Tell me if this pattern sounds familiar.
One of my clients (let’s call him Elliot) would go hard every three months. Aggressive diet. New workout plan. The full deal.
And it would work…for a few weeks. Then life would do what life does – motivation would fade, work would get stressful, there’d be a sick kid to take care of, a vacation – and the whole thing would unravel.
Three months later, the cycle would start all over again. Only this time, everything felt a little worse. The scale would tick up, his knees hurt more, and he felt more out of breath going up the stairs.
Determined, he’d say to himself: “I just need to try harder this time.”
When I sat down with Elliot to build out his coaching plan, we realized that even though every previous attempt felt like progress in the short-term, in the long run, the system was failing him.
As my friend and Rebel Leader Steve Kamb writes in his upcoming book How to Try Again:
“Trying harder at the thing that already didn’t work wastes energy we can use to figure out a better solution.”
So that’s what Elliot and I did – we stopped pouring energy into the thing that wasn’t working.
(By the way: Steve is hosting a live Q&A TONIGHT just for people who have pre-ordered the book! If you want to join, and read the first two chapters of the book 2 weeks early, visit HowToTryAgain.com for details and next steps!)
A lesson from the beach
If you’ve been to the beach, you’ve probably seen the signs warning about rip currents.
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Here’s the counterintuitive thing about them: when one is pulling you out to sea, you’re not supposed to swim AGAINST it. You’ll exhaust yourself, and you’re not going to win.
What you’re actually supposed to do is swim sideways. Parallel to the shore.
And if you can’t escape the tide? Float or tread water.
You’re not getting closer to the beach – but you’re not exhausting yourself either. Holding steady and staying afloat is the critical first step to getting back to safety.
This is the P in the PACT framework Steve writes about in his book – Pause.
Not a one-time emergency move. It’s a skill we can use again whenever required.
And this was the exact piece that was missing from Elliot’s earlier attempts. When we rebuilt his plan, we didn’t start with what his “optimal day” would look like.
We started with “how do we stay afloat when life throws you into a rip current?”
This is the thing that most fitness plans miss, and what I’ve seen actually work hundreds and thousands of times with clients in Nerd Fitness Coaching.
Progress isn’t about operating at our peak all the time, forever. It’s about learning how to toggle between periods of maintenance and periods of focused effort.
Ultimately, that’s the strategy that gets us towards our goal.
I get it!
The allure of “continual optimization” and “just try harder” FEELS good.
As Steve says:
“Seeing positive movement toward a goal gives us that warm, fuzzy feeling and a sense of control that we are making things better. And when we are NOT making progress? We feel like we’re falling behind.”
That feeling is the trap. It’s what sent Elliot into an unsustainable sprint every three months.
And SCIENCE is on our side, too.
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We can maintain muscle and strength on one-third of our normal training volume for weeks at a time.
So, when you’re slammed at work and cut your 4-day program down to one short session – you’re not losing ground, you’re staying afloat. You might not be winning, but you’re not losing either.
That’s the difference between the yo-yo and the staircase.
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How to put a Pause plan into action
When your energy is low, you’re juggling 50-kajillion things, and you’re stressed – what can you fall back on that keeps your head above water?
For Elliot, this looked like:
- A quick breakfast protein shake he actually liked that was easy to throw together
- A short bodyweight workout (~15min) 2x/week
- Push-ups while the coffee brewed.
Once we implemented that, he no longer crashed out after a few weeks.
For you, your “tread water” plan might look like:
- A shorter version of a workout you already like
- Stocking up on high-protein freezer meals you can grab in a pinch
- A brain dump before sleep to get whatever’s rattling around in your head onto a page
- Short movement breaks throughout the day – 20 squats before lunch, a 5min walk before your next meeting, etc.
There’s no right or wrong answer here. Experiment to find what works best for you.
Steve has a line that I want to leave you with:
“A pause is not moving backward. Compared with making things worse, a pause is the correct next step.”
When life has you caught in a riptide, the urge is to put your head down and swim harder. That’s what backfires. Instead, pause and tread water until you’re out of the current.
You got this. 💪
Still floating,
-Matt