l was thinking about discipline, and how it pertains to my day to day decision making and why I succeed and fail. I decided to try to visualize it and think explore how I leverage discipline to stay on track.Goal: The goal sets the dotted line and dictates the target you are trying to hit. Good goal setting takes practice, as choosing too lofty a goal means even on your most motivated day, you’ll fall short of meeting the needs of your goal. This is failure before you begin.
Spark: The thing that gets you super excited about this goal. Maybe it’s watching an elite athlete perform an amazing feat. Maybe it’s seeing a photo of your fat ass. Maybe it’s seeing someone with something you wish you had. This spark is the impetus to get you started, but is extremely short lived. Usually lasting a few hours at most.
Motivation: Comes into play next. It ebbs and flows over time. Sometimes, the motivation is more than the minimum work required to achieve your goal, at which point the work is enjoyable and effortless. Other times, it dips below that minimum work line, and you fall off the wagon. Depending on how much time you spend below your ‘minimum work’ line, progress could completely stall, or you might even slide backwards. This might mean you have too aggressive a goal, or it might mean you need to lean on…
Discipline: Discipline is the safety net of wavering Motivation. Discipline is the ‘punching the card’ workout when you feel crummy, or the dedicated hour of study time when you’d rather be drinking. It’s the safety net that keeps you from riding the rollercoaster of motivation into the ground. But Discipline is a budget and depletes the more you use it. When you’re on a downswing, you’re burning up your reserves. Lean on Discipline too much and eventually you run out of it and failure results. Discipline replenishes during the upswings in motivation. Sometimes Discipline keeps you above the ‘minimum work’ line, and other times it falls below and only keeps you from derailing yourself. But it’s critical to use it. And just like gaining strength, it builds over time and you get more of it.
Area under the curve: The total work you perform towards your goal is the area under the line defined by the highest value of the three curves at any time (Spark/Motivation/Discipline).This is all purely hypothetical, but it was illustrative to me to visualize these components and will make me think about how I set goals, as well as giving me some feedback about why I seem to be failing or stalling.
This is something I’ve been thinking about recently as I begin a new phase of my strength and conditioning. Usually, in sport, we abide by the SAID principle when preparing for an event. The Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand principle says that if you want to get better at throwing, you should throw. If you have a power lifting meet, you should be practicing the three lifts. You will specifically adapt to the demands you place on your body. It’s a miracle of evolution and part of why we survive as a species.
This is why when you see a runner run, they look like a gazelle and have perfect control of their breathing and heart rate, but if you put them on a bike, they are uncomfortable and struggling to breath. Runners run, cyclists bike. That all makes sense.
But can it ever be a bad thing? I believe it can. Specifically in the realm of exercise for fat loss and cardiovascular health. If you’ve spent any time in commercial gyms, you have seen it. Think about the chronic cardio folks who endlessly do the elliptical machines and never make progress. They have decided which cardio equipment they prefer, and within about 90 days, their body adapts to the demand, becomes efficient at the motor pattern, and thus requires less metabolic output to maintain a given resistance or speed. This is not preferred for metabolic conditioning.
I notice this when I do a Maffetone LSD (long slow distance) block of training with a heartrate monitor. His protocol is for building a cardio base which will stretch the chambers of the heart and provides more stroke volume per beat of the heart. This will lower your resting heart rate and improve your health. Read more about that here. When doing this kind of training with one kind of cardio, I notice that within a few weeks I have to drastically increase my perceived output to keep my heartrate in the proper zone. This is an observable adaptation. It makes the work less pleasant, more monotonous, and more fatiguing. But there is an easier way!
The answer is inefficiency.
That is, select a novel stimulus every few weeks. Or even several in the same session. By having a long list of options available, you are avoiding adaptation and maintaining novelty. This is inefficient. This is what we want. We want to be the runner who is trying to swim or ride a bike. The person who is interested in general physical preparedness wants to be “bad” at the movement they use for cardio.
So if you feel yourself in a cardio rut, or notice that you aren’t moving towards your goal, might I recommend something you suck at?
Incomplete list of cardio options:
Heavy Hands Walks – Using 3-8lb dumbbells in your hands, and some 3-5lb ankle weights and just go for a walk. You might have heard the wisdom that “every pound on your feet is like 5 pounds on your back”. In this case, that’s what we want.
Ruck Marching – Put a 10-25lb plate in an old backpack, or get a weight vest and go for a walk.
This post is specifically about cardio, but the same goal of inefficiency can be extended to strength training too. By the end of completing Dan John’s 10,000 kettlebell swing challenge several years ago, completing the 500 daily swings became ‘easy’. SAID at work. I think that having access to many lifting implements, and rotating their use in a timely way (while avoiding chronic program hopping) will lead to better general conditioning over the long term. Coach Dan John agrees. I can’t recommend his work and programs enough for the generalist athlete. In a similar vein, Louis Simmons’ Conjugate/Concurrent method also leans heavily on this concept.
If you are just getting started in cardio or strength training, then everything you do will be inefficient. Enjoy those noob gains. Everything works, until it doesn’t. Understand your plateau is just a result of millions of years of evolution. Then find something efficiently inefficient to do.
If you read my posts on the Ruger 10/22 (part 1, part 2) that I set up for home defense, this post will contain echoes and similar logic to that series. That particular .22 now lives at my parent’s house as their home defense rifle. Since we had a gun-void, I sought to fill it.
The Mission:
Find a carbine that my entire family could confidently use for self defense in the home, be willing to train with despite being recoil/muzzle blast-sensitive shooters, and keep at a reasonable cost. The ultimate goal is to build shooters with sufficient skill to make high pressure shots with no-shoots downrange on low probability targets. The only way to get there is if shooting isn’t a chore or abusive to the senses.
The Resource Problem:
Ammo costs and availability are a factor. We have a limited income, so a more affordable caliber makes sense for us. In my experience, less expensive caliber doesn’t mean spending less annually on ammunition, it means buying more ammo for the same price. More ammo means more practice, which means more proficiency.
We also don’t have $1200 for an AR-15 pattern 9mm carbine. We have a cost ceiling that we need to stay under. I have a pile of Glock pistol magazines that largely go unused since I’ve switched to Double Action Pistols. Using Glock magazines would be a nice bonus to save on support gear.
We have a time limitation. I need to maximize the training time, and blunt the learning curve by picking a platform that lends itself to quick proficiency. We rarely get time together, period. So finding time to go to the range is exceedingly rare. I have to strive for efficiency. Rifles are easier to shoot well. Four points of contact with a rifle beats two points of contact with a pistol. A red dot sight makes the learning curve easier for getting hits.
The shooter consideration problem:
For the shooters in my family, I need to be very considerate of recoil, and muzzle blast. My wife is quickly turned off to shooting a 5.56 rifle at indoor ranges due to the chest thumping concussion and flash that an AR-15 gives. She’s good for maybe 30 shots before she’s done. If concentration and focus is gone after one magazine, then competency will be impossible given the rarity of our range trips.
My wife isn’t a shooter. She wants to understand and be able to run all of our guns, but she doesn’t love shooting like I do. I have to be considerate of her time and pick something that she might enjoy more than an AR or shotgun.
I’d wager that many of you might be in a similar boat. It’s really time to bump the obsession with terminal ballistics down the list and keep context at the top. Despite what the ‘5.56 AR-15/ 00 buckshot or nothing’ crowd says, it’s more important that all the shooters meant to use a firearm can achieve a certain level of competency. If that means a .22LR, then that’s what it is. I wanted to give a 9mm carbine a chance, so here we are.
The tactical problem:
This is the reason we want a rifle that anyone in the house can use. My greatest concern is the shooting problem of a home invader with a downrange no-shoot. Not that it needs saying, but in the real world, it is very likely that there will be no-shoots forward of the ‘180* range safety line’. In fact, it’s quite common in home invasions for a husband to answer the late-night knock on the door, only to be overrun by bad guys. If I’m downrange, I want to make sure my shooters are competent enough to shoot them well, and not shoot me. It’s a self-preservation thing.
Story time to drive the point home. One of Tom Givens’ Students had to make a difficult shot with her husband down range:
A struggle ensued, during which the homeowner was shot in the thigh by one of the suspects. The homeowner’s wife was at the front door to greet her husband, and saw the attack. She ran upstairs, got her handgun, opened the bedroom window and engaged the suspects with several shots from the window.
She hit one suspect, and both fled.
As the husband neared the front door, he heard the dogs growl and ran back to his bedroom, arming himself with a can of wasp spray, the records say. A man charged him in a hallway, and the husband sprayed the wasp spray in the intruder’s face, but it had no effect.
“The fight was on,” the records say. Both men tumbled to the floor, and the wife ran out with a baseball bat and struck the intruder with it until it broke, according to the documents.
After about three minutes, the husband yelled to his wife for help, “not knowing how long he could hold out in the fight,” according to the records. The wife “ran to the kitchen, grabbed a knife and stabbed the suspect several times until he quit fighting.”
These instances are not rare. That’s reason enough for me to want good shooters in the house.
The Result:
I decided that I wanted to try the Ruger PC Carbine in 9mm. It checked a lot of the boxes that I had for this purpose. There’s a lot of reasons I went with this over some of the other options out there. I’ll make a quick list of the big ones:
In 9mm. A caliber that all of my handguns shoot. I have plenty on hand, and one caliber streamlines things. It’s also the most affordable ‘duty round’ caliber.
Easily takes an optic on the section of picatinny rail on top of the receiver.
Takes Glock magazines. From 10-round to 33-round happy sticks.
Similar ergonomics to the Ruger 10/22. The rifle that my wife has the most time on.
Affordable. I got mine for $425 on Brownells. That’s extremely reasonable for a rifle.
Adjustable length-of-pull with included butt-pads
A section of rail that can be used for a weapon mounted light. I always try to have a light on long-gun.
Has the ability to break down in half for transport and storage (not necessary, but a nice feature)
Next up will be some details on running it faster, optimizing the setup, and designing a training program.
Thanks for reading,
Mark
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There’s a common saying in combat sports (and other high risk endeavors) that goes, “You Can’t Teach Heart”. As in, either you’re born with the gameness to fight, to push yourself beyond your comfort zone, run into the burning building, and continue to fight in the face of adversity and possible injury… or you’re not.
This phrase has one of two effects on the observer. One, the person gets fired up and feels they’re part of a special class who is willing to fight with heart and overcome adversity. Two, a person who sees someone exhibit great Heart and can’t fathom themselves ever being able to keep up and they subsequently never start.
I would like to propose that ‘Heart’ is a skill like any other that can be built through years of dedicated work, working towards a meaningful goal, a willingness to be uncomfortable in the pursuit of that goal, and the discipline to keep showing up. I will agree that there are people who seem to be naturally fearless and talented at maintaining a winner’s outlook. There are those who were born with the attributes that allow them to excel quickly. I’m not writing this for them. Those of us who question if we have what it takes are not lost. There is hope for us and ample room for growth.
My path to cultivating Heart has been through Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. So I’ll be talking about heart through that lens. Why BJJ? Because improving at Jiu Jitsu requires:
Discipline to keep showing up.
Repeated and Demoralizing defeats (Ego calibration)
Collecting and assimilating techniques (motor learning)
Discovering your personal strengths and many weaknesses (self-reflection)
Developing your athleticism (multidisciplinary pursuit)
Mental toughness (Heart)
I spend way more time here…
than I do here.
There’s lots of ways to show Heart in BJJ. Lots of ways to stretch what you can tolerate and develop grit. I’ve been at it almost 8 years, my BJJ honeymoon has been over for a while, so I feel I can speak about this a bit objectively and with enough experience to be useful.
Cultivate Heart
If there is a genetic component to heart, I feel like I probably was given a minimal share. I am full of fear, low confidence, self-doubt, and generally don’t care for competition. I’d rather go with the flow and fly under the radar. I’m the kind of person who you probably wouldn’t expect to love a combat sport. Here are my observations for what it takes to improve your Heart. To turn from an easy-quitter to someone who is likely to see it through.
Maintain an internal focus. Try to learn to be completely present and to understand and accept yourself. Make it less about winning, and more about improving yourself an incremental amount day to day. Strive to say, “If I had to fight last week’s version of me, I’d win”.
Keep showing up. Even if you feel the majority of your workouts are placeholder workouts, just keep going. Suppress the negative self talk and say to that voice, “you shut-up until we get this work in” and just go. If you are resolved to your ultimate goals, you’ll be able to see past bad workouts and demoralizing defeats. It seems heart is developed at the edge of your willingness to continue being uncomfortable. At your quitting line. So the more time you spend with opportunities to suffer, the quicker you will develop heart.
Don’t allow yourself to be the biggest fish in the pond. If you’re no longer challenged, you need to expand your group of training partners or your goals to continue your personal growth. Luckily this has never been an issue for me, but I can see it in others.
Maintain a growth mindset. If you come to view shortcomings as obstacles to overcome, rather than excuses to quit, you will continue down the correct path. If you believe that Heart is a skill to build, and you work at it, you will find you are able to do things that take more Heart than you thought you had.
Understand that having Heart ultimately is about Love. Love of the game, love of your people, love of the journey. You might start your martial arts journey because you’re fearful or angry, but if you don’t grow to love the journey itself, you’ll burn out. The people who are dominant through anger or hatred eventually get beaten and crumble mentally. If you’re coming from a place of love, even failure is motivating. Be love.
I can’t think of many higher pursuits than self-improvement and self-understanding. I will continue on this path as long as my body and mind lets me. I hope you got something useful from this one.
If you want to read more on this topic, check out A Fighters Heart. Regards,
Regards,