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If who I am talking to can’t understand what I’m saying, it is entirely my fault. You will never be an effective communicator if you can’t take ownership for your audience’s level of understanding. The worst communicators in the world are those that blame their audience for not understanding what they have to say. When this happens, they immediately create an ‘us-and-them’ mentality. The dialogue becomes a competition, or worse, an argument. In an argument, somebody “loses”. This is the opposite of what good communication should look like.
If you’ve read any of my previous articles, you’ve probably seen me mention growth mindsets. I’ve already written an article on the mindset required to make progress in a training context, and realistically, I’m going to be repeating most of the same content, but within a different context in order to hopefully make it applicable to anyone aspiring to, or already within, a leadership position. I want to be very clear about this, though. I can’t hammer this point home enough: In everything, you should constantly strive to adopt a growth mindset over a fixed one.
In this article, I will go through the principles and practices that have guided me as I have navigated the treacherous road of leadership - both in the military and out. As an infantry soldier, I received some of the best leadership training in the world - designed to give me the tools I needed no matter how dire the situation.
This may not be the definitive edition of leadership positions, but it is the guide I use. I guarantee that at any point in your life, you will be exposed to people who could be bosses, role models, coaches, or mentors. It is important to your personal success to be able to assess these individuals as managers and as leaders. Did you choose them or not?
In my experience, there are a disproportionate amount of bad leaders. This will never change unless the quality of junior leadership is acknowledged, as leadership habits are learned very early on and are developed, for better or worse, over the course of an entire career or working life. By the time someone reaches a management or executive level position, many of their habits are too ingrained to change, if they ever make it there in the first place.
It’s the time of year where we wrap up our articles, and look back on the year - wins, losses, lessons learnt and changes made. I guess if I was to summarise the year of 2020; what the fuck?
Everyone who has ever attempted a training program based around the Squat, Bench and Deadlift will have an opinion regarding each of them. Some of the most accomplished powerlifters and powerlifting coaches in the world could spend hours explaining to the average lifter why their favourite lift is the best, the hardest, or the lift worthy of the most attention. Despite this, the deadlift seems to consistently rise to the top of training circles as the King of the Lifts. Why?
In this article, I want to provide some insight into how someone struggling may be feeling - beyond just sad, angry, anxious, stressed, and so on. I will be drawing from my own personal experience, so take everything with the understanding that I’m a single person with experiences and perspectives limited to just that - one human being.
Every time I look back on the first time I set foot in a gym, I can’t help but cringe a little. Like any beginner, I had the best of intentions. As human beings, the squat is a natural movement. Babies do it all the time, and they do it exceptionally well. I had been doing a bodyweight variation of the squat my entire life, and somehow - just like every beginner who wants to lift more weight with little regard for technique, it didn’t take long for me to screw everything up.
“What do you bench, bro?” - Some asshole, circa every time a powerlifter or bodybuilder enters a commercial gym.
I want to start by saying that the bench press is, and has always been, the lift I have struggled with the most. I have been bench pressing since I first stepped foot in a gym - which is a long time to build up bad habits, poor technique, and unhelpful motor patterns that all work together to slow my progress in a lift that is, at face value, fairly simple.
GAS breaks down these primal reactions into three phases - alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. These phases begin at initial exposure to a perceived threat, and span over an extended period of stress - detailing the bodies coping strategies for longer term exposure.
I’ve never been described as the most encouraging person. When I was an infantry soldier in the military, encouragement was actively discouraged - it was your own responsibility to push yourself hard enough to keep up, and a 10/10 commitment level was expected regardless of the activity performed. The team was the priority, with the individual being expected to push themselves harder and further for the sake of the team - motivation to do so came from not wanting to let the team down, or be seen as the one holding everyone back.
The command centre for the human body is the brain, and branching from the brain is the nervous system. The nervous system uses chemical and electrical signals to communicate information within the brain - where it is processed and acted upon as necessary. The process in which these electrical signals are created is quite interesting and involves the movement of chemicals within a plasma membrane.
Are all injuries preventable? Definitely not. No matter how strong you are, and no matter your bone density - there will always be weak points. The very nature of training your weaknesses means that as they get stronger, other parts will fall behind and creates an ongoing cycle of weaknesses that will continuously need reassessment or refocus. If one falls too far behind the others through laziness, negligence, or poor training priorities, then it is at risk of suffering serious injury.
The pursuit of happiness is an extremely common and understandable path for many people - and, why wouldn't it be? What better ultimate goal could there be than happiness - whatever that may mean for you. It is important to consider the factors that contribute to happiness differ from person to person - money, family, travel or health (just to name a few). However, in the pursuit of anything in life, the road is rarely smooth or linear.
Figuring out your nutrition can be a complex and overwhelming process. With so many fad diets, skinny teas and fat-burning drinks on the market, it's all too easy to fall into the consumer trap. With a lot of misinformation being readily accessible, it is easy to feel lost when trying to understand what is best for your nutrition. Understanding the role of nutritional factors and having set personal training goals can act as a foundation for building a healthy, tailored nutrition program. This article aims to clear up some nutrition myths, whilst providing insight into eating for particular training goals/body composition.
The difference between a high performance athlete and someone who is training for themselves is that an athlete needs to perform at a known point in time. For example, a football athlete has a season, with a set amount of games spaced out over a known period. A powerlifter has meet days of which they are aware weeks, months, and years in advance. Bodybuilders know when they will get up on stage, Olympic athletes know where and when they will be competing years in advance - the list is endless.
Many of us will know our weekly responsibilities off the top of our heads and use that memorization to fulfil these responsibilities. The issue with relying on this is the inherent fickleness of human memory - it’s quite easy to forget about a task on our to do list if another one is placing stress on us or consuming more time than originally anticipated. It is also rare to look back at your schedule once reaching the end of the week and thinking “I had so much extra time”.