Should you change your plan or just manage your emotions?
Guys often fixate on the action of change rather than sticking with the plan and managing their emotional discomfort.
It’s often easier to take action than it is to tolerate the discomfort of stasis.
It's why we see guys chronically dieting after a successful 12 week fat loss phase - because the stasis of maintenance is often too uncomfortable.
They need to be in constant motion or action to feel like they're making progress.
Except
Except that's not how this works.
If you’re always pushing to 100%, then your body will downregulate your top end output to manage the long term expectations you’re placing on it.
Meaning that if you’re always lifting as heavy as you can, your body will limit the amount of energy it will allow you to produce because it knows you wont give it a break.
Metabolically, this happens in diets too. If you chronically underfeed your body, it will downregulate the amount of activity it allows you to do, focused thinking you can produce, and will power you can muster because it knows it’s being pushed to sustain something it doesn't have the resources for without a break.
Tolerance
😬 It can be anxiety-inducing to intentionally hold back your best efforts. To deliberately hold in reserve your maximum output for a later date. However, this happens in many other situations in life, and we don’t question it.
👨💻 At work for example you might launch a new initiative for 3 months then spend 9 months handling the influx of customers and growth of your team.
👨🏫 Your business might acquire a new company over 12 months and then spend the next 2 years integrating the systems, clients, and personnel of that acquisition.
🏠 You might buy a new home over a 6 month period and then spend the next 6 years working on developing it into the home of your dreams.
What gets you to your goals might not be the same thing that keeps you there. Action, and the immediate progress we initially see from it, is exciting and motivating. However, if we’re always using the same tools and techniques and always pushing for new and more, we tend to hit a wall.
The skill then is to work hard, achieve the first milestone - then tolerate the discomfort of intentionally holding back your absolute maximum so as to regroup, recover, refuel, so as to be able to maintain progress and eventually go again.
At builtXyou, we work with busy guys who are data driven and used to being successful. Working hard and achieving goals is a large part of their identity. As such, we tailor our coaching and systems to specialize in helping guys save themselves from their overachiever syndrome. Our programs are designed specifically to help teach, support, and hold guys accountable to the scientific principles of training and nutrition progress so that they can achieve transformational health, fitness, and physique results. Interested? If you’re ready to go all in to build a body you’re confident in and proud of, then apply for one of our limited monthly coaching spots below.
