Attacking Tomorrow Today
Mark Brown
May 10, 2022
Progress is the result of consistency. I shared in chapter 2 what happened when I lost 4-5 weeks of gym time to Covid-19 related public area shutdowns. Consistency is best evidence of someone’s discipline. It shows their commitment to both the goal and the process. This commitment when combined with progressive overload becomes the launching point of momentum forward. The key is to keep using that kinetic energy created by one’s own discipline to keep attacking day after day to keep growing and moving more momentum forward. That is where today’s chapter comes in. Doing what you need to do tomorrow through preparation today ensures that one can maximize the potential tomorrow has. This chapter will be about everything that entails and why it is important to attack tomorrow today.
The genesis of the phrase I am basing this chapter off of comes from work. I have stated in the past that my job is akin to a Strongman loading race. Most if is placing pallets on the floor then totes full, or not full, of products to be sent to the stores of the convenience store chain I work for. There are various other responsibilities. One of the primary ones is making sure that larger pieces like refrigerators, ovens, shelving, wire racks and such also get on said pallets along with the totes. The “service” parts for the next day come from a different warehouse and arrive shortly before I finish work. This presents me with a couple different options. In the past I have done the first option, which is to do it first thing in the morning. For the last couple months, I have taken care of “tomorrow’s” service stuff at the end the current day. It takes 10-20 minutes depending on volume. I have found that it is much better to take care of it that way because it allows me to get to what I need to be doing right away and gives me a heads up of stuff I need to be aware of tomorrow.
I thought about what I had been doing with the service parts and began to look at life and strength training through that lens. I found that quite a bit of the statements I hold true because of it and aids them. This biggest one is a phrase I have repeated multiple times: There is no honor in missing sessions because one went too hard the session before. What this means is that a lifter doesn’t get a pat on the back or a “Good job, bro!” for going so hard on leg day that they aren’t recovered by the next planned session. Missing sessions blocks the development of consistency and prevents the building of momentum forward. Moreover, if a lifter is part of a group of training partners, then they owe it to the others in it to be ready to go every time. Obviously, some life circumstances can get in the way of that. Not being recovered in time isn’t one of them. Being a dependable training partner can unlock doors that would otherwise stay closed. Relationships built on trust that stay trustworthy are ones that create opportunities for others to follow. Thus, discipline demands that a lifter not go full tilt every time in the gym. This is especially important for lifters, like me, who don’t use any performance enhancing drug or substance, banned or unbanned, to drastically increase the body’s recovery ability.
Missing sessions also has another effect. When a lifter misses one session, they become behind by at least 2 unless they just write it off as a missed day. This comes back to the “doing the program as laid out” phrase I also repeat. If a lifter decides to push the session missed back a day to make up for not doing on the day intended, then everything else gets pushed back a day. For lifters who lifter only 3-4 times a week, this might not have long lasting consequences. However, for those who lift 5-6 day a week this will complicate the program for weeks or it forces a change in the days lifted in the program. Based on personal experience, missing intended sessions has the habit of messing up weeks on end unless I decide to mitigate it. Moving my day 2 leg/back day to Sunday in correlation with my tiredness has had the effect of not being ready to go Wednesday while also pushing back my day 1 chest/shoulder to Tuesdays sometimes. This situation is where my splitting isolation day off on its own manipulates what days I do my power lifts. Sticking to a schedule is important because consistency demands the lifter be ready but not at the expense of recovery. That is why lifting in the RPE 7-8 range for the vast majority of sessions is ideal for making consistent momentum creating progress. Lifters who compete have be extremely aware of missing sessions because the number of sessions to a competition are finite. They also become more important as the date of the competition approaches.
Attacking tomorrow today means making physical and mental preparations to help it happen. Those who lift in the morning are more acutely effected by this concept more than those who lift in the afternoon or evening. I lifted before work 5-6 years ago when I was doing a different job in the warehouse and was working all the way to 6-7 pm instead of 3-4 pm like I am now. It requires a different mindset and is a different physical challenge. Lifting in the morning requires one to reach a physical and mental peak soon after waking up. The morning lifter, many of whom start at 4 or 5 am to get it done, has to take “yesterday” very seriously because of what I just stated. The day prior to lifting sessions, especially involving more power movements, have to be managed especially carefully. Eating and sleeping well are important for both morning and afternoon lifters, but the former will feel poor eating and sleeping more. Using the rest of the day to recover through proper nutrition and active rest while working is a very efficient use of one’s time and energy. It also means they have to somewhat ruthless with their sleep schedule to be able to peak almost immediately the next morning.
I have been an afternoon/evening lifter since around 2018 when my schedule at work had me starting at 5 or 6 am. I feel safe in saying that the physical and mental peak is more natural now and I feel my lifting progress has increased because of that. I regularly get 20,000 or so steps at work and get my upper back ready to go from the loading race. That preps me for the power movements that I do in my program, especially squats and deadlifts. I have found I am far less ready to lift without all of those steps, even with stretching. The biggest challenge for an afternoon or evening lifter is getting good nutrition in because the time scrunch makes for decisions to be made. I find that getting lifting, eating and sleeping in the right ratio is damned difficult. Adding the responsibility of writing the way I have chosen to do it hasn’t helped either. That is a large reason why PEDs or supplements are not even a consideration to me. Another effect for the afternoon or evening lifter involves people, unless a significant other lifts with them. Strength training is mostly a solo affair, unless a lifter goes out of their way to make a true team effort.
Attacking tomorrow today will help someone be more prepared for life’s chaos better. Aside from the fact that being more prepared is better than less prepared, regression can be avoided if sessions end up being missed for reasons other than lifting. What I have written so far says that a person with great discipline can always take steps forward. That’s a great goal to have but wholly unrealistic. I write like missed sessions are the worst thing imaginable but they are a reality so they have to be worked around and part of any plan. What’s important to remember is the best way to maintain forward momentum is to not taking steps backward. It’s perfectly okay if the next day doesn’t produce a full step forward, so to speak. The wall from chapter 3 will still be there ready to be knocked down and rebuilt. The 4-5 week layoff from the gym in 2020 was multiple steps backward and took a long time to recover from. It’s not a lesson I want to repeat learning again.
If a lifter had to take an extended amount of time off for non-injury reasons, there’s a lot scientific and anecdotal evidence that shows it can all come back over time. Muscle memory is a very real thing. I didn’t squat or deadlift from the middle of 2018 to the June of 2020. I surpassed my previous high squat from 2018 by August of 2020 by 40 pounds. Not the smoothest or best of reps at 405 on the day in August 2020 at the gym but it got up. I didn’t bench press much at all from the middle of 2018 to May of 2020. That lift is leagues above where I thought it would ever get. Muscle memory is an exceedingly important reality to accept because it gives a lifter something to believe in when breaks happen. By attacking tomorrow today someone can raise the floor of what can be accomplished and keep it there before momentum gets stopped.
One of the consequences of adopting such a lifestyle philosophy is that every day becomes regimented to a certain degree. This doesn’t always mean a rigid structure to the day. However, it does place a priority on certain activities above others and places them in certain time slots. Let me explain through a personal example. I’ve written before about the 60-70 hour weeks I worked in 2020 and 2021 so I won’t retell it in full. Not keeping up with my lifts would have been easy to do given the hours worked and time I left work. There were a lot of lifting sessions that finished up between 10 and 10:30 pm. Add 15-20 minutes of driving back home from Pete’s garage to a wake up time of 5 am and one sees a lot of tired mornings. I recognize now those lifting sessions were important a couple different reasons. First, I was reintroducing skill based lifts back into my normal lifting pattern. I would not be where I am at currently without them. Second, they became the backbone of my discipline by showing me the kind of effort I could put into lifting during less than ideal circumstances. If I could lift hard and make progress at that point, then I can do it when the circumstances are much more amenable.
Another of the consequences involves relationships with people in one’s life. When something is one’s soul to the degree I have been talking about, everyone else comes along for the ride. That means those people are part of the program and must be planned for. They can add a lot of different variables to the training or alter it completely. A major motivation for people who lift in the mornings before for work is to allow them to spend time with families in the evening. Family and friends can import some chaos to bring speed and a feeling of the need to accomplish something quickly. That’s the kind of energy people in one’s life who don’t lift but are present nonetheless help push momentum forward. I’ve made lifting such an integral part of my soul that any woman who I bring into my life or shows interest in being with it will have to deal with it. At this point, it’s me. I’ve written before that if one wants to be great at something, they become a slave to it. I am exactly that.
Hard work when used intelligently helps build momentum every day. Using the energy that comes with that to attack tomorrow today keeps building confidence and helps prepare for unknowns of every day life. The role of discipline is to maintain that need to push forward while actively forcing ourselves to demand more from everything we are. There’s no guarantee there will be steps forward, but the effort and the intent being there will be. Accomplishing tomorrow’s work today allows one’s discipline to create a positive patterns that push them forward. With time, the structure of discipline becomes more and more self-evident.
Life Through Lifting 