Read 20 Minutes Per Day
If you have kids above the age of 6 you have probably been harassed/encouraged by their teacher to make sure they read every night. At my daughter’s back to school night her 3rd grade teacher handed out a packet of information about the upcoming school year. Included in that packet was the below info graphic:
I admittedly have not done any research on these claims. I don’t care to discuss the validity and/or necessity of standardized testing and percentiles. 1,800,000 is a lot of words to read. Reading for the equivalent of 60 whole school days is probably more reading than I have done in my entire life. But to be fair, reading for 12 whole school days also feels like a lot of reading.
I understand where the teacher is coming from and I think that this concept can easily be applied to any other area of our life. I own a gym, this will be posted on a gym website and it only makes sense that I relate it to that area.
“Stop overestimating what you can do in 3 months. Stop underestimating what you can do in 3 years.” The annoying thing about fitness is that it is never actually achieved. It is a continuous journey that lasts your entire life. If you follow CrossFit’s definition and test of fitness there are only two people on the planet who do not have anybody more fit than them. But they still lose workouts so in different areas of fitness they are still not the fittest. There will never be a day when you are FINALLY “in shape” and can just stop working out. I hate quotes and sayings but this whole thing is a marathon, not a sprint.
If you want to get significantly better at anything you need to be consistent for a long period of time. If you lack mobility, do it for 20 minutes every day. ROMWOD has been huge for me personally because I will not stretch by myself but for some reason Noah Ohlsen on a beach with a deep voiced man talking just does it for me. If you hate rowing, come in early and row 5,000 meters every day until you like it. If you suck at running then do it until you are good at it. Dedicate 20 minutes of every day to getting better at something. 20 minutes is 1.38% of your day. This applies to anything; except GHDs. Don’t do 20 minutes of GHDs.
It is so easy to cherry pick workouts and skip one. If I were to tell you to skip 1 workout per month that doesn’t sound that bad. But that ends up being 12 workouts per year. If you do the 3 on 1 off 2 on 1 off schedule that is over 2 weeks of skipped workouts. This shit adds up.
Break up your weaknesses into 20 minute increments and hammer them EVERY DAY. You have more than 1 weakness. “Constantly varied” movement will not fix the things you suck at. Doing the things you suck at will fix the things you suck at. But you have to do this for longer than a week. Make it a priority. If you don’t make it a priority I won’t feel bad for you when you don’t magically get better at the things you don’t work on. Especially double unders.