| What is your why? This a simple yet very powerful question. It is a question many peak performance coaches use to help uncover your true purpose in order to elicit the motivation, drive, and fuel needed to produce peak performance. It is a question asked by self defense expert, Tony Blauer, to help unleash the energy and desire to protect yourself against an attacker. It is the question to which Navy SEALS know the answer to and use to help get them through the toughest military training in the world. If you already know your “Why?”, then you have probably already felt its power. The saying goes, “If you have a strong enough “Why” you can accomplish anything.”. If you have never deeply examined your “Why?”, you can follow the following process to help uncover it . This exercise can be applied to your life in general or to any specific area you wish to optimize. For an example, let’s apply the process to exercise. Why do you exercise, and what does it signify for you? Jot down your immediate thoughts. Then, challenge yourself anew. Probe deeper, asking if a more profound purpose exists. Repeat this process until your response can’t be superseded.Another tool to help uncover your why for exercise is the “Exercise Motivations Inventory”. This can help us better understand what you value most about exercise, so that, we can help you move towards those values. Lastly, when it comes to exercise, I think it is extremely helpful to make the distinction whether your primary purpose for training is to stimulate the body in order to set in motion a positive physiological adaption within the body or is your primary purpose to produce some type of feeling from exercise. Our particular brand of exercise, “HELIMO Quantified Strength Training”, applies a “muscle-centric” approach to stimulating the body in order to create positive physiological adaptions. Those primary adaptions are building strength and muscle and many other downstream benefits of building strength and muscle that we have mentioned in previous emails and blog post. A quote from the legendary bodybuilder, Mike Mentzer, states that High Intensity Training is is meant to do just that, build muscle and strength it is not about getting a “pump” or being sore. There are psychological benefits from exercise and exercise can definitely be used as a “well being” tool but our exercise design does not place this as the highest priority. We would categorize “movement/activity” as the primary tool for this purpose. This is not to say that you cannot or should not enjoy or derive a feeling of well being from a focused strength training exercise session. Our goal is actually to help you achieve both a stimulus that helps create the positive adaption, as well as, a feeling of well being both physically and mentally. What I am asking is for you to consider what is most important to you and if the answer is the physiologic benefits, then be aware of chasing the feeling at the expense of physiological gains. As a personal example, if my goals for exercise were purely to gain muscle and strength, I would place my focus on the intensity of effort and form during exercise, make sure my nutrition was dialed in (especially the amount of quality protein), and optimize my recovery (primarily through sleep and stress management). I would not spend as much time and energy training Jiujitsu which definitely impacts my ability to recover from my strength training sessions. I am willing to trade some of those gains from strength training because of the other benefits of training Jiujitsu but I am not blind to the trade off. Schedule a Free Demo Commit • Show Up • Don’t Quit • Be Uncommon • Be Your Best Self– Billy |