for me, it’s one workout per week. I have a sheet of paper with 52 weeks on it: it lasts one year, and it just takes a check mark per week.

As you start to accumulate a good track record, you won’t want to break it!

What gets measured and reported gets done much better.

Commitments that are purely internal are easily abandoned. If you can have an accountability partner who you have to report this to then you’re much more likely to follow though.

Say a friend calls you every Saturday to check if you’ve done your workout(s) for this week. But what’s going to motivate them to call you? One thing that can work is a good-natured penalty payment you give them whenever you don’t succeed. Say it’s $50 or $100–painful enough you don’t want to pay, but well worth the payment if a handful payments means you’ve been on track the entire year.

Of course, there are other methods…

You can hire a personal trainer, who is at the gym waiting for you every workout, and who charges you if you don’t show up. And there are other benefits to having a trainer or workout partner who can give you real-time feedback to improve your exercises during your workouts, and not just the fact that you’re doing your workouts. I could go on about the benefits a good trainer can provide, because this is what I do; but I’ll leave those for another time.

If you want to sustain your fitness progress beyond just a week or month, and be still maintaining your progress after a year…a decade…and a lifetime, then one key is to have an accountability and feedback system that ensures your consistency. Whether an incentivized friend or a hired trainer, put in place a system that operates independently of your willpower any given week. This will be much more effective over time.

To health and life,
Chad

To build a strong foundation, start slowly.

Aim for steady progress.

Take a long view.

Think about yourself, two years from now…

Two years will pass before you know it. In two years do you want to look back and vaguely recall that you got in better shape for a few of weeks? Or would you like to see that you made a habit of steady progress and your body has been transformed…and continues to progress?

What to do:

Commit to a minimum once a week or twice a week strength training routine.

Commit to improving your technique at every workout.

Make whatever you commit to a realistic minimum for the next 3 years.

That’s all for today.

To health and life,
Chad

From the mailbag…

Today, I want to answer a question about the “3-Exercise Workout” yesterday.

Here’s the email I received:

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“How many of each?
What is a good starting weight?”

*******************

[Note: this is asking how many reps/sets of each exercise, and what weight to start lifting on the exercises.]

My reply:

Great questions!

And, interestingly, getting clarity about the first gives most of the answer to the second. Let me explain and break down exactly how to do this…

“How many?” vs. “How much?”

To answer, “How many of each?”, we first need to change that to, “How much of each?”

Here’s why…

The traditional method of counting repetitions we perform is a sloppy and problematic way to measure what we are accomplishing. As you attempt to perform more repetitions, your speed of movement can vary widely–by more than 100%. Because of this, counting ten repetitions on two different occasions can result drastically different amounts of exercise performed. See the problem?

Therefore, it’s better to use a stopwatch and track the total duration of time your muscles are working during the exercise. This is called Time Under Load, or TUL. And before I can get to the ideal time under load–the “how much,” we need to consider….

How much what?

Supposing you’re now just looking at the total duration your exercises last, there’s another problem we need to solve. Erratic movement and pauses during an exercise can create momentum and various kinds of muscular rest during. An exercise of a given duration could include a range of anywhere from 0% to 80% of rest time–when your muscles are basically at rest. Yeah, I’ve seen exercise sets that were seriously 80% rest time.

So, you need to standardize your movement speed and technique. And as long as you’re going to standardize these, you might as well make it as optimal as possible; a speed of about 10 seconds lifting and 10 seconds lowering the weight. Separately, it’s important to have completely smooth turn-arounds at both ends. Doing this will largely remove all momentum (and rest) from your exercise.

Now, if you try this you might notice how helpful can be to have someone else observing you and giving you good feedback to keep you doing this right…especially as the exercise becomes challenging.

And the magic target time is…

Okay, NOW, you’re in a place where what your doing is objective and standardized enough that I can answer the question of “How much.”

Begin by aiming to complete around three minutes of continuous exercise. And during this entire three minutes, you must maintain the standardized reps as described above–without pausing to take a break. If you this correctly, there is no need for a second or third set. Notice: after three minutes you’ve already spent far more time doing this exercise than most people who perform 3-5 sets. And those people rest between sets; you’re not!

What’s a good starting weight?

The answer to this question is now easy…

Select your starting weight to allow you to perform the exercise for 3:00 with perfect technique.

The first couple of times you do it you should consider more practice than exercise. Then, as you become confident with the exercise and your technique, raise the weight so that you CANNOT go beyond three minutes.

At first not being able to continue means that your form would deteriorate in an attempting to go beyond 3:00.

Eventually, this should mean that as you reach 3:00, you can no longer move the weight no matter how hard you try–and that you are sincerely trying with all your effort. Here, you stop thinking in terms of a cutoff time at 3:00, and just focus on getting to this point where you cannot budge the weight. Your times will now be things like 2:48 or 3:12, or whatever. After each workout you’ll just adjust the weight for your next workout to keep you in the 3:00 range.

Once you’re at this point, there will be additional options to consider; but this is a great path to get started.

To Summarize:

1. Start with a weight you can lift for 3:00 with perfect technique (form, pacing, breathing, etc.)

2. Increase the weight to find a weight where you CANNOT continue past around 3:00.

3. Continue challenging yourself and getting in stronger, better shape!

I hope this helps!

More questions? Comments? Let me know below, or here: facebook.com/myogenicsfitness

To health and life,
Chad

The 80/20 Rule and the 3-Exercise Workout

The 80/20 principle suggests that we can often get 80% of the benefits from just 20 percent of our efforts.

Do you want to know what that high-leverage 20% is in your fitness routine?

It’s three exercises: Leg Press, Chest Press, and Pull Down.

These “Big 3” are an ultra-efficient way to exercise and strengthen the majority of your body.

What’s even better is that by focusing on just these three exercises–and really mastering them–the increase in your workout productivity can quickly rise above 80% to exceed 100% of what you might otherwise be able to achieve.

Many of my personal workouts are just these three exercises. And let me tell you, I’m totally spent afterward. I have no doubt I get a better overall workout than I used to get in 45 minutes with a conventional routine.

So, what can you do with this information? I suggest this: make the “Big 3” the core of your workout routine. Whatever else you might do, make the most of these exercises, every workout. Do only these three at least sometimes; so you’re not distracted by anything else, nor holding back to conserve energy for a longer workout.

While these are basic, straight-forward exercises, there is a lot of subtlety and room for endless improvement if you decide to go on the journey to master the and “milk” everything you can from them. I’ve found that journey to be incredibly valuable, and I invite you to take the same journey. Get excited about mastering these. It’s worth it!

Oh, and while I named exercises that require equipment, you can approximate these with no equipment: a wall sit, push ups, and chin ups. Or, variants of push ups and chin ups can be done as isometrics for people of virtually any age and any strength level.

Don’t be stopped by the “tried that” delusion.

I’ve seen many people dabble in and discard one diet and workout program after another. It’s easy to say everything failed to work. Now, this can indicate a huge problem…but it’s a problem that’s easy to solve once you know how.

Whenever you think: “I tried that and it didn’t work,” do you actually mean: “I implemented it 100% and proved that it doesn’t work”? Or, do you sometimes mean, “I dabbled with that approach, but never did it fully enough to know whether it worked”?

Real failure helps you course-correct; it tells you what not to do. BUT there’s real failure, and then there’s “fool’s failure.” Fool’s failure happens when you conclude that an action failed after never really taking that action. The “tried that” delusion is fool’s failure.

Now, this is an easy thinking error to make, because there’s a sense in which the action didn’t work–you didn’t get the desired result. But if you didn’t fully take the action, how will you ever know if that action works?

If you’re deluding yourself into thinking you’ve taken the actions when you haven’t, this can create an endless vicious cycle of seeking ever new advice, books, experts, programs, etc.

We’ve probably all made this mistake before…I sure have. But I don’t want you do be caught in this trap any more.

So, keep these two issues clear and separate:

1. Does a course of action work in reality to achieve your goals?

2. Are you fully taking the actions that are part of your plan?

If the issue is the latter, looking for a new plan of action will probably not solve your problem. Instead, look for solutions to the problem of not taking actions you’ve identified you want to take. There are various reasons why you might not be taking the actions, and solutions to these do exist. But you won’t find those solutions by looking for a new answer to issue #1.

Quick Recap:

Keep on alert for the red flags of the “tried that” delusion, of “fool’s failure,” and of conflating whether a plan works with whether you took action.

When you notice this problem, here is the solution:

1. Separate the two issues above.

2. Address each issue as needed.

The better you do this, the more I think you’ll find that both your failures and successes will lead you forward–towards your goals.

Now, I don’t want you to be confused that I think the *only* important thing is to take action. Some people say that ANY diet and ANY workout routine will work as long as you do it consistently. They say the only issue is the need to do *something* consistently. I strongly disagree with that. Reality, not our intentions, determines what works. Some approaches work far better than others. And some approaches are downright counterproductive.

In addition to avoiding the “tried that” delusion, I think it’s necessary to put effort into determining what actions are best to take to achieve your goals. And it’s important to observe the feedback your get from the actions you take (i.e., did they actually fail?)–and adjust your strategy accordingly.

To health and life,
Chad

The difference between “outcome goals” and “action goals” can make or break your resolution.

Let’s start with an example: imagine you want to lose 15 lbs., get stronger, and see muscle definition.

Here are the two different types of goals you might set:

a. I’m going to lose 15 lbs in the next 3 months.

b. I’m going to go to the gym at 7:30 am, 2 times a week, Mondays and Thursdays, for the next 3 months; and I’m going to eat according to dietary principles “z” exclusively for the next 90 days.

Goal “a” is a goal for an outcome, goal “b” is a goal for action.

First, notice that both these goals are specific. A vague version of these goals would be: “I’ll lose weight,” or “I’m going to start going to the gym and eating better.” Being specific makes both these goals better than average.

But there are important differences between “outcome goals” and “action goals.”

You can DO an action goal. Because of this, every day has the potential to be a 100% success–a “win.” You can precisely track and monitor how well you’re doing. Every day you either completed the desired action or you didn’t. This allows you to set up simple and clear accountability processes.

On the other hand, a goal for an outcome requires a potentially unlimited number of unspecified actions. It provides no daily guidance. There’s no obvious way to measure your accountability on a daily basis. And you can only experience success after the entire goal is completed. While you can measure your overall progress toward an outcome goal, e.g., how much weight have you lost so far, you can’t achieve the daily “wins” that come with completing the simple actions that are inherently part of an action goal.

It might sound like it’s automatically better to have action goals instead of outcome goals. But that depends on the situation. Here’s how it works…

When an “outcome goal” is optimal: If you have a track record of consistently achieving this goal in the past, and there’s no question about your ability to do it, then an outcome goal is right for you. A simple example: your goal is to drive to a favorite restaurant for dinner. You know exactly how to get there and you have full confidence that you can do it based on past experience. You can focus on the outcome of where you want to end up–at the restaurant. However, if you’re visiting an unfamiliar town, going to an unfamiliar restaurant, you’ll need turn-by-turn guidance/goals in order to arrive at your destination.

When an “action goal” is needed: If it’s not obvious that you’ll automatically achieve your outcome by simply focusing on the outcome, then you’ll benefit from specific “action goals.” The more difficult and uncertain your task, the more important this is. This was the case in the unfamiliar restaurant example above, and also this is the case for most people’s fitness goals.

As I alluded to above, action goals also lend themselves better to various accountability strategies. The right accountability can dramatically boost your chances of succeeding. If a goal is important to you, this can be critical, but the principles and tactics of accountability strategies is a whole other topic that I won’t get into now. If you’d like me share my thoughts on that topic let me know here.

BUT, action goals cannot exist in isolation…

Action goals serve a larger purpose: your overall desired outcome. When you have action goals taking the actions is your immediate focus, but you must also check in at appropriate intervals to ensure your actions are achieving your overall desired outcome. If not, you need to re-evaluate your strategy. The specific turns you make while driving must take you to the desired restaurant. The exercise and dietary actions must to improve your body in specific ways: like losing that 15 pounds you want to lose.

Questioning your action strategy too often can be detrimental. This can be the “watched pot never boils” syndrome…and can cause you to stop taking actions before they can realistically achieve the desired effect. There’s an art to balancing evaluating and setting overall strategy and focusing on taking the determined actions fully. A systematic approach to balancing this well is something I’ve worked on developing over the years with clients. I’ve found that for most people, a serious “outcome goal” and strategy check-in every three months tends to work well. Between those check-ins, it’s all about action and implementation of the determined strategy.

Getting clear about the difference between actions and outcomes is necessary to avoid what I call the “tried that” delusion.

The “tried that” delusion is something I’ve seen frequently prevent people from ever getting the outcomes they desire–and it’s a simple mental error that you can avoid once you understand it. I’ll explain that tomorrow.

To health and life,
Chad

You can’t achieve your goals unless you do this…

Make your goals as specific as you can.

To the extent you’re not clear about what you want, your chances of achieving any of it go south. Being specific doesn’t guarantee you’ll get there, but it can improve your odds a lot.

So, take your list (you have a list somewhere, right?) and, if these goals are important to you, find a way to be more specific.

When I work with people on clarifying their goals, I find a lot of initial resistance when I ask for more clarity like this. I expect you’ll resist this and not want to do it. But I’ve also seen that once people get beyond that resistance for even a few seconds of hard thinking they benefit immensely almost every time. So set a timer for 2 minutes and see what emerges.

What did you find? Was it easy? Difficult?

Let me know your thoughts, below or here: www.facebook.com/myogenicsfitness

Cheers,
Chad

P.S. Tomorrow I’ll discuss the difference between goals for specific actions and goals for specific outcomes. You might want to ponder this distinction as you do the above.