"Every Rep. Every Set."
The Bar is Loaded, Part 2: The simplest way to win that few people are willing to try.
Raise your hand if you feel like you have to be the most creative or the most clever person in the room to succeed. (Okay, depending on where you are when you read this, maybe don’t raise your hand… but you can relate, right?) It’s easy to look at successful people and believe their good fortune in IQ accounts for most of their accomplishments. But, what if there’s actually something more consistently predictive of success? Or, put another way, what if we have more power over our own journey to excellence than we realize?
Get Your Reps In
The first semester I lived in Carbondale, I would go to the gym with my roommate once every week or so, only when it was convenient. It was all fun and games until the following day, when my body would scream at me for all the work I put it through the day before. A few more days would go by, I’d feel fine again, and then the next week I’d do it all over. I thought to myself, “how do some people do this 4-5 days a week? It takes me that long to recover!”
This, my friends, was the first lesson I had yet to learn about lifting: consistency matters. I didn’t realize until I started following a consistent program multiple days a week that our bodies adjust, recover from, and improve with a schedule much more effectively than random one-off sessions here and there. Not only was my body struggling with the lack of consistency, but also, I wasn’t getting any stronger. And, to be any good at powerlifting, you have to keep getting stronger.
This aspect of strength training is both incredible and frustrating. On one hand, it’s so cool to me that the primary factor for success is simply how consistently an athlete trains over an extended period of time. Yes, things like genetics and body type and good coaching play a role, but even the ideal body for lifting heavy won’t get strong on its own. Yet, it takes patience and discipline to show up, week after week, practicing the same three lifts over and over and over, for weeks, months, and years. The more I think about it, the more I realize this principle applies to our success in life—no matter what we’re pursing.
One of my ag retail customers shared some feedback recently with our marketing team that illustrates this truth. He said that marketing programs don’t matter unless there is consistent local representation and support for his sales team; that is, a rep like me needs to show up consistently, often in mundane ways, before I can expect to win with a big sales proposal. That’s why most of my time is spent driving around the countryside, stopping in at locations to visit with retail sellers to see how I can support my products with equipment or knowledge, and learning more about their goals for their business. Much less of my time is spent drafting sales proposals and looking at spreadsheets; those pieces are important, yes, but they won’t get me anywhere if I haven’t put in the time visiting with my customers.
It’s not just about sales: this concept holds true in other areas. Whether you’re after a promotion at work, an A+ in a class, or winning over the heart of your significant other, the first, most impactful thing you can do, is to simply keep showing up. We don’t have to have all the answers or even have the best ideas; we have to do the tedious work of listening, learning, and helping in small ways before we are entrusted with the big things. It may surprise you how few people are actually showing up in whatever their role is, because they’re either not willing to take the time or they think they’re too good to do the basics, so they spend their time doing something more cool and complex.
Clearly, showing up, getting in reps, is important. It’s the first piece of what’s entirely in our control on our journey to becoming excellent, in whatever we do. But, there’s one more piece to showing up, and I learned it through powerlifting, too.
Don’t Be A Robot
Powerlifting training sessions are repetitive by design. Across four training sessions each week, I do the same three compound lifts multiple times each, with a few accessories at the end. For example, in any given week, I perform upwards of 100 reps on several variations of bench press. That’s a lot of this: line up the bar over my eyes, lock in my shoulders, unrack the bar, lower the bar to my chest, push the bar back up, and rerack. That’s a lot of the same thing, over and over. If you couldn’t guess, it can get boring. There’s only one or two “fun” heavy sets to get excited about each week, and the other 95 reps are practice. It’s easy to just go through the motions, literally.
My coach knows this. Early on in our time working together, he dropped a nugget of truth in one of our coaching calls. “Treat every rep, every set, like it counts. Because it does.” If you rush through 95% of your lifts, your performance on meet day will show it; you’ll perform like you practiced your boring lifts, not the ones that were fun and exciting. Now, whenever I am tempted to rush through a set, I try to repeat that truth to myself. As I wrap my wrists and flip the lever on my belt before a set of paused squats, I’m in my head: every rep, every set. As I slide my toes into place under the bar for my final deadlift set of the session: every rep, every set.
Why do I remind myself that every rep, every set matters? Because that’s the second half of showing up: caring about it. If you’re working hard at showing up in mundane ways at your job, but only doing it to check the box, you’re probably going to feel stuck. If you’re going through the motions to make time for your significant other, trying to meet your quota of phone calls for the week, they’re probably not actually going to feel like they’re a priority to you. If I drop by a retail location only to tell my customer “hey, I’m just here to say I was here this month,” how much business am I going to gain? I’m not actually adding value, so I haven’t earned anything.
Now, you may ask: “how can I make myself care about something?” This is where you have to know yourself a little bit. Sometimes, we can’t make ourselves care. If what we’re doing doesn’t light even the smallest of sparks in our soul, maybe we should consider doing something else. But, to refer back to my post about following your passion, I would challenge you to search your heart for what might matter to you about the seemingly mundane thing you’re doing. Maybe you don’t love writing papers about the farm economy, but reminding yourself of your future goal of helping farmers navigate the challenges of an ever-changing economic environment can keep your fire going. Every rep, every set. Maybe you struggle with seeing the value in waitressing, carrying plate after plate to table after table, so you remind yourself of the souls underneath the faces of your customers. Every rep, every set. We’ll never be perfect, but we sure can become more consistent, more caring, as each day goes by.
The good news is, showing up and showing we care doesn’t necessarily mean we have to work harder than everyone else, although there are certainly folks who aren’t showing up because they’re not working hard. Rather, I think many of us work too hard at things that aren’t very important, or at least aren’t important until we have built the foundation of consistently showing up. The other neat thing about all this is the more we show up, the more we learn to care, the more we’ll want to show up… it’s a positive feedback loop. The more reps I have under my belt in the gym, the more my technique improves, the more I enjoy every rep. Whether you’re getting into lifting or you’re putting in metaphorical reps somewhere else, the same can be true for you.
Showing up and caring. It’s so simple, most people aren’t willing to do it. Yet, because it’s so simple, any of us can do it. It takes time, it won’t always be fun, but the more reps we put in, the better we’ll be. How cool is that?
Journal Prompt of the Week
Where in your life have you been going through the motions? What might happen if you started to care about every rep?