PRs have stopped, you're not feeling as good as you had been, you'll not looking forward to your time in the gym like you had been.

Sometimes it takes longer to realize than you would think, but suddenly you realize things are not going as you would like them to go (and as they had been before). What do you do?

Because recovery is the limiting factor, it is helpful to think through different areas of your life that contribute to recovery and where you might be falling short or missing the mark:

• sleep (quality & quantity)
• eating (quality, quantity, consistency)
• alcohol
• protein
• routine (do you have one right now?)
• stress

You will likely identify an area or multiple where you are not doing as well as you can. For example, maybe you've fallen out of your normal routine during the summer, partly by drinking more. The drinking has reduced your sleep quality and quantity and also your protein and fiber.

Tightening things up, reducing alcohol, and reestablishing your routine can help.

Identifying the path forward when you want to make changes can be hard. Really, the simple, hard, effective way is the way forward. Focus on one or two things, and do them consistently.

The change needs to be something you can see yourself doing indefinitely. IT needs to become a habit, so that when you do not have discipline OR motivation, it is the easy thing to do.

For example, for Andrew and Niki they feel bad when they do not work or they eat bad food. It has become easy for them to eat healthier and train because otherwise they very quickly identify they feel bad and see the negative consequences.

Take the minimum effective action to reach your goals.

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Learn how to prioritize thinking. Take time to improve your approach to those most important pursuits and aspects of your life.

Taking time out to think matters. Why?

As Matt has discussed in recent podcasts, and his his upcoming book Undoing Urgency, we need to set up habits and systems in our life that help us actually spend time with the most important things in our life.

How do we spend time with these most important things?

Thinking helps ideas arise, whether they be things we need to stop, do better or different, or start.

How does one do this, though? How does one actually take time to think?

Matt has identified a few conditions that need to occur for him to think well, and then a few different environments where he tends to think well.

Matt things best after:

• he has slept
• he has cleared urgent work

The first may seem obvious, but it is truly critical. You cannot think well if you are tired. For Matt, this occurs after a good night of sleep or nap.

Of course, Matt does not immediately wake up and start thinking, but rather after taking care of some quick tasks, making coffee, and clearing his head, he can think.

Critically, he eliminates urgent work. It is difficult to think about the important when urgent tasks are pressing on your mind.

Some of the best environments for him to think include the following:

• walking (alone or with wife)
• long drives
• manual labor
• vacation
• sauna or similar quiet times

Matt tends to have an initial brain dump when an idea arises, and he makes sure to take quick bulleted notes down (don't worry about spelling, format, etc. just get the ideas down).

Later, when he has more time, he fleshes the ideas out.

On a long drive, following this method, he developed the idea for Barbell Logic Online Coaching.

Prioritize thinking!

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• Or email podcast@barbell-logic.com

There is a time around 6 weeks into an attempted habit implementation, new diet, or workout routine, where people tend to quit.

The early, easy gains end; the long-term changes the person wants have not really been seen; and the path forward remains unclear.

This is when most people quit. They build a habit of quitting, not knowing how to get beyond this common sticking points.

If approached with wisdom and perseverance, these times are actually doors to long-term success.

These times are great times to ask for help or dig deeper. For lifting, signing up for online coaching can be great (real online coaching where you get technique feedback and personalized programming) or go in for an in-person technique check up with a professional coach.

If you cannot afford this or, for some reason, do not want to seek a coach, you have to educate yourself and become a coach.

Piling more stress on in and of itself typically does not work. Pulling the stress back often does not work. The stress-recovery-adaptation period must be elongated, no longer one stress event with time afterword, but rather a period of time where you stress yourself, build up fatigue where fitness decreases, and then allow for recovery to allow fatigue to go down, fitness to come up, and ultimately cause more performance (hopefully a PR).

Getting through these sticking points, however, is really the key to long-term success. You have to be able to handle unexpected bad times, keep going, but keep going intelligently so you do not burn out.

Get beyond the sticking points. Learn how to build life-long health and fitness habits. Strength is for everyone. Strength is for life.

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• Andrew on Instagram

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
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• Or email podcast@barbell-logic.com