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!

This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.

Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.

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• Podcast Webpage
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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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• Or email podcast@barbell-logic.com

Learn when to embrace urgency. Typically, you want to undo urgency, but, on occasion, embrace the galvanizing energy of urgency.

Check out Matt's recent interview on Right About Now with Ryan Alford:

• Apple
• Spotify
• YouTube

Woah, I thought we were about Undoing Urgency!?

Well, typically, yes. This is one of those rules that serves you well most of the time. You want to avoid useless or counterproductive urgency. If you fail to get out of the knife fight of the urgent, you cannot take care of the artillery battle of the important.

Let's discuss some examples of when embracing urgency makes sense.

• impending lawsuit requires drastic changes and rebranding
• not able to pay the bills and overhaul of business or family expenses needed

As you can see, these examples are both urgent and important. They both really come with the real prospect of impending failure.

These times are crucibles. Do you live or thrive or die?

Lean in and embrace the galvanizing power of the urgent.

These times periods, however, burn people out. They must be short and infrequent.

They can totally transform, however, relationships and organizations. These periods often come with nostalgia as we look back on them.

Learn when to embrace urgency.

This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.

Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

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

You set a goal. Inherent is this is that you do not like what you are doing now. Something must change.

You have probably intertwined your identity with the actions that you need to change.

The potential pitfall is wallowing in negativity and neuroticism. You may adopt a victim mentality. Clear this hurdle.

Niki and Andrew share common and personal examples.

One that happens that is less obvious is coming to terms with the slowing improvement toward the end of LP or early intermediate training.

You may have not reached the goals you expected or desired. You may have wrapped up your identity in the daily and weekly PRs, and now are trying to accept you have to do more work to get fewer PRs in less time.

Niki struggled with the process of gaining weight. She found having structure and guidelines around the process and metrics helped her have confidence in the process and her coach.

Andrew has confronted that he has accomplished much reacting to his emotions. Now, to reach further levels of professional development, he has to overcome this inclination.

Learn how to confront uncomfortable truths.

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When important becomes urgent, clear your plate, and address the important (because, by definition, it's important).

Those things that are important but not urgent, such as family, health, and religion, can become urgent when unattended to (or minimally attended to) long enough.

You find yourself bickering with your spouse or family more than normal, clothes unable to fit and feeling physically and mentally worse, and falling short of the standard your faith holds you to.

Now, your family, your fitness, and your faith are urgent (and, of course, still important).

It is time to clear your schedule, pull the weeds, and take care of what is most important. Life is signaling to you that you need to spend more time and effort on these things.

This might be scheduling a vacation. It could be a spiritual retreat. Maybe you clear off a time to train every day and start every single day (today) training.

This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.

Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

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

It's that time of year, where people begin to go on vacation and either take breaks from lifting or ask to do hotel workouts (which they often do not do).

What may cause, in part, the low compliance with hotel training is not understanding the point of the accessory lifts that, because of the limited equipment and weight, have to be used for these workouts.

So, what purpose do these lifts serve?

The provide additional volume for muscle groups that cannot be adequately stressed by solely using the main lifts.

We love the main lifts, they are fantastic tools and over time they should go up.

As you advance, though, you will almost certainly need to incorporate more of these auxiliary lifts that train muscle groups like the deltoids, triceps, biceps, hamstrings, calves, and more.

As always, you first need to know the why? We explained the general why, but the personal why - why do you as a lifter need them now?

You have to consider your time, equipment, preference, goals, and desired muscle groups to target.

The benefits of home gyms are huge, but this is one area where home gyms tend to be more limited. You may have to get creative or invest in things such as adjustable dumbbells or pulley attachments.

These need to be performed strictly and for difficult sets. In fact, these can be more productively trained at higher RPEs than deadlifts and squats because they provide less systemic fatigue to the body.

You want to bar speed to slow down for the last rep or two and for them to be challenging. Program them for reps below 20, typically, because you do not want to stop because "you're tired."

Consider adding accessory lifts to your program if you want more training stress and hypertrophy.

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Matt shares extreme gratitude for his team, family, church, and more and invites you to do the same for you life.

Matt goes through and thanks many of the people that have helped bring him and Barbell Logic to the point it is today.

Having just submitted the book to Forbes, about to go on vacation, and halfway through the year, Matt takes time to thank the people who matter to him.

He recommends doing this if you have not. We want to appreciate the pursuit, not the outcome, and taking time to be thankful is a great way to enjoy the pursuit.

Opportunities have arisen that, whether you call it luck, fortune, fate, or grace, you did not deserve in any real way. You found friends and colleagues, co-workers and jobs that you did not expect but mattered.

Take time to be grateful. Have extreme gratitude.

This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.

Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

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