| THIS MONTH: TURNING BIG GOALS INTO SMALL WINS | | |
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C5-6
quad Eddie Crouch has figured out how do all of the things he needs to
live independently — including transferring and pulling his manual
wheelchair into his car — by breaking big challenges into manageable
pieces. | |
I’ve
never been one for New Year’s resolutions. I think it’s because coming
from an athlete’s background, I have an implicit understanding that big
goals don’t mean much of anything without focusing on the little changes
that’ll help you get there.
I’ve played wheelchair rugby for the past 20 years, including 10 at an international level. When I was playing at a high level
— as opposed to the “used to be good but now has a job and two kids”
status I currently enjoy — the big goals like making a national team,
winning a national championship, or winning a Paralympic gold, never
occupied much mental real estate. Don’t get me wrong, they were in the
back of my head, serving as fodder when I needed motivation. But my
day-to-day focus was on the small improvements that would allow me to
play at a higher level.
Say I wanted to get faster. Was it more important to have a higher top-end speed or better quickness? I should prioritize quickness. How do I get quicker? Increase my muscular power. How? By periodizing my lifting — muscle building first, then strength, then explosive power. But lifting heavy makes me slow — could I handle getting slower for a part of the season to increase my quickness by the end? Sure, as long as I planned my year around which months I needed to be fast. If I lift more explosively, how should my nutrition change to recover properly? Eat more than I want to. But meat is expensive and my wife is a vegetarian — how do I get enough protein to build muscle? Buy annoyingly large quantities of eggs, peanut butter and cheap whey protein.
Every big goal contains many smaller goals, and countless variables that
have to be addressed, tweaked or abandoned based on the circumstances
at hand. It’s why athletes and coaches always talk about process over
outcome. Think of your big goals as outcomes, and the small lifestyle
tweaks as processes. Outcomes you can’t control. Processes you can. | |
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BREAKING YOUR GOAL TO PIECES
Of course, most of you reading this newsletter probably aren’t dreaming
of Paralympic gold. Or maybe you are, in which case, great. Go get it.
But that same process mindset is effective, whether you want to lose
weight, increase your independence, spend more time with your family,
start a new career or make any other major lifestyle change.
Employing a process mindset means continually breaking your big goals
into smaller, more concrete pieces that are easier to tackle, and then
putting your energy toward those challenges one at a time. Let’s take an
example and work through it.
You want to lose 50lbs. Ok, that’s an outcome you may or may not reach, but, as we talked about in last year’s weight loss newsletter,
do you really want to lose 50lbs? Or, do you want to look better, feel
better and be more functional in your everyday life? Those are goals you
can work toward.
What do you need to know and do to start addressing those goals? Well,
to “look better,” you probably need to decrease body fat and increase
muscle. How do I do that? Move your muscles consistently and with escalating intensity, and eat fewer calories. Pick one and start there. Exercise sounds more fun, but I only have like four muscles that work. Work
those. Find some wrist weights and do shoulder shrugs and bicep curls.
Start with a couple days a week and get in a routine. But now my traps are sore, and my quad belly isn’t going anywhere. OK, but how are your biceps looking? They’ve grown from mandarins into slightly larger mandarins! Great, you must be getting stronger, now, let’s take a look at that diet.
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THE POWER OF MARGINAL GAINS
The
nice thing about breaking a big goal into smaller ones is that tracking
whether you’re making any progress and adjusting accordingly is a lot
easier. Start stacking small wins together and that’s where
change happens. In 2019, I wrote about one of my friends, a guy named
Eddie Crouch. Eddie is a C5-6 complete quad who lives independently.
He’s figured out how to do car transfers, showers, his bowel routine
and even tie his shoes with two quad fists. As I wrote about his
abilities:
All of [Crouch’s] daily tasks took a great
deal of patience to master. Just putting his pants on, let alone socks,
shoes and everything else, would take 30 minutes when he first got out
of rehab. Figuring out how to transfer onto the toilet took him 10 years
— a decade of having to do a bowel routine on his side in bed when he
traveled. He was finally able to master that transfer when he got D’s
Locks on his everyday chair, and he didn’t have to worry about hitting a
brake lever with his leg or a wheel moving slightly while he
transferred. As much as anything else, what makes Crouch unique is his
ability to work through problems over and over again, stacking marginal
gains atop each other, without getting so frustrated that he says, screw
it, not worth the effort.
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Whether
or not you like New Year’s resolutions, everyone has life goals they
want to accomplish. If you want to get serious about making them happen,
break your goals into the smallest pieces you can think of. Start
finding solutions, one by one, and now you're on the path to something
big. | | |
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