1. Realize that you are ready

You might not have everything you need to complete the journey, but you have enough to start RIGHT NOW. Don’t worry about the details – the journey will change you and you’ll find all the tools you need to reach your goals along the way. Just take some action, no matter how small, right now.

2. Embrace fear

Do you get anxious/scared when you go to take a shower? Hopefully not. What about before going to speak in front of hundreds of people, or before lifting a weight you’ve never lifted before? Fear will always be a part of your life, so instead of avoiding it at all costs, embrace it. View it as a guidepost that says what you’re about to do is important and meaningful to you, and then just do it.

Here is a fantastic free resource to help you tackle your fears: The Flinch

3. Consume less, create more

It’s near impossible to effectively consume and create at the same time. Try sprinting while reading a book, or jumping out a plane while doing your taxes (making sure to send the video footage to me) and lemme know how that goes.

The less time you spend consuming, the more time you have for creation, and creating is the only way to move forward.

Create movement. Create time. Create relationships. Create the life you want.

4. Get the #*(@ out of your life

Have you ever cleaned & organized your place after putting it off forever? For approximately 6-7 seconds after you’re done, the universe opens up and drops this knowledge nugget right into your head:  “Damn this feels awesome! Why didn’t I do it sooner?”

This could be stuff that has been piling up forever, but it could also be negative people who just drag down at every turn.

Getting rid of stuff that only takes up space and adds no value makes room for things that do.

5. Be inspired daily

Read a book.
Have a great conversation.
Listen to a podcast (recommendations here, here, here & here)
Watch a dope movie clip.
Read some awesome quotes.

Pretty much do ANYTHING you can to get your mind right. Everything becomes easier to do with a positive mindset.

6. Make it fun.

‘Nuff said. If you don’t like doing it (or make it at least enjoyable on some level), you won’t stick with it.

7. Be a Toyota Prius, not a rocket ship.

The problem that often befalls people is not their actual goal, but the time frame that they set to achieve it. Losing 20lbs of fat ? Hell yeah – super possible! Losing 20lbs of fat in 30 days? Only if you have a chainsaw and are up for losing some limbs.

The more unrealistic the time frame, the more ridiculous things you’re gonna have to do to even have a chance of getting there. Even then, the chances of failure are pretty high.

A realistic time frame gives you more breathing room to find out what works and to play around the variables related to your goal, while still giving putting enough fire under your cheeks so that you don’t stretch it out into infinity.

Don’t burn out via a rocket ship-esque effort (aka an all out guts & glory approach with little to show for it when all is said & done). You’re in this for the long haul.

8. Chase failure like a cheetah chases…whatever it is that cheetahs chase.

No one fails by doing nothing; failure requires risk and action. Failure means you found a way that didn’t work – AWESOME!

And guess what? You didn’t die, the world didn’t come crashing down around you and you didn’t soil your pants.

You’ve lived to fight another day, gained valuable experience and are now one step closer to finding something does work.

9. Do something different

If you’ve been tackling a goal for some time with a lack of results, change something.

Expecting a different outcome by doing the same thing you’ve always done is like expecting a punch in the face from Mike Tyson (any era) not to hurt: no matter how much you want it to be true, it’s just not.

10. Never give up

If winning is the only option, how can you lose?

Bonus

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” – Dale Carnegie

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” – Jim Rohn

“It’s always too early to quit.” – Norman Vincent Peale

“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.” – Nido Qubein

“Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door.” – Kyle Chandler

“Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.” – Peter Marshall

“The gap between ignorance and knowledge is much less than the gap between knowledge and action.”
-Anonymous

“The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.” – Confucius

“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.” – Bruce Lee

A few months ago I wrote about one of the most effective strategies that I know for strength gain under any circumstance: reverse pyramid training. Today, I want to give you a few tips to ensure that your continue to progress for months and years to come.

The one draw back of RPT, or rather how people implement it, is that it’s fairly easy to burn out if you aren’t careful, which leads us to our first lesson: AVOID TRAINING BEYOND FAILURE LIKE YOU’D AVOID EATING MEAT LEFT OUT IN THE BLAZING SUMMER SUN FOR 148 HOURS.

When I type in all caps, you know I mean business.

If you could only take away one delicious nugget of information, this would be it.

Think of your body as a car. Ideally, you’d be driving down the street at a normal speed and slowly braking at all traffic lights. Sure, there would be occasions when you’d have to stomp on the brakes to avoid a collision, but these moments are few and far between.

Now picture you’re another car, but this time you’re gunning the gas pedal every chance that you get, and when it comes stopping at a light you only know one way to do it: drop kicking the brakes at the very last moment.

Which one of these cars is more likely to fall apart faster?

Approach your training sessions with a sense of long term vision if you’re interested in long term progress. If you’re grinding out reps each every time you pick up a weight,  you better put on your chef hat because you’re creating a recipe for burnout, both physically & mentally.

Rep range first, weight increase second.

For reverse pyramid training, you first want to set up a rep range and let that guide your sessions. For a nice blend of strength and size gains gains I recommend a 2-5 rep spread using compound movements (think bench press, squat, overhead press, dips, rows & deadlifts). From here, and this is where the beautiful simplicity of this system comes into play, you stay at that weight until the you get to the top of the rep range.

Example:

Session 1: 225 x 2
Session 2: 225 x 3
Session 3: 225 x 3
Session 4: 225 x 4
Session 5: 225 x 5

Only after the last session where you hit 5 reps would you increase the weight by 5-10lbs (even smaller increases work as well) in order to bring yourself back down towards the bottom of the rep range, starting the process all over again – milk this for all it’s worth.

One note about the above: there’s nothing wrong with taking your time to hit the top number. In fact it’s much better to do that then grinding your way to the top just so that you can increase the weight, only to end up stalling soon after.

If you get to the top range and feel like you could’ve done one more rep, that’s a good sign that you’re ready to increase the weight. If you barely got that last rep, stay there for a week or two (or however long it takes) until that last rep doesn’t feel like you’re going to pop a brain vessel. Although it may seem like it sometimes, you’re not in any rush. Success takes time.

What you don’t want to do is this:

Session 1: 225 x 2
Session 2: 225 x 4 (grinded out 2 more reps with questionable form)
Session 3: 225 x 5 (grinded out 1 more rep – super difficult but upped the weight anyway)
Session 4: 235 x 1 (epicly hard)
Session 5: 235 x 1
Session 6: 235 x 1
Session 7: 235 x 1
Session 8-9: Skipped, didn’t feel like training.
Session 10: 230 x 1

By letting the rep range dictate when you increase your weight, you take yourself and your emotions out of the equation while also keeping yourself from training to failure.

The best thing about weights is that they’re completely objective. They don’t care what kind of day you had at work, nor do they care how heavy you think they are or how many reps you want to get – 300lbs will always be 300lbs. When your body is ready and capable of lifting a certain amount of weight a certain number of times, it will happen because you have trained for it, and not a moment sooner.

Have you incorporated reverse pyramid training into your workouts? If so how freakin’ awesome have your results been? If you have any questions, or just want to share how well it has worked for you, please do so in the comment section below!

I often get emails asking how to boost protein intake throughout the day,  so I wanted to share a quick low-tech/high effect recipe that takes less than 2 minutes to put together that address this problem directly. One bite of these apples and you’ll slap yourself for going through life up until this point without them.

Now on to the free stuff!

My review of the Quest Protein Bars (check it out here) was a big hit, and for good reason: they taste like love feels.  I don’t want to keep all the yum yums to myself though, so I’m going to randomly send readers a bar from my own private stash until they’re all gone – my loss is your delicious gain!

There are 3 ways to be eligible (doing each gives you 3 total chances to win):

1) Leave a comment below.

2) Share this post via Facebook or Twitter, making sure to include me in the loop (@RogLaw on Twitter and here on Facebook).

Let me know what you think of this recipe!