Coach’s Advice? Curate “Normal”

Welp, here it is. This is my most effective, wide-ranging, universally important bit of coaching. My simple advice is to curate what is considered “normal” in your life. When you normalize health and fitness, achieving and maintaining a remarkable level of fitness isn’t just possible, it’s a robust model that can withstand both small and large adversities.

In many cases where I’m in a new environment with new people, for example, I’m made to be the odd one. Questions like “What time do you wake up, though? 5am?” and “How many days a week do you workout? Seven?” come my way, because being physically literate is abnormal to most people. “I just love food too much,” they say unsolicited, of course. I really don’t know what to say other than, “Me too?”

Conversely, in my circles of friends there are a host of things that are assumed and normal that aren’t even points of conversation. Things like being able to clean a barbell or do a pull up aren’t abnormal. 

Generally speaking, what we consider “normal” will serve as the baseline we default to.

If the people you’re around place basic physical literacy on an elitist pedestal. That is where it will stay. The opposite is also true. 

The advice is non-dogmatic and it doesn’t get into the weeds of what to eat or whether lifting heavy is for everyone or how best to recover. The significance of this advice is in emphasizing the container in which we live rather than addressing the parts of our life rather than the environment in which our life takes place in. 

Imagine eating perfectly clean with an abundance of vegetables in a mindset that is white-knuckling a period of attempted healthy living. Now, imagine a person who has normalized training, eating well, and a worldview of skill-based movement, who is acutely eating comfort foods for any reason. 

The abnormally healthy individual has no chance against the person who has normalized health and fitness. It’s for this reason that the details of what you’re doing don’t matter much when your perception of normal doesn’t include the behaviors you want and need.