‘Scotch is for closers.’

Recently, I had a day in the office that went about as well as any day in the office can. Two interviews that I’d done went live, the internet went quietly nuts over something else I’d written, I asked a guy to be my best man (he came back with a heartfelt yes), broke my 10RM in the front squat, sorted out the plan for my fiance’s birthday, and every meeting, chat or discussion I had ended with a positive result. In between all that I got loads of work done, and at the end of the day I still managed to sneak in an hour of wrestling practice before going home and whipping up some basque chicken. As Ice Cube would say, it was a good day.

30 Rock, the greatest sitcom ever created, has a name for this phenomenon. Jack Donaghy explains it:

 Making it through a full twenty four hours without a single misstep is called “Reaganing.” The only other people who’ve ever done it: Lee Iacocca, Jack Welch, and – no judgement – Saddam Hussein.

I would respectfully suggest that it’s not that difficult. Anyone can have a good day – the secret is having them more frequently. Here’s how I think you can do that:

Do the groundwork

I doubt you can Reagan without doing this. Most of my good days are the culmination of other stuff: things I’ve been putting in place for a while, or knowledge I’ve assimilated over a long, long time. This isn’t a quick process, but sometimes you just have to keep grinding, and have a bit of confidence that the work you put in now will pay off in the long run.

Hit the ground running

Having a checklist is the kind of advice that seems so obvious you’ll probably never actually do it. Every time I make a checklist, I’m amazed by how well it works, and yet I still don’t do it every single day. I should. Anyway, the best way to do this (that I’ve found) is to make a checklist at the end of your working day, with the most important task for tomorrow at the top – this clears your brain for wrestling (or whatever you do with your evenings), and allows you to come into the office (or wherever) and immediately get on with whatever that most important thing is.

Ride the momentum

This is the real secret of Reaganing: once you start, everything gets easier. Firstly, the feeling of ticking things off your list is addictive – this is a good reason to split any task into small, instantly actionable chunks that don’t require you to wait for anyone else. Secondly, this might just be me, but having a good day makes me feel bulletproof – and when I’m confident, I express ideas better, argue more persuasively and approach everything with a better attitude. Well, I think I do, anyway.

Pay it forward

The important one. If you’re having a good day, try to use the momentum to do something nice for somebody else. It’ll amplify the good feelings all round.

HOMEWORK: At least try the checklist thing. And watch the ‘Reaganing’ episode of 30 Rock: I defy you to not act a little bit more like Jack Donaghy. Anyone for a belt of Scotch?

‘Nobody knows anybody. Not that well.’

Warning: like many of my posts, this one starts off by being about strength training and then goes onto something else. Come on, I know the internet’s ruined your attention span. 

Among the many other fine things it has done for most people’s ideas about fitness, CrossFit has introduced the mostly splendid concept of workouts being measurable and improvable. In other words, they set the parameters (a squat has to go below parallel, for instance), and then you do whatever you can to go heavier, or faster, or get more reps or whatever.

This is mostly a fine concept – because people will push themselves to get better scores on anything – but it has its drawbacks. Most obviously, there are valuable exercises you can’t set clear parameters for – sledgehammer swings, for instance, are great for rate of force production, but there’s no real way to judge how hard they are, so you sometimes end up with this sort of bullshit.  Less obviously, there are exercises that you can judge but shouldn’t, because just measuring time and form doesn’t tell the story. Like the super-plank.

Hopefully everyone reading this has done a plank – basically like holding a press-up position, except on your elbows – at some point. You may have also tried the super-plank. If not, the form is subtly different. Your heels are together, your elbows are further forward, and hopefully closer together. Crucially, you are also squeezing your glutes and bracing your abs as hard as possible – some people can plank so hard that someone else can stand on their back. This sort of plank isn’t sustainable for more than about 15 seconds, but that’s a good thing - it saves you time, and gets you stronger than the regular, hanging-out, half-arsed version anyway. Crucially, though, only you will ever know if you’ve attacked it as hard as you can – no form guide or judge can tell you if you were giving it everything you had.

Now for the real point. Outward accountability is fine, but it will only get you so far. Maybe you’re doing an hour’s practice of something a day, or writing 1,000 words, or drilling the serve/throw/armbar you need to do 100 times, but only you will ever know if you’re giving it your full attention. You’re hitting the numbers, but are you really doing the work? Are you giving it everything? Because when the cage door closes behind you, or you step onto the stage, or you send your book to a publisher, or you’re about to walk to the lifting platform, only you will know if you really did everything you could to prepare.

Counting and measuring is fine: it’s part of the process. But practising self-accountability is equally important. Because it’s what you do when nobody else is watching, or counting, that really matters.

HOMEWORK: Try the super-plank at least once this week: don’t time it, just go for it as hard as you possibly can without passing out. And, if you haven’t, watch Miller’s Crossing, the film that features the quote in the caption. Meanwhile, I will leave you with a quote that’s often attributed to Einstein, but actually probably comes from sociologist William Bruce Cameron:

‘Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.’

Live hard!

‘Asking a Judge inappropriate questions: three years in the cubes, citizen.’

If you haven’t seen the film Dredd, you almost definitely should. It’s a near-perfect translation of the comic it’s based on, beautifully acted by everyone involved, with the added bonus that the plot revolves around a drug that makes everything look really cool.

It didn’t do very well at the box office.

One thing that makes Dredd different from the vast majority of action films, and a large part of its brilliance – and maybe one of the reasons that it didn’t sell too well – is that Dredd, in the film, isn’t a hero. He’s a professional. He has a pretty bad day, trapped in a city block full of people trying to kill him and low on bullets, but he still gets on with his job. For him, there’s no drama in the gunfights, no breathlessly ducking behind things or desperately returning fire – half the time, he just stalks the corridors, shooting when necessary. He doesn’t crack wise or make impassioned speeches or otherwise grandstand – he gets shit done. 

Which brings me back to weightlifting. And, in fact, doing most other things.

Acts of heroism – or things that come close to them, since we aren’t talking about life or death situations here – are massively popular in both sports and, erm, real life. Sucking it up, leaving it all out there, pushing it to the limit – whatever your cliche, seeing people go beyond their perceived boundaries is exciting: in fact, it’s something sports are designed to encourage. But there’s a difference between enjoying the occasional heroic effort and aspiring to crank them out on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis. Here’s why:

• Nothing worthwhile gets done in one Herculean effort.  Whether you’re aspiring to get a black belt in BJJ or write the Great American Novel, you aren’t going to do it in a day, or a week. Whatever you’re doing, you need enough left in the tank to keep coming back, and back, and back. You know why Rocky always has to do a massive training montage? Because he gets fucking fat between films. This is not the way to approach things.
• Heroism is tiring. In lifting, pushing it to the limit every single time you hit the gym means adrenal fatigue, overtraining, and injury. In writing, one 5,000 word day might ruin your brain enough for you to need a week off. I’ve done both of these things. Usually, it’s better to leave a rep in the tank before absolute failure, or stop writing at a point where you’re still excited about what you’ll write tomorrow. Sprint guru Charlie Francis puts it best: ‘Usually, if your athlete hits a personal best, you stop the workout.’
• By its very nature, heroism is unsustainable – right there out on the edge of your abilities, testing things to the absolute maximum, is not where you want to be. At some point, you’re going to come up short. To bring this back to Dredd, think about a real-life special forces unit. Do you think they’d rather their gunfights were desperate, messy, heroic affairs, or clinical, precise, no-bother ones?

Pushing things to the absolute limit is something to do occasionally, not constantly. Professionals do enough to get the job done. And they win.

HOMEWORK: Set yourself a nice, manageable set of goals this week: lifting or other projects. Once you’re done for the day, down tools. Be professional. And watch The Raid: it’s got an almost identical plot to Dredd, but is every bit as good.

‘Moo.’

First let me say this: I love having space to train. My idea of the perfect gym is basically a massive open space full of farmer’s walk handles and oversized tyres, and I torch more calories just from stomping around to psyche myself up than you’d burn from most Tracy Anderson routines. But, although having space is great, you don’t need it. And pretending that you do is just another lie you might tell yourself in the pursuit of staying out of shape.

There’s a saying in Shaolin-style kung fu: ‘A boxer can practice where only one ox can lie down.’ Some people interpret this to mean that a Shaolin monk will kick your ass without having to move: I prefer to think that it references the minimal space some of the monks – on the run from various dictators, let’s remember – often had to train.

And so, occasionally I try to train myself in the space that an ox could lie down. This is actually quite decent – it’s bigger than a yoga mat, and Bikram practitioners will spend 90 minutes on one of them a couple of times a week. There are many, many ways to do it. But I keep coming back to one favourite:

On the minute, every minute:

10 kettlebell swings

Put the bell down, and ‘walk’ your hands out into a pressup position

10 pressups

Repeat for 10 minutes

BAM. That’s a push, a core-strengthener, a glute-awakener, a pretty serious cardio hit and a fat burner, all in one go. In ten minutes. And you don’t even move your feet. That’s the Lying Ox. Give it a try.

HOMEWORK: Do the Lying Ox. Trained guys should use a 24kg bell, everyone else can use a 20kg or a 16kg – dumbbell swings (gripping one end) are also an option. If you can’t manage the pressups, reduce the reps to something sustainable, or just walk out and hold a plank for 10 seconds instead. None of that kneeling bullshit. Live hard!

If Jet Li does it, it is absolutely the right thing to do.

Japan is a fine country with many excellent customs, and over the years I’ve been privileged to participate in several of them. I’ve been buried in volcanic mud at an onsen, walked around the first seven stops on Shikoku’s famous 88-temple pilgrimage, and queued in line for 24 hours to buy a Playstation 3. I have been to see the fights at Korakuen hall, and composed haiku under a cherry-blossom tree while shitfaced on sake. I have even slept in an internet cafe. One thing I’ve never done, though – and something that remains on my bucket list – is the tea ceremony, or chanoyu.

The Tea Ceremony, according to what I’ve read, is a form of Zen Buddhism – focused on encouraging participants to live in the present moment, keeping them totally involved in the occasion and not distracted by mundane thoughts. According to web-japan:

The ceremony is equally designed to humble participants by focusing attention both on the profound  beauty of the simplest aspects of nature—such as light, the sound of water, and the glow of a charcoal fire (all emphasised in the rustic tea hut setting)—and on the creative force of the universe as manifested through human endeavour, for example in the crafting of beautiful objects.

Conversation in the tearoom is focused on these subjects. The guests will not engage in small talk or gossip, but limit their Tea ceremony conversation to a discussion of the origin of  utensils and praise for the beauty of natural  manifestations.

Nice. But what if you don’t have a access to a Japanese tea-house, dear reader? Or what if you don’t read this website for my love of Zen and hot drinks, but to craft yourself into a more fearsome human being?

Simple: apply the lessons of the tea ceremony to your time in the weightroom. Or, more appropriately, shut the fuck up when you’re deadlifting.

There’s rarely any need to talk in the gym. Yes, it can be nice, and having friends at the gym is one way to keep yourself motivated – especially in the early going – but to be honest, it’s distracting, and often counter-productive. You’re there to get stronger, or leaner, or healthier, and talking about your job or your relationship – or, worse, last night’s TV – is not going to help. Less obviously, the gym can be an escape from the mundane, and a chance to leave other concerns behind for an hour while you concentrate on hauling the heaviest fucking thing you can off the floor. That’s why CEOs train, and you’re more productive in the afternoon after you lift.

So here’s an experiment: apply the lessons of the tea room to the gym. If you lift with friends, suggest a session where all conversation has to be based on the experience of the gym: how the last set felt, whether you can go heavier, what form pointers you should focus on for the next set, no joking or messing around. If you lift alone, this is even simpler: just put on your headphones, focus on your session, and stay off Twitter between sets. Enjoy the experience of focusing on one, simple thing: lifting that weight just as well as you possibly can. Do something as close to perfectly as you can: it’s not something you can do often.

Oh, and drink some green tea. It’ll help you get lean, and it tastes fucking delicious. Live hard!

HOMEWORK: As above. If you do bodyweight moves instead of gym stuff, that’s fine. If you go running, then try to focus on the sensations of the world around you and the way you feel, instead of boring everyday life. If you aren’t going to do any of those things over the coming week, I don’t know what to tell you.

Oh, and watch Fearless: the film that the above pic comes from. Aside from its kickass tea-drinking scene, it’s full of thoughtful moments alongside some absolutely astonishing fight choreography, and is the best of Jet Li’s ‘late-period’ films.

Keeping cortisol levels in check like a boss since ’93.

As I’ve mentioned before, most of us who have the free time to mess around on the internet have it insanely easy compared to almost everyone else in the entire history of the planet. But, let’s be honest, that isn’t always easy to remember. Also, being angry about things feels vaguely satisfying, and calming yourself with meditation and ‘gratitude lists’ does feel a bit like the sort of thing hippies do. So when someone asks how your day was, especially on a day when nothing absolutely amazing (getting a new job, meeting Tom Hiddleston, eating a steak the size of your own ribcage) has happened, the easiest thing to do is hit the default button:

‘Okay, I suppose.’

‘Busy. I’m so tired.’

‘Terrible.’

This is not helping. 

Enter Ice Cube.

If you’ve got time, please listen to the seminal work that is It Was A Good Day. Personally, I prefer Girl Talk’s version with the beat from Devo’s Gates Of Steel behind it, but you might be a Cubic purist. Either way, please enjoy these selected lyrics:

No barking from the dogs, no smog
I got my grub on, but didn’t pig out

Had to stop at a red light
Looking in my mirror not a jacker in sight

Today I didn’t even have to use my A.K.
I got to say it was a good day.

For those not paying attention, let’s recap: air pollution was down a bit, Ice Cube ate a modest breakfast, and nobody tried to steal his car or otherwise force him to shoot them. And, yep, that counts as a good day.

You might argue that this is still hippy nonsense, or at least wildly overoptimistic, but you’d be missing the point. Positivity helps. It helps you to be a better person to be around, since you don’t whine as much. It helps your relationships, since you can express your appreciation for what other people do. Life is as good or as bad as you make it, and it’s entirely possible to view things in the best possible light while still trying to make them better. 

And anyway, things aren’t all that bad. Didn’t have to use (or own) an AK? Today was a good day. 

HOMEWORK: Re-read How Was Your Day, then post two good things that have happened to you today in the comments. And this week, when you’re tempted to complain, think of something positive to say instead. Oh, and listen to the rest of that Girl Talk album. It’s amazing gym music.

Bonus: no gout.

Lots of diets work. Some of them are even good. I’m pretty convinced that the Paleo Diet, The Slow-Carb Diet and intermittent fasting (if you do it properly) will work for your body composition goals, and could well make you healthier. If I had to pick a diet to recommend to anyone, it would be Nate Miyaki’s Samurai Diet, which to grossly oversimplify it, says that Paleo is fine for inactive people, but rice isn’t the end of the world, and people who train hard should probably eat a few carbs. I think it’s fantastic advice. But maybe you don’t need a diet: maybe you need a strategy.

Any kind of eating plan needs to be sustainable. Unless you’re an eat-for-fuel type, and they do exist, that means your eating plan has to taste good, be relatively easy to prepare, not take up all of your disposable income and be close enough to real food to satisfy any romantic partners you have that don’t share your batshit crazy views on eating broccoli first thing in the morning.

Enter eating like a peasant.

One-pot cookery is absolutely the easiest way to make things that are delicious, easily stored and reheated, cheap, sexy and nutritionally optimal. Take beef bourguignon – part of French haute cuisine that originated as a peasant dish, you typically make it with beef, bacon, carrots, onions and mushrooms – that’s a massive hit of protein alongside three of your five a day that you don’t even notice - unlike, say, dolefully shovelling down handfuls of spinach raw from the packet. Unlike boiling your veg, stewing means you keep the nutrients in the dish, which is a bonus. Make it with real mash if you’ve got a none-dieting partner to impress – otherwise, use the cauliflower or sweet potato versions.

Other suggestions? I cook a decent basque chicken stew, a nice Moroccan lamb, and several variations on a pretty sweet chili. All can be done with relatively cheap meat – use bone-in cuts from the chicken, and you get the bonus that the nutrients from the bone leak out into the meat and broth, making it tastier and better for you. The chili tastes best about two days after you do it, which makes it the perfect thing to cook on a Sunday and eat all week. Super-secret bonus: if you’ve got any sauce left from the chicken one, you can poach eggs in it, a glorious hangover cure and a near-certain lady-impresser.

You don’t need a set of rules to eat healthily: you need a strategy. Try eating like a peasant today.

HOMEWORK: Try some one-pot cookery this week. If you can, make a bucketload and share it with someone you like kissing, or keep it for a week. And don’t eat any spinach out of a bag. Cookery!

Genki Sudo: like Seneca, only with a better spinning backfist.

Picture the scene: you are on an escalator where the rule, as in most civilised societies, is to walk left, stand right. Someone in front of you, perhaps a drunken football fan or Italian student, is blocking the left aisle. Do you:

a) Shrug.

b) Boil with inner fury.

c) March up the escalator bellowing ‘Excuse me!’ and shove past them.

If you answered b) or c), congratulations! You’re ready to live in London. And then have a heart attack at 55.

Regular readers of this site may not be surprised that I have done all of the above. Regular readers of this site will also, hopefully, know that I am all about a) Self-improvement and b) Not dying at 55, and so I’ve been thinking about how to deal with it.

The answer? Empathy. 

If you’ve got 20 minutes, read David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech to Kenyon college from 2005. If not, here’s the gist:

When you’re angry on the underground, or the supermarket’s crowded with people waddling around in front of you, filling their baskets with crap, or someone leaves all the plates on the leg press at the gym, or otherwise disturbs your perfect, beautiful existence, maybe you should consider the possibility that their life is harder, more stressful, or more painful than yours.  Maybe the person with that shopping basket hasn’t had your opportunities to learn about nutrition, or they’re having a bad day and just need comfort food. Maybe the guy on the leg press only had half an hour to squeeze in a workout because he’s having the most stressful week of his life, and the iron is the only thing stopping him from going crazy.

Maybe, maybe not. But your reaction is what’s important. You can spend your life boiling with rage, or you can spend it empathising. One might kill you, the other might make you a better person. In the words of DFW:

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

Maybe that sounds patronising. I certainly don’t – and can’t – do it all the time. But I’m trying, Ringo. And when you’re ready for level two, check out this TED talk  by sociology professor Sam Richards, in which he’ll try to take you through empathy on a bigger, tougher scale. And since I don’t have a better closer, I’ll steal his:

‘Step out of your tiny little world. Step into the tiny little world of somebody else. And then do it again and again and again. And suddenly all these tiny little worlds, they come together in this complex web. And they build a big, complex world. And suddenly, without realising it, you’re seeing the world differently. Everything has changed.’

No drugs required.

HOMEWORK: Seriously, read that speech and watch that TED talk. And if you’ve still got a taste for expanding your empathy after that, read Scarcity. It’s the best book I’ve read all year, and a real insight into the brain-science of why people act in a way that’s illogical and infuriating, especially under conditions of stress. And, of course, when you get angry at someone this week, consider why they might be acting the way they are. It won’t happen overnight, but it might eventually change your world.

‘BRB, stabbing a bunch of dudes LOL.’

Assuming that long-dead cultural groups were right about everything just because they kicked a lot of ass, had excellent dress sense or have been favourably portrayed in films is rarely sensible. If you subscribe to the idea that we’re constantly expanding our body of knowledge as a species, then ‘old’ automatically means ‘not as good’, and chances are that the Shaolin monk, Roman emperor or Greek philosopher you’re basing your life on had some ridiculous beliefs about the way the world works.

Samurai, for instance, had an absolute shit-ton of stupid ideas. Hagakure, widely regarded as one of the best texts on the samurai mindset (and the one you probably remember from Ghost Dog) offers the following advice:

• It is good to carry some rouge in one’s sleeve.  It may be that when one is sobering up or waking from sleep, his complexion may be poor. At such a time it is good to take out and apply some powdered rouge.
• If you attach bags of cloves to your body, you will not be affected by inclemency or colds.
• Furthermore, drinking a decoction of faeces from a dappled horse is the way to stop bleeding from an injury received by falling off a horse.

Amazing, I agree. But while I don’t agree with taking medical advice from people who thought you should drink liquid horseshit to cure horse-related impact wounds, I do think you should be able to evaluate advice on its own merits. And this, from later on in the same book, is pretty good advice:

‘There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. There will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.’

Yup. That’s a man with no Twitter account.

Samurai, of course, did not multitask. Firstly, it obviously isn’t practical if your job involves getting in fights with three-foot razor-blades, or even if you’re just training for those fights with a wooden stick that can still smash bone and pulverize muscle. Secondly (and probably relatedly), samurai culture was designed to encourage single-minded focus: consider, for instance, the tea ceremony, during certain incarnations of which you were banned from talking about anything that wasn’t how nice your tea was, or your immediate surroundings. Thirdly, multitasking is not a real thing: it’s a label applied to ‘messing about’ by people who want to feel good about their ruined attention spans and lack of productivity. Multitasking is at best pointless, and at worst counter-productive, since it doesn’t really exist: you’re actually task-switching, and that means you’re wasting cognitive energy on shifting gears from task to task. A study from the University of Illinois suggests that, because it’s a drain on ‘working memory’, multitasking can stifle creativity, and also (according to various studies), means you make more mistakes. And, of course, there’s the social angle – one study from the University of Essex claims that just having a mobile phone nearby during conversations with your significant other – not even answering it – can put strain on your relationship. Eating while you do other things makes you less present during the meal, and can lead to you stuffing your face with more calories than you need. In other words, multitasking is bullshit.

Now: samurai had an advantage over you, dear reader, in that there wasn’t all that much competing for their attention. They didn’t have smartphones, email or Instagram, and if anyone wanted to bother them they’d have to storm their dojo or at least send a retainer round. So how are you to cope?

Easy: pretend to be a samurai, by reducing your reliance on, and obedience to, technology. For instance, if you can get away with it, switch your phone volume and email notifications off until the pre-determined times of day (11am and 4pm are sensible) that you’re going to check them. Change your voicemail to a message that says you don’t really check voicemail and you’re easier to reach via text or an email. Batch up emails to do at those times. Don’t go to meetings unless there’s a clear agenda for them. When you’re working, switch on a Pomodoro timer and refuse to do anything except the project you’re working on until the ‘bing.’ At lunchtime, go and eat a sandwich without trying to do anything else at the same time. When you’re with friends, pay attention to those friends. When you have a cup of tea, take a couple of minutes to enjoy your fucking tea. And hey, if you’re hungover, maybe throw a little rouge on. Not all samurai ideas are crazy.

HOMEWORK: This week, when you eat your lunch, you’re allowed to talk to other people – but don’t work, or watch TV, or read a book, or do anything else to distract you. The other ideas in the paragraph above: optional, but recommended. Live hard!

‘That’s my secret. I ALWAYS feel like deadlifting.’

[Disclaimer: I started this post after a really good deadlift session. If you smell your screen, you’ll probably catch a whiff of  endorphins]

Here’s something that I find myself wanting to tell people all the time. You’ll read it and think you know it – and to be honest, you probably do – but you don’t always remember it. And it’s one of the things most worth remembering.

Nothing you do is ever harder than the very first time you do it.

Walking into a gym for the first time is awful – you don’t know how anything works, or what moves to do, or who’s doing stupid shit and who you should listen to (rule of thumb: almost nobody). Trying to work out what to eat is near-impossible – everyone has a diet to sell you, and the things that actually work get buried in the mess. Cooking for the first time is horrible: nothing makes sense, and everything burns. Going to a dance class, a ski slope, a dojo, picking up a pen to write, trying to work out Adobe Illustrator, monkey-vaulting over a railing, speaking in front of an audience, presenting an idea to a panel, slipping a right cross  - the first time you attempt them, they seem impossible. This is where lots of people get stuck: going ‘If I’ll always be this sore, feel this weak, hate my new lifestyle this much, I’d rather just stay where I am.’

But it gets easier. And soon, you can’t remember when things were any other way.

This is especially true in getting strong and eating right. Once you learn to cook scrambled eggs properly, and maybe dice an onion, that is done - you can make a decent, cheap, healthy breakfast in less than two minutes, and you will never have to learn how to do it again. After you learn to deadlift, bench and squat, you’ve got the basis for a gym programme that’ll last the rest of your life. Once you’ve taken those first, brutal steps – finding a workout plan that will work for you, getting through the stage where you can’t even manage a single pull-up, finding a way to cook broccoli that’s actually edible – everything gets easier.

That’s when the perpetual motion badassery can start.

Your tastes will change. Your habits will change. The way you feel about exercise – chasing the sustained high of an endorphin rush instead of the quick hit of a sugar one – will change. You’ll know what to eat, and how to make it taste good. You’ll know that you can hit any sensible goal you set, and you’ll be inspired to set more. At some point, it won’t feel right to go two days without exercise. At some point, you might look forward to an Olympic lifting session or sparring/open mat/hitting the park’s pull-up bars like you currently look forward to a day on the couch, playing GTA V or mainlining Breaking Bad. At some point, you’ll be getting stronger, healthier and more confident every day, and it won’t feel like an effort, because it’s just how you live. At this point, you’ve done via biology and psychology what’s impossible in mechanics – you’ve turned your body into a perpetual motion machine that’s constantly getting stronger, and faster, and harder to stop. You’ve started a process that can, and should, last for the rest of your life. Eating and training properly will never, ever be as hard as the first week you do it. It will only get easier.

This is easy to say. It’s easy to read. And you probably believe it. But you won’t know it – like you know that you need food and air – until you do it. So, please, try it. And let badassery commence.

HOMEWORK: Go and do something exciting. LIVE HARD.