Maximise the Power of your Day: design a winnable strategy for your habits.
James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) and Andrew Huberman (neuroscientist and podcaster) deserve the highest accolades for their work guiding us all to be the best version of ourselves with the least friction. Why?
Do I worry about my 1RM Deadlift the most? Not anymore. Do I worry about the grammar in my newsletter writing? I probably should but I don’t. So do I worry about how much to charge for a BLACK Tier membership. Nope. So if it isn’t athletic, content shipping, or membership fees (all have drained significant brain space in the past 10 years!) what keeps me awake?
Simple. I worry when the last time will be that I bounce my daughters on my knee. Or how quickly the time will arrive that I stop being cool (stopping snorting), idolised (seriously shhh), and unequivocally adored. I can buy anything else, I can replace anything else, I can probably expect to care very little about anything else. But not spending as much time with my daughters now and making sure that I am in peak condition to chase and play with them dwarfs my business fears.
Importantly however there is another reason I don’t worry about my Deadlift, newsletters, or business tactics. Because far more clever minds than mine (read aforementioned James and Andrew - to name but two), teach how to build frictionless growth focused habits that we would be foolish to disregard. I don’t lose sleep over my athletic goals or business tactics because we spend upfront time sharpening the axe with detailed strategy and then allow our strong habits time to compound.
No one else cares if you have created an environment for nutritional success or not. And no one else will lose sleep over your investment ratios. But you should. You should spend enough time now to create winnable circumstances, automatic contributions, and rapid onboarding for everyday activities that make you a better version of yourself and utilise lessons from the findings of experts.
So what can you structure most effectively from these great teachers?
Gamify your goals. Commit to 6 daily habits. Big or small they must all stretch you forward enough to deserve a self gratifying check on the fridge each night. (Ie brushing your teeth if you are older than 3 doesn’t get you a sticker - sorry). Write all 6 on a whiteboard and celebrate achieving 4 or more. Some days you will be perfect but some time life gets in the way. Avoid chastising yourself for grabbing a snack and ‘losing a point’ and instead celebrate successfully turning off your screens 30 minutes before your bedtime *hypothetical goals, enter your own 6.
Flip the friction switch. Make your new habit easy and the one you want to break hard (we all do this the wrong way round!). Stick a password limit on your Youtube screentime each day or cut up some vegetables on a Sunday and leave them as ready made snacks in the fridge. It doesn’t matter to me but if you find yourself slipping into your old ways too easily, create an obstacle (home delivery avoids the snack aisle!) and butter the success runway.
Find an accountability partner. Ok this one is more from our very own habit guru and Senior Coach Danny Atamu but without someone to hold you accountable, to celebrate with, and to remind you of why you started in the first place you are 100% less likely to achieve. Big statement but anyone who achieves long term health success with us has has the support of a spouse, best friend, child, or coach. Life is tempting and hard, why make your own bags heavier when you can share the burden.
Why movement competency matters.
Pain controls everything.
We compensate away from it in our personal lives (*read instantly gratifying hunger or boredom with snacking and Youtube) instead of sitting in discomfort; and our bodies radiate it when movement is dysfunctional or we have done too much. Our lower back overloads and warns us when we pick things up poorly from the floor, and our knees ache when we ascend and descend at speed on tired muscles. Then we know about it for the next week and regret that first 5km run or running with a heavy bag at the station.
So we have a choice. Avoid physical stressors (heavy, fast, uneven, enduring events), or technically and properly develop our movement capacity so that we are resilient and strong enough to cope with whatever life throws at us. This is a personal choice.
Luckily for us mother time will do her part. So you need not do anything if you want your muscles to atrophy, your heart to weaken, your joints to stiffen, and your metabolic age to soar. Simply stay watching Netflix and let the decaying commence.
Or you can fight. You can identify the incompetencies in your daily health, critique your diet, and find windows to live the fullest physical life you can. Then when you are 80 you can chase your grandchildren and carry your own luggage up the stairs.
If you are more inclined to fight than succumb (we hope!) then you need to know what physical restrictions are inhibiting your movement and smartly train to improve them. No one moves perfectly and we all compensate for that stiff shoulder or niggling elbow. Take the time now to know what for you is preventing pain free daily life and attack it. There are plenty of ways to assess your baseline and it is important to find the right one for you. However you define your journey, we encourage you to check your physical bank balance and educate yourself on the investments you need to be a millionaire.
We believe that everyone with a goal is an athlete and that the only difference between achieving progression or stagnating is a defined purpose to be the best version of yourself. What’s your Pinnacle?
Our Co-Founder, Tom gives us some tips on how to do a Squat shape. Learn how to do this shape properly and notice how you improve the way you move in your everyday activities.
Why we believe in subscribing to your fitness.
Showing my maturity (read: age) I remember taping the Top 40 from the radio each Sunday so that I didn’t have to buy the CD. Cheap Yorkshireman certainly, but I would argue I wasn’t alone and we were all accepting of the world of musical and television subscriptions. Now in 2023, everything is at our finger tips in consumable subscription models many hundred of hours deep. Want to binge on Netflix? That will be US$ 11 per month please. Want to listen to music all day every day? That’s US$ 7 on Spotify please.
Stepping back from the dopamine entertainment hits to life and careers, raise your hand if your university charged you by the hour? Of course not. What about the schools your children attend? Public or private you still pay at the start of the year in taxes or fees. So why does all this matter and why has 99% of the coach led fitness world got it wrong? Why do most coaches charge by the hour?
Well fundamentally all the examples above and the reason Pinnacle prioritise subscription memberships is that it provides stability and projecting power for the business. The school that has fees confirmed can employ the best coaches and upgrade facilities. The streaming services with the highest number of sign ups can out market the competition and capitalise the industry. But as a consumer it goes deeper than that. We can all relate the wonderful meal that was tainted by paying the bill at the end or the hotel stay that was dwarfed by analysing the invoice and spending the final hour of your holiday in a queue to pay for the experience. Daniel Kahneman notes that the ‘Peak-End rule” is the realisation that memories store the best (peak) of the experience at the end; vis-a-vis, load up the costs and logistics before the event and you will enjoy it all the more by ending more enjoyably.
So in the capitalist world of attention marketing and uniquely also for our mental health, paying upfront is better for us. We agree and strongly advocate for your fitness being a lifestyle subscription instead of a transactional bill on your table!
“OK Tom, so you have made a case for why Spotify is better than individual CD’s and we all know the business model of Apple and crew, but why is this important to fitness?” Well put bluntly, fitness is the last into your schedule and the first out (sense the tone of frustration referring to the rate of cancellations in the industry when “a meeting has come up”). If you are willing to postpone a training session that is directly correlated to a better and longer life for a meeting about some paperwork crap that will be forgotten the moment you leave, imagine how big the barrier is to even commit to a plan that will have success. Put simply, every time you need to pay a bill for the expert fitness coaches you need you question it not based on a 20 year plan, but on a cash flow that day. Is your longevity and health at 60 really something you want to look back on and remember that at 35 a new iPhone was more important? We don’t believe so.
So why is the industry so backward? Why are the most readily available options for knowledge based fitness (coaches) transactional? Because the world doesn’t think fitness is a subscription commitment and something as important as your mortgage. We think it is a nice to have extra or something that 3 x 60 minute sessions will complete each week. Newsflash, it isn’t. If you view fitness as a costed extra you will put it last and miss the best opportunities to be your best self and achieve results when they matter.
But let’s be clear. We are not advocating for cheap, 24 hour unlimited access to a sweaty treadmill in the corner. No. We are advocating for a coaching subscription service that puts your commitment to your health first and combines the business needs for stability and forecasting at the top of the tree with your human emotions to avoid paying for things that take effort.
Regardless of the services and the fee pay, if the value aligns to your budget and fitness needs then you are literally off to the races. By budgeting for a fitness service to be part of your life every day for the next 10 years you are prioritising your quality of life and significantly impacting the results you will achieve and your enjoyment.
Subscriptions enhance utilisation. In entertainment they walk us down a line of lost hours and un-productivity. Flip that model to your benefit. Don’t stop at subscribing for your media diet, keep going and commit to your nutritional, physical, and mental diets. If subscriptions handcuff us into the 3rd hour on YouTube each day, imagine the power of that extra session or extra coaching consult that you have already enrolled to!! We promise that you will get out of bed for the habit you subscribe to instead of the one you pay to attend. Your body and your results will thank you for it.
So ask if you can settle the bill when you arrive next time you go on holiday and enjoy lying by the pool knowing you have paid for it instead of racking up a bill that is going to niggle you in 7 days time. And when you get back convert your fitness packages into subscriptions that commit you to a journey and maximise the brains power for using every bit of something you have already paid for.
Tom is the CEO and Head of Strength & Conditioning at Pinnacle Performance. He now leads a team of full time coaches having spent his coaching career with professional athletes from World Cup Cricketer’s and Footballers, to Sprinters and Triathletes.