00:03:48.700So we had you on the show over almost a year and a half ago. That's episode number 177. For those of you who want to check that out, it's called Homemade Muscle and Bodyweight Training. And we dug into this just terrible accident that happened to you where you lost your leg and how you used bodyweight training to rehabilitate not only your body, but also your psyche because you were just in this terrible funk for such a long time.
00:04:13.320For those who haven't listened to that episode, check it out. It's inspiring, but also lots of action-oriented advice where you can apply it to your own life.
00:04:21.400You got a new book out. It's all about making fitness a ritual, making fitness stick.
00:04:28.280I'm curious, why did you feel like you needed to devote an entire book to this topic?
00:04:34.920Was it a problem you saw with a lot of your clients? They were starting bodyweight training, but then they just stopped for whatever reason?
00:04:41.820Well, I think it's a very common problem for everyone nowadays, for coaches.
00:04:46.740It was also something that helped me solve my problem.
00:04:49.840So basically, we live in this age of abundance of information.
00:04:54.520And I think there's too much, in a way, too much knowing, but not enough doing.
00:04:59.640You know, as the classic quote says from Van Gette or from Bruce Lee, who also uses it, like knowing is not enough.
00:05:41.500So I reached the point where I was working like six days a week, about 12 hours a day.
00:05:47.680I realized that even I personally was struggling with balancing everything, my life and my workouts.
00:05:55.200That's when I started basically doing a lot of research on time management, on life and work balance, productivity, habit formation, stuff like that.
00:06:03.800I realized this is great. If I put all this information in sort of like a book, it will be,
00:06:09.100first of all, great for my clients, great for me, basically something very important that I should
00:06:13.920have in my library. Basically, that's how I got inspired to write this book.
00:06:19.320So for you, it was just being really busy, got in the way of your fitness goals. And what other
00:06:25.060things usually gets in the way of people trying to make exercise a habit? Is it just, is it
00:06:29.080busyness or are there other things involved as well?
00:06:30.800Yeah, well, it's being busy, but also bad time management, spending too much of your cognitive resources of your brainpower in things that can be very automatized, can be where you can use as things such as rituals that we'll be talking about today.
00:23:40.300For example, I did have, and you know, people think that even us trainers and people who
00:23:45.720our coaches do this as a living and are like really passionate about exercise think that
00:23:51.040this is like 365 days a year how we are which is not and you know for example this year I did have
00:23:58.620like a couple of weeks when I really didn't want to train because you know life just happens
00:24:04.920sometimes and you're going through other emotional periods and stuff like that but that's when
00:24:09.760basically my rituals really kicked in and really had my back in a way. So yeah, we all struggle
00:24:17.040with consistency, even with the things we love. And I mean, even with the people we love, you know,
00:24:21.420we all have difficult periods. So keeping in mind that, you know, these are just phases and
00:24:27.280depending on solid rituals that you've basically hardened and you've incorporated in your lifestyle
00:24:34.180is essential because you know when life is good it's easy to practice those rituals and you should
00:24:39.860so you learn to adapt to them but yeah when uh when life kicks you in the teeth you know that's
00:24:46.640when you can really see the value of rituals right like um my coach matt reynolds says those
00:24:51.960days where you don't feel like training just those are days you treat you call them he calls
00:24:56.800them blue collar days right it's like you just treat it like a you put on your hard hat you put
00:25:01.220on your coveralls and you just do the work you check in and it might not be that great of a
00:25:07.400workout you and you'll probably just be going through the motions but that's okay because you
00:25:11.840just what you want to do is you want to keep that that habit ingrained in you and also what's
00:25:17.900interesting even if you if you don't feel like working out in the beginning what's one of the
00:25:20.760powerful things of rituals is that it it sort of bootstraps you into getting taking action and as
00:25:26.840you take action, you find yourself feeling more motivated to actually do the thing you're actually
00:25:31.340doing. Yeah. Yeah. Like most of those days, once I'm over like the first 10 or 15 minutes of just
00:25:37.720preparing stuff and getting my warmup, uh, I'm like, my mood is again, it's good. And I'm
00:25:42.900actually most of those days I'm like in really enthusiastic with the workout, but, and as you
00:25:48.400said, you also have like, you know, just days when you just punch the clock and, uh, that's okay.
00:25:53.220Not every day has to be a super special day with your workout or with everything.
00:25:59.860So you talk about in the book this idea of the avalanche effect with these rituals you develop, not only for exercise, but for other areas of your life.
00:26:12.040So the avalanche effect is basically the same effect that you have with – this also works in the pre-workout checklist.
00:26:20.000So starting with little things, accomplishing little things successfully builds momentum and gives you more confidence for slowly getting more challenging tasks done, more complicated things done, more bigger things done.
00:26:35.800So for me, I know that if I start my day properly, for example, if I wake up successfully, if my alarm clock rings at six o'clock and I don't snooze, I don't check out any social media on my phone, I get up, pour some tea, do my meditation and sign my checklist.
00:26:55.040I know that 99% of those days, the rest of my day will flow as productively as those first as that first half an hour. So basically, the more you accomplish tasks, one after the other, the other thing is, yeah, that the more you accomplish tasks, one after the other, the more invested you feel in staying into that flow of productivity.
00:27:19.940That's how I experience it. And, you know, that's the feeling that the avalanche effect creates.
00:27:25.660And I thought of that metaphor because I remember sort of in those Disney cartoons where, you know, an avalanche effect would start with a little tiny snowball, which, of course, that's not the technical ways avalanches start.
00:27:37.520But I always remember that Disney metaphor, that Disney scene where, you know, things start with a little snowball and as that snowball goes downhill, it gets bigger and bigger and has more momentum and more speed and it's more unstoppable.
00:27:53.960They also did a study and saw that when people, for example, got up in the morning and made their beds, they would also get into that flow of productivity and do more and more things successfully.
00:28:04.680Not that making your bed is something magical and it will make you do amazing things the rest of the day, but it can put you into a flow of doing more and more things gradually during the rest of the day.
00:28:18.340And how did the avalanche effect help get you out of – I mean, you were – after your accident where you lost your leg, you were in like a five-year funk, like depressive, just a depression.
00:28:30.220How did the avalanche effect help you get out of that rut?
00:28:33.260Yeah. So while I was writing this book, and I thought of this metaphor, I realized that actually, that was the way I got out of my depression those years. And I didn't know I did that way. But that's how it happened. So basically, after my accident, I spent five years having one operation after the other. All of my friends were moving on with their lives, you know, finishing their studies, getting jobs, this and that. And I was just stuck. And that eventually got me really depressed.
00:29:01.400I couldn't exercise which was always something that helped me mentally and I was really stuck
00:29:07.860for five years I couldn't do anything I didn't I would I would try like to read a book I would just
00:29:13.880stop after one paragraph like I couldn't do anything successfully there was zero willpower
00:29:19.680left in me so I started with one little thing and that was basically meditation so mindfulness
00:29:27.180meditation. It was something I started doing in the mornings. It was like, I didn't really think
00:29:33.280it would help me a lot, but I was like, okay, this is like the only thing I haven't tried.
00:29:37.380Let's give this a try. And it really helped me into clearing up that fog of my head and
00:29:43.740having that emotional stability in the beginning of the day to think a bit more clearly and have
00:29:50.000a bit more willpower to invest on other things. So after meditation became a stable habit for,
00:29:57.500I think for about three weeks, I added exercise again into my lifestyle. Once my exercise was
00:30:04.880stable, I started eating healthy. No, sorry. First I started exercising. After that, I started
00:30:10.600reading books. And after that, I started eating healthy and sort of all these small habits sort
00:30:16.700of started piling up and created this avalanche effect where I started working on this project,
00:30:22.880Home Eat Muscle. I started socializing again more and life just started getting better and better.
00:30:30.100So you didn't try to do it all at once? Because I feel like it's what a lot of people try to do
00:30:33.500when they want to improve themselves. They try to make all the changes all at once.
00:30:37.100Yeah, no, definitely. That fails like 90% of the times. Maybe there are some people that can do
00:30:42.300that. But you definitely want to make sure that a habit is fixed before you start adding more and
00:30:50.120more things because then you don't have a stable base. So I would say add one habit. I would say
00:30:57.800depends on the habit, but at least make sure you stay disciplined to that habit for a month. And
00:31:03.780it feels really fixed. You feel confident that, okay, I got this now. I can slowly experiment
00:31:10.280with adding something new. Never add too many things all at once.
00:31:15.440So you talked about, sometimes you get really busy with your work and everything. How do you
00:31:21.620keep the ritual of working out when you get in those really busy times in your life? For example,
00:31:26.720one time in my life that got really busy is like when my wife had kids. For like the first two
00:31:31.740weeks, things were nuts. But I still managed to get a workout in. I don't know how I did it.
00:31:36.240But I'm curious, what did you do to ensure that you keep with that routine or that ritual, even when you're really, really busy?
00:31:43.960Yeah. So the first thing I would say is that a typical mistake is obsessing during these periods and sort of trying to train as much as you train during like really relaxed periods during those difficult times.
00:31:58.260So, you know, maybe if you're training like five times a week, don't obsess on getting five workouts a week again, because what happens then usually is that you're going to miss a workout and you will go to like a downward spiral.
00:32:12.240Basically, you will have the opposite of the avalanche effect, like a negative avalanche effect.
00:32:16.420You'll skip one workout and then you'll be disappointed and you're going to mess up your nutrition as well.
00:32:22.360And then you'll be like, OK, I didn't train.
00:32:53.960So two days of strength training per week has been proven to be enough to at least maintain your progress.
00:33:01.380So focus during these periods on maintenance, you know, not don't try to like keep on breaking plateaus or losing more weight if that's your goal or building more muscle.
00:33:12.120So compromise and focus on maintenance because the end goal basically of fitness in a long term lifestyle is maintenance.
00:33:19.920You know, you're only going to be improving for a specific amount of time and until a specific age.
00:33:26.300And, you know, maintenance is not a bad goal, at least for difficult periods of your life.
00:33:31.920So don't obsess on doing things perfect.
00:33:34.700You know, try to at least maintain your results or find the minimum effective dose that you can apply this period in your life that, you know, will help you to maintain your results, but also maintain that habit.
00:33:48.320I would say that's the healthiest way to go.