By Barbell Logic
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The podcast currently has 968 episodes available.
Not all metrics are created equal. Learn about the hierarchy of metrics, including targets to improve (TTIs) & key performance indicators (KPIs) and ensure you are measuring what matters.
Not All Metrics Are Created Equal: TTIs & KPIsTwo main categories of metrics exist to help measure progress toward strategic goals and gauge the health of the company: targets to improve (TTIs) and key performance indicators (KPIs).
TTIs are your top set of metrics, which have to directly impact your strategic priorities. Your strategic priorities need to align with your tenets and core values.
If these metrics improve, you have moved closer to or met your strategic priorities. These are not monthly or quarterly (though you measure them monthly and quarterly and probably more often than that) but likely annual priorities and TTIs.
KPIs are snapshots of the health of the company. If they improve, they should help your TTIs and strategic priorities (for the most part).
Often times, these are metrics that lower-level employees may care about. The CEO does not need to get into the weeds of Instagram post performance, for example, but the social media manager does.
Some metrics will likely not move, but if they do move you need to identify why they moved (either to understand the success or address the underperformance).
For Barbell Logic this might be churn. A good example in another industry is engine temperature in an airplane. This should remain constant, but if it starts to go up you need to address it quickly.
Not All Metrics Are Created Equal: Hierarchy of MetricsWhat you measure focuses your attention, so pick your metrics carefully. The CEO should not be looking at 100s of metrics. Improvements in your TTIs must actually move you closer toward your strategic priorities.
For example, if a strategic priority for you is to earn $50k in coaching revenue this year, revenue is a TTI. KPIs that align with this may be churn, clients, cold calls, and life time value of clients.
Make sure your metrics align with your priorities and your priorities align with your values and tenets. Prioritize metrics: do not measure metrics just because you can.
Not all metrics are created equal.
This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.
Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.
Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hostsRepeated action brings you toward your goal. Obviously, if you want to learn Latin, you need to study Latin regularly - studying Mandarin Chinese will not help.
That being said, a mediocre plan that you consistently follow is better than the "perfect" plan followed sporadically.
Fitness influencers like to argue about the perfect program, the best exercises, the proper technique, and many other things. None of these things matter if you do not train regularly.
The difficult part of this is that you have to put in the effort for a long time before seeing the results you want.
Consistency: Compliance & TechniqueThis is about actions, not outcome, though the actions bring you to your desired outcome.
Compliance - following the actions that bring you toward your goal - does not mean following a rigid plan perfectly without any possibility or flexibility for deviation.
Rather, it means regularly performing actions that bring you toward your goal no matter what. You train whether you are motivated or not. That may mean bodyweight exercises, shorter workouts, fewer workouts, but it means you do not "go dark" for periods of time.
Consistency of technique, as it relates to strength pursuits, is also undervalued. Having a repeatable way to perform an exercise helps provide a clear measuring stick, let's you know if you completed a repetition or not, helps prevent injury, and targets the muscle groups as desired.
Pursue consistency, because nothing matters as much as this.
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hostsAre you struggling to identify your core values? Use this bottom-up hack to identify your core values.
Struggling to Identify Your Core Values!?Matt has heard that, despite his discuss on developing and defining your core values, and its importance, many are still struggling on how to actually get this done.
Matt was working with leadership at Barbell Logic years back on a business trip, and he and the team identified that they needed to work to identify 5-year strategic priorities.
They had extremely limited time, but using some simple techniques, they were able to establish Barbell Logic's tenets quickly, using a bottom-up approach and the pomodoro technique.
Helpful Hack to Identify Your Core ValuesThe team had hundreds of sticky notes and a blank wall in the AirBnB they were staying in. Separately, they each wrote down as many important tasks as they could think of.
Once done, they stood back, and began to group them together. Groups became larger groups, as patterns emerged.
What emerged from this process was the 4 tenets that Barbell Logic still has to this day: serve, grow, teach, steward.
Another tool you can use to really identify which tasks you should stop and which you need to prioritize and protect, write down your tasks in the four quadrants of the Eisenhower matrix.
These tips and tricks can help you if you are struggling to identify your core values.
This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.
Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.
Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hostsPRs have stopped, you're not feeling as good as you had been, you'll not looking forward to your time in the gym like you had been.
Sometimes it takes longer to realize than you would think, but suddenly you realize things are not going as you would like them to go (and as they had been before). What do you do?
Because recovery is the limiting factor, it is helpful to think through different areas of your life that contribute to recovery and where you might be falling short or missing the mark:
You will likely identify an area or multiple where you are not doing as well as you can. For example, maybe you've fallen out of your normal routine during the summer, partly by drinking more. The drinking has reduced your sleep quality and quantity and also your protein and fiber.
Tightening things up, reducing alcohol, and reestablishing your routine can help.
Minimum Effective Action: Consistency & Path of Least ResistanceIdentifying the path forward when you want to make changes can be hard. Really, the simple, hard, effective way is the way forward. Focus on one or two things, and do them consistently.
The change needs to be something you can see yourself doing indefinitely. IT needs to become a habit, so that when you do not have discipline OR motivation, it is the easy thing to do.
For example, for Andrew and Niki they feel bad when they do not work or they eat bad food. It has become easy for them to eat healthier and train because otherwise they very quickly identify they feel bad and see the negative consequences.
Take the minimum effective action to reach your goals.
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hostsLearn how to prioritize thinking. Take time to improve your approach to those most important pursuits and aspects of your life.
Prioritize Thinking: The Importance of ThinkingTaking time out to think matters. Why?
As Matt has discussed in recent podcasts, and his his upcoming book Undoing Urgency, we need to set up habits and systems in our life that help us actually spend time with the most important things in our life.
How do we spend time with these most important things?
Thinking helps ideas arise, whether they be things we need to stop, do better or different, or start.
How does one do this, though? How does one actually take time to think?
Prioritize Thinking: When Do You Think Best?Matt has identified a few conditions that need to occur for him to think well, and then a few different environments where he tends to think well.
Matt things best after:
The first may seem obvious, but it is truly critical. You cannot think well if you are tired. For Matt, this occurs after a good night of sleep or nap.
Of course, Matt does not immediately wake up and start thinking, but rather after taking care of some quick tasks, making coffee, and clearing his head, he can think.
Critically, he eliminates urgent work. It is difficult to think about the important when urgent tasks are pressing on your mind.
Some of the best environments for him to think include the following:
Matt tends to have an initial brain dump when an idea arises, and he makes sure to take quick bulleted notes down (don't worry about spelling, format, etc. just get the ideas down).
Later, when he has more time, he fleshes the ideas out.
On a long drive, following this method, he developed the idea for Barbell Logic Online Coaching.
Prioritize thinking!
This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.
Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.
Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hostsThere is a time around 6 weeks into an attempted habit implementation, new diet, or workout routine, where people tend to quit.
The early, easy gains end; the long-term changes the person wants have not really been seen; and the path forward remains unclear.
This is when most people quit. They build a habit of quitting, not knowing how to get beyond this common sticking points.
If approached with wisdom and perseverance, these times are actually doors to long-term success.
Get Beyond the Sticking Points: Perseverance & Long-Term SuccessThese times are great times to ask for help or dig deeper. For lifting, signing up for online coaching can be great (real online coaching where you get technique feedback and personalized programming) or go in for an in-person technique check up with a professional coach.
If you cannot afford this or, for some reason, do not want to seek a coach, you have to educate yourself and become a coach.
Piling more stress on in and of itself typically does not work. Pulling the stress back often does not work. The stress-recovery-adaptation period must be elongated, no longer one stress event with time afterword, but rather a period of time where you stress yourself, build up fatigue where fitness decreases, and then allow for recovery to allow fatigue to go down, fitness to come up, and ultimately cause more performance (hopefully a PR).
Getting through these sticking points, however, is really the key to long-term success. You have to be able to handle unexpected bad times, keep going, but keep going intelligently so you do not burn out.
Get beyond the sticking points. Learn how to build life-long health and fitness habits. Strength is for everyone. Strength is for life.
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hostsLearn when to embrace urgency. Typically, you want to undo urgency, but, on occasion, embrace the galvanizing energy of urgency.
Check out Matt's recent interview on Right About Now with Ryan Alford:
Woah, I thought we were about Undoing Urgency!?
Well, typically, yes. This is one of those rules that serves you well most of the time. You want to avoid useless or counterproductive urgency. If you fail to get out of the knife fight of the urgent, you cannot take care of the artillery battle of the important.
Let's discuss some examples of when embracing urgency makes sense.
As you can see, these examples are both urgent and important. They both really come with the real prospect of impending failure.
These times are crucibles. Do you live or thrive or die?
Lean in and embrace the galvanizing power of the urgent.
These times periods, however, burn people out. They must be short and infrequent.
They can totally transform, however, relationships and organizations. These periods often come with nostalgia as we look back on them.
Learn when to embrace urgency.
This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.
Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.
Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hostsYou set a goal. Inherent is this is that you do not like what you are doing now. Something must change.
You have probably intertwined your identity with the actions that you need to change.
The potential pitfall is wallowing in negativity and neuroticism. You may adopt a victim mentality. Clear this hurdle.
Uncomfortable Truths: Move Toward Your GoalsNiki and Andrew share common and personal examples.
One that happens that is less obvious is coming to terms with the slowing improvement toward the end of LP or early intermediate training.
You may have not reached the goals you expected or desired. You may have wrapped up your identity in the daily and weekly PRs, and now are trying to accept you have to do more work to get fewer PRs in less time.
Niki struggled with the process of gaining weight. She found having structure and guidelines around the process and metrics helped her have confidence in the process and her coach.
Andrew has confronted that he has accomplished much reacting to his emotions. Now, to reach further levels of professional development, he has to overcome this inclination.
Learn how to confront uncomfortable truths.
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hostsWhen important becomes urgent, clear your plate, and address the important (because, by definition, it's important).
When Important Becomes Urgent: Faith, Family, FitnessThose things that are important but not urgent, such as family, health, and religion, can become urgent when unattended to (or minimally attended to) long enough.
You find yourself bickering with your spouse or family more than normal, clothes unable to fit and feeling physically and mentally worse, and falling short of the standard your faith holds you to.
Now, your family, your fitness, and your faith are urgent (and, of course, still important).
It is time to clear your schedule, pull the weeds, and take care of what is most important. Life is signaling to you that you need to spend more time and effort on these things.
This might be scheduling a vacation. It could be a spiritual retreat. Maybe you clear off a time to train every day and start every single day (today) training.
This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.
Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.
Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hostsIt's that time of year, where people begin to go on vacation and either take breaks from lifting or ask to do hotel workouts (which they often do not do).
What may cause, in part, the low compliance with hotel training is not understanding the point of the accessory lifts that, because of the limited equipment and weight, have to be used for these workouts.
So, what purpose do these lifts serve?
The provide additional volume for muscle groups that cannot be adequately stressed by solely using the main lifts.
We love the main lifts, they are fantastic tools and over time they should go up.
As you advance, though, you will almost certainly need to incorporate more of these auxiliary lifts that train muscle groups like the deltoids, triceps, biceps, hamstrings, calves, and more.
Adding Accessory Lifts to Your TrainingAs always, you first need to know the why? We explained the general why, but the personal why - why do you as a lifter need them now?
You have to consider your time, equipment, preference, goals, and desired muscle groups to target.
The benefits of home gyms are huge, but this is one area where home gyms tend to be more limited. You may have to get creative or invest in things such as adjustable dumbbells or pulley attachments.
These need to be performed strictly and for difficult sets. In fact, these can be more productively trained at higher RPEs than deadlifts and squats because they provide less systemic fatigue to the body.
You want to bar speed to slow down for the last rep or two and for them to be challenging. Program them for reps below 20, typically, because you do not want to stop because "you're tired."
Consider adding accessory lifts to your program if you want more training stress and hypertrophy.
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hostsThe podcast currently has 968 episodes available.
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