Domino Fitness

I'm starting to think that Seth Godin should go ahead and start a health and fitness blog! In case you don't know, Seth is probably the most popular blogger in the world.  Nominally, his blog deals with marketing, but his insights apply so universally that anyone could benefit from reading it.

Recently, he posted about what companies can learn from dominoes (the game). To often, businesses go for the big score and the game winning deal.  Instead, they need to line up one domino at a time, starting with the one that's easiest to topple.  Once they get that first one past the tipping point, the resultant show of toppling dominoes will be an impressive and monumental sight.

What Can Dominoes Teach Us About Our Fitness Goals?

Have you ever tried to lose ALL those ten pounds in a week?  Have you ever gone so hard on your first workout or your return to the gym that you couldn't walk the next day?  Have you ever gone to a big family gathering, not touched a morsel of the delicious spread, and regretted it a week later when you're back to eating everything in sight? If any of that sounds familiar - I'm guilty of all of it at one time or another - then you know what Seth is talking about when he refers to going for the big score.

Sometimes Less Is More (but Better is always Better)

It's great, even essential, to have a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal).  But you have to break it into steps and compenents that allow you to steadily creep towards your objective while staying under the radar of any negative adaptations. Circular Strength Training provides us with a number of tools to help us make the most progress possible without the resultant breakdown that often comes with typical quick results.

Pairing the principle of Incremental Progression with the monumental Training Hierarchy Pyramid tool, you can plan out a program that will get you to where you are going one small step at a time.  But the funny thing is, you'll get there more quickly than by trying to race to the finish line.  Hmm - Isn't there a popular kids tale about that...

6 Tips For Creating The Domino Effect

1. Define your goal - Imagine exactly what the end result will be.
2. Dissect your goal into pieces - Slice that end result into as many little pieces as you can. When you become that person... What are you eating? How are you sleeping? What training are you doing? What recovery work are you doing? What skills do you possess? What attributes do you have? Now take all those things and slice them up even more. For example, what training will you need to do to support the training you'll be doing when you reach your goal?
3. Line up your "dominoes" - Now, take all your slices and put them in order. Which ones need to come first to support the rest.  Those early slices are part of your General Preparedness (from the THP model).
4. Make a macro plan - Take all those lined up slices and build yourself a macro plan.  This is a large scale plan that allows you to visualize all the steps it's going to take to get you where you are going. This can be a mind-map, a pyramid, a list, an essay or whatever format most speaks to you.
5. Make weekly micro plans - Every Sunday night, spend some time mapping out the next 7 days. Use your macro plan as a guide. Assess which dominoes have tipped and which are next in line.
6. Adjust the macro plan as needed - It's essential to have a big picture plan, but fatal to assume that it is immutable. You will need to adjust it constantly as you go in order to reflect the realities of your life and your progress.

Look Back & Admire The Results

What I've learned about the THP and Incremental Progression over the last few years is that anything is possible. Not only that, REAL results will come faster than you could imagine. But you have to get those dominoes tipping in the right order and with the right timing. Then the magic starts happening.

[image courtesy of  Mirko Macari on Flickr]

Comments

[Ralph]

Good list! Micro plans work great for just about anything you want to do.

[Adam Steer]

Hey Ralph,

Thanks for dropping by. Yeah, just common sense when you think about it, eh?

Cheers,
Adam

[Cindia]

Very helpful stuff. Far too many people think that you need to do everything all at once, but with most things in life, taking it a small piece at a time can work wonders.

[cigarette smoking fetish]

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