Pursuing Strength: Tenacity, Focus, & Specialization

So every morning I get up and I’m an absolute grizzly bear until I get my coffee. No, I’m not going to pretend to be the strength coach that says I hit the floor with both feet first thing ready to headbutt open the bathroom door and punch the front door open and march right on into work ready to kick ass and take names. That comes…just much later after the caffeine has kicked in.

It’s probably not consistent with what you might imagine, but there’s a building up to that sort of thing. If you also happen to be a slow starter as well then welcome to the club. Just know that even though you and I may be slow to start the important thing to remember is to be consistent and unrelenting! After all, the finish is what matters.

Tenacity

Last Friday I was able to attend a marketing seminar with a good friend of mine and leading internet marketer Matt Bacak. It wasn’t anything like your typical strength and fitness type seminar, but the information that I learned was incredible.

During this event the subject of tenacity came up with Matt and many of his colleagues in the field. Several of these guys that were speaking touched on this in one form or another while sharing their experiences. Just to let you know up front many of these guys were multi-millionaires and millionaires in the making.

So as you can imagine this quickly got my attention as they were pointing out that in the game of internet marketing, sales, business, and life that most people would start strong on something and then simply allow themselves to be distracted, or to pull off of the task at a hand causing them to fall short of their goals.

This is one thing that I obviously see a great deal of in the strength and fitness world as well. Being tenacious requires focus and the guts to keep a handle on what one is doing despite all the external noise and distractions that may try to pull one off of a particular endeavor.

As I pointed out here the battle that seems to be waging with a great deal of the population is covering two different extremes. Either people are doing nothing, or they are trying to include everything under the sun into their schedule of training. As stated here one is just as bad as the other.

Specialization

A solid option that I try to push onto everyone is mastery. I’m working harder to push a message that encourages more specialization when it comes to one’s training. In other words, pick a few major foundational movements such as squats, push ups, pull ups, and deadlifts and work like hell to get better and better at these until there is no doubt that you have a handle on these very movements.

Besides the beard the other problem I’m seeing is that people will do just the opposite, or they’ll not stick to the game plan long enough. Understand that when I talk about getting better at the 5 or 6 different movements here that I mentioned I’m not just talking about giving it a try for a few weeks and then moving on.

No, I’m talking about spending months (or more) working the same movement and varying that movement when necessary to progress even further in your strength development. Understand that when I say vary I don’t mean to jump from doing the bench press to doing arm curls in the place of the bench. That would be a completely different movement.

An example of what I mean by varying the movement is to transition from doing a back squat to doing a front squat. The point is that you’re still performing a squat movement, but there is a slight variation in the movement in order to engage the body differently for the purpose of stability, strength, and to shift the distribution of the load.

The bottom line is that you’ve got to be tenacious and focused. Start your pursuit of strength and stick with it without getting too cute and wandering off of the trail of progression.

Some Big News…

Over the past week BRF has been accepted to be a brand ambassador for the supplement and nutritional company Wellpath. If you’ve been following me for a while you understand that I’m not going to sell you on a line of BS.

There is no such thing as a magical pill, supplement, or potion to give you the sustainable gains and health. That only comes from the hardened mentality of a warrior spirit. That comes from a ball busting attitude of getting shit done, period.

However, there are times where life gets challenging for all of us and sometimes when we’re chasing the dream we get short handed on some of the nutritional needs that we need in order to perform. Personally I’ve always been resistant to taking anything other than a protein shake, or bar from time to time. I mean I will even be stubborn about taking an advil for a headache.

Nevertheless in recognizing this WellPath is not a line of supplementation to BS you in any way. It’s about filling gaps in your nutrition and when life gets busy, challenging, and fast paced it’s ideal to have a killer customized strategy to help steer you in the right direction.