There was an interesting video I watched a while back from professional trainer Jeff Cavaliere. He discusses the limitations in mindset around the common “3 sets of 12” paradigm around workouts.
His criticism comes not from the ineffectiveness of the structure, but what it incentivizes us to do. Particularly, our knowledge of future repetition of the same exercise forces us to limit our effort in the current set. Because we wonder to ourselves, “Well if I go all out now, how can I finish the rest of my sets?”
But that misses the point. You’re not working out to complete sets. You’re working out to push yourself to failure and grow. You don’t need to do 3 sets of anything to do that. But in order to complete 3 sets, we make the first two half-effort so we can do the third. But what was the point of doing three sets when the first two are meaningless then?
Jeff argues that each set should be pushed to failure. Each rep should be made to count. Even if it means lower weights the next time around. It’s the only way to make them count.
Raising Our Hands High
There’s a simple experiment Seth Godin performs on a stage at many of his speaking events. He asks the audience to raise their hand as high as they can. And as they do so, he asks them to raise it even higher. To his surprise, people find a way to raise it higher. How is that possible?
He comments on the idea that we often hold ourselves back, somewhat unconsciously. We’ve been led to believe that there’s always more work that’s waiting for us. More tasks assigned to us. More homework to complete. More sets to dish out. As a product of that belief, we hold ourselves back. Because we think we need to save energy for the future.
I believe this mindset can come from our perspective of work. Specifically, it’s easy to view it simply as a to-do list. Things to check off. We can say we did this task, project, etc. It can make us feel accomplished. It’s a straightforward way to measure progress. There’s a good dopamine rush from checking something off as completed.
But the question we should be asking instead is: what was it for? What change did it make? What new ideas did we try? Such questions force us to break ourselves from viewing our work as completing “3 sets of 12”. Instead it’s asking how we advanced our cause even further today than it was before.
We can’t look at our future work as an indicator to give low effort now. Because what’s the point then? What are we putting into our art that goes above and beyond if we conserve our talent for our project future?
Does Leonardo Dicaprio find a good line and save it for his next movie? Does Jackson Pollock save an art stroke for the next painting? Does a scientist decide to save his new idea for a better experiment until after this one is done?
What matters is what we put in now. The question is, are you willing to go all in each moment? Or would you prefer to play it safe for the possibility that the future gets tough? Or so you can simply say you got through something?
Your call.
