Hello there!
Hope you are having a pleasant weekend so far. As we wind down the year, I hope to take some time off next week and recharge and come back. Next year promises to be challenging and will require a lot of patience, as we cannot wish for everything to go back to normal. Whatever that means.
I will not be publishing an episode on Dec 27 and will be back on Jan 3.
On to the 3 things for today.
When students with intent, drive and a desire to learn come in - it is a coach's dream. There are refreshing things to learn from such a student. This post is about what I learned.
3 quotes on purpose and realism. From Ryan Holiday, Charlie Munger, Jason Fried.
I am fond of repeating Coach Dan John’s “Show up” and we’ve produced incredible results at The Quad by just enabling folks to show up 3 days a week. But sometimes, showing up is not enough. Are we aware of the difference?
what I learned from a driven student
At The Quad, we work with, broadly, two kinds of people.
Beginners to the world of strength & conditioning. This is the majority and our specialisation, as this is what we personally identify with. These people are us, many years ago. Confused by too much information floating around, pseudo-science, social media experts and all that.
And non-beginners who realise the value of coaching and have a serious commitment towards their fitness. This is again a group we closely identify with because this is us, today. Intent, drive, commitment are not a factor and these folks are willing to just put in the work.
This is a story about a student of mine from the second group.
SC had prior training experience. They had trained at premium gyms abroad under multiple top trainers and had enough skillset in barbell training as well as callisthenics, and some kettlebell work as well. During our assessment (an assessment is simply a way to understand student's goals and also where they are starting off from), I quickly realised that this was a person who knew what they were doing. With a bit of fine-tuning in technique, they were ready to join my advanced class. The technique in the lifts is something we constantly will want to get better at and at The Quad, we love coaching and refining technique. While SC's skill and technique were solid, there were a few glitches. This is not a unique situation at all and all of us, especially me, gain a lot to being coached under watchful eyes.
I suggested to SC to ease in the first quarter and get used to the lay of the land and how the training worked at The Quad. Polish the technique, get used to training outdoors and all that.
SC was not having that. With a clarity of thought, SC requested 1:1 skill coaching to iron this out. In group coaching, there's a lot of communal learning, a lot of watching and talking with your partners and exchanging notes. A fun way to learn. But sometimes, we learn better by ourselves or in a private setting. SC understood this and wanted the best path forward.
SC took a month or so and got comfortable with kettlebells. Even though they had a lot of top-class training experience, the open-mindedness to take feedback and the drive to improve stood out. And joined the advanced class directly from there, after refining their technique.
Shortcuts do exist. Except they are not how we picture or imagine them to be. The willingness to learn, to put aside our ego, and the drive to get better - these are shortcuts to becoming better.
3 quotes for the week
More than purpose, we also need realism. Where do we start? What do we do first? What do we do right now? How are we sure that what we're doing is moving us forward? What are we benchmarking ourselves against?
– Ryan Holiday
When I moved back, I thought passion and purpose were all one needed. If these two were present, then nothing else mattered. Well, sure. Except there's the small matter of what should one actually do and how does one go about doing it?
Are we doing the right thing? Are we staying true to our mission and values? Or are we going against what's true to our hearts to make more money or get more clients or whatever?
The purpose is important. Passion, I'd rank much behind the purpose. But as Ryan says, realism is crucial.
I've never been able to predict accurately. I don't make money predicting accurately. We just tend to get into good business and stay there.
– Charlie Munger
During a period where everything as we know it has been rocked, it has been tempting to try and predict when things will be normal when we can get back to certain things in business and in personal life and all that.
When someone like Munger says this, you realise that you go back to what's under your control. Be the best at what you can do. Don't predict. In fact, plan for the worst-case scenario. Coz everything will be a level up from there.
How fast you can reach someone has nothing to do with how quickly they need to get back to you. The content of the communication dictates that.
Emergencies? Okay.
You need me to resend that thing I sent you last week? That can wait.
You need an answer to a question you can find yourself? That can wait.
You need to know what time the client's coming in three days from now? That can wait.
– Jason Fried and DHH
Not having a stretch of time where I work undistracted has been a huge issue. Interruptions, either in the form of email or chat or phone calls or whatever, or distractions that are just due to poor habits and lack of focus get in the way of us getting into our work and producing quality effort.
For a lot of us, meetings and other people's demands are a huge problem. That's external. As these two fine folks (c0-founders of Basecamp) tell us, most things can wait.
Don't confuse urgent and important and neither.
sometimes, showing up is not enough
Showing up is the first big battle. If you don't show up to the gym, then it does not matter what the training plan is or how awesome the coach/gym/equipment/whatever is. The multiplication factor is zero, and so, no output is produced.
So, we are clear that we actually have to show up.
At The Quad, we've been able to consistently produce results for most of our students with the simple goal of "Show up 3 days a week". That's it. 90% of our success stories are built upon that.
But are we being pushed intellectually and creatively at our job? Are we producing the work that we are truly capable of? Or are we on auto-pilot and producing what we can produce?
Are we being pushed out of our comfort zone and growing?
Rarely. We show up but we aren't fully there. For various reasons.
Are we coasting?
The first question to ask ourselves is "Are we showing up?". If quantitatively the answer is yes i.e. your attendance is marked as yes, then the next question to ask ourselves is "Are we SHOWING UP?".
Figuring out the answer to this and probing deeper into this question has been uncomfortable. But valuable. It is much easier to hide behind being busy but that’s just silly.
Over the next 10 days, I am hoping to dig deeper into this question and a few other questions I have lined up for myself.
Thank you for reading! It has been a fun experience putting this out here every week. I will see you back in January. You have a good break and recharge those batteries.
