Let’s go a layer deeper on the five factors this week. Credit to Ben Bergeron and Patrick Cummings for the overall framework, but there are a handful of key voices in the community who I’ve found particularly trustworthy and will reference consistently.
Each of the factors is a spectrum. No one will be perfect across all five, especially as life ebbs and flows. When the kids are sick, sleep takes a hit. When we’re on vacation, I’m not worrying about dialing in my training and nutrition. However, building good baseline habits makes it that much easier to deal with life throwing you a curve ball, maintaining what you can, then getting back on track quickly.
Here is what we might consider a “prescription” across each of the five. As with everything in the gym, we approach these goals with curiosity, not judgement:
Train: Do constantly varied, functional movements at a high relative intensity 5-6 days per week. Relentlessly work on your weaknesses.
Eat: Eat real food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Specifically, eat 800g of fruits and vegetables and 0.7 grams of protein per pound of lean bodyweight daily.
Sleep: Sleep at least 7 hours per night. For most, this is 8+ hours in bed.
Think: Read daily. Challenge your mind with hard problems and complex ideas. Maintain a growth mindset and focus on what you can control.
Connect: Cultivate deep relationships with multiple friends and family members. Spend time every day in self reflection. Commune with nature multiple times per week.
There are many specific actions we can take within each of these factors to improve them, but the best path to sustainable progress is to take it slow. This is lifestyle change, not a 30-day challenge. Alongside these tactics, we’ll also chat about how to build habits that make the good things easier to do.
Next time, we’ll go deeper into the most important factor of them all. Stay tuned.
See you around the gym,
Erik