WED: Measure What You Manage

Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Peter Drucker once famously wrote, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”, which has then been re-paraphrased over the years to mean, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

I consider this concept law for how I operate as a business owner, a coach, and a fitness participant who has goals.

Let’s take three scenarios.

  • Get stronger.
  • Lose weight.
  • Feel better.

They are the three most common goals listed on people who join our gym, and even though they are abstract they can absolutely be broken down into measurable input.

Get Stronger
With so many lifts, movements, and different versions of strength we can’t just track our favorite. We must measure it all. Barbells, bodyweight, kettlebells, dumbbells. Don’t overcomplicate this. If you don’t have a tracking system, get one. Buy a journal and jot down down your output each day in the gym. Even the most mundane detail of your training might be an area holding you back.

Lose Weight
You have no real chance of losing weight and keeping it off long term if you don’t have a tracking system for what goes into your body. Only once we have years and years of healthy food habits can we intuitively eat and maintain progress, but even then, it’s a crap shoot. I’ll use myself as an example of how I have screwed this up. At the beginning of last year, I decided to track what I ate the first time ever. I thought I had a great grip on nutrition, and when I actually did the work, I discovered I was only eating about 1,800 calories per day. The demands of a long work day had created tunnel vision where I was not eating nearly enough. Had I not tracked this, I would have continued down a road of hypocaloric input for far too long.

Get a tracking software. Even something as simple as MyFitness Pal will work to get you started.

Feel Better
The context of this is totally different for every person, but how we feel is ultimately a sum of what goes into our body (food, water, sleep) and what goes out (exercise, work, stress). Measuring everything I just listed is incredibly easy to track. What did you eat? How much water did you drink? How much sleep did you get? What did you do for exercise? How long did you work? How did all of these combined ingredients impact your stress level that day?

Expecting to achieve a goal without tracking is like trying to train for a marathon without milemarking. “Just running” might produce a result, but not nearly as favorable a result as following a plan, checking it off, and tracking it along the way.

-Dave

Wednesday, 1.17.18

First, for Strength.
4 Hang Power Cleans @ 60-80%
(x4)
Perform 1 set every 3 minutes for 12 minutes.
—
Then, for Conditioning. Move as quickly as you can without compromising technique.
10 Pull-Ups
8 Ab Roll-Outs
(x3)
10 Ring Dips
10 Sandbag Lunges
(x3)
10 DB Push Jerk
5/s Plyo Lunge Jumps
(x3)
800m Run