#78 - Balance Is for Tactical Athletes That Haven’t Been Tested

Every time I chased perfect "balance" I quit, burned out, or failed. This episode breaks down why balance is the wrong target - and what to chase instead.

We run through a problem/solution framework across training, nutrition, and lifestyle so you can endure the tough seasons and keep the main thing the main thing.

Prioritization over balance. Every time.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Everyday Responder podcast. And we have some good stuff for you today. This is something that I've definitely struggled with. Uh, when it comes to just balance, I have come to hate that word. And I think it's it's thrown a lot or thrown around a lot. And it's something that, you know, if we chase that, I think we are going to burn out or be disappointed, which obviously we want to avoid those things. So I'm going to get into that today. But before I do, I wanted to give uh a couple different announcements of things that I am very fired up for. So we do have the Endurance Crucible, which is a training that I gave. The video is live. So if you are interested in that, um, it will be down below. With that, a quick synopsis. So I had a research thesis that I did for my capstone in school, and I studied tactical athletes. So we really wanted to dive into you know, how do certain people endure things that were where other people would quit, right? So we interviewed SEALs, uh, wildland firefighters, um, SF, uh, a bunch of different folks, SWAT, world strongest firefighter uh competitors, um, a couple people who have completed Leadville. There was a ton of really cool people in there, right? Who've definitely faced some barriers. Um, so it was fun to dive into that research and figure out the mental techniques that they use, and more importantly, how we can actually apply them on a day-to-day basis with training, with nutrition, with um some aggressive targets that we have in the future. So that is one thing. Very excited about that. And the link will be below. Um, so you can you can get that video. Now, the second thing that I'm very excited to excited to talk about is I am currently running a program that is is going to be a uh a program for everybody. So I am very excited about it. It is uh two full body days, two conditioning days, something that I have been talking a lot about. And it's gonna be, you know, it's gonna be great because you know, going off of this episode with balance, I am in a pretty tough season when it comes to uh a ton of different competing priorities, but it's been nice to keep training on the forefront, but not burn myself out. So there is that flexibility baked in. Um, and it's it's great from a results standpoint as well. So I just recently ran my second readiness evaluation. Every single metric improved, which I am very fired up about. Um, I will say that my my compliance is at 100%. Um, so I think this is very important because it is a training program that I am actually running through and and going through it and making sure that, hey, I know that I am in a tough season. I know I am balancing a ton of competing priorities. Um, I said that compliance is at 100, but I will also say, hey, there's been days where it's like, all right, I need to push this to the right. Let's still get it done. And in that type of perspective. So if you are in a tough season and you want some results from a strength standpoint, conditioning, work capacity, um, that program is going to be coming soon. And uh again, it's it's run by me and and I've ran through it. So it's uh it's making sure that it's like, hey, I'm not just saying, hey, this stuff I think would be cool or this is going to be hard, right? This is going to, you know, make people sore and that type of perspective. Because I think a lot of that goes on. I've seen you know some many different programs where it's like, hey, you know, just do this, and and they're, you know, at home or not going through uh, you know, being in uniform, different things like that. So um just wanted to talk a little bit about that, but we will get into the episode here. Um and I will say, you know, like I had mentioned already, I hate the word balance. And if you have spent any time in a uniform, you know that, you know, balance doesn't exist from a physical capacity, from a mental capacity, but yet it is still quote unquote sexy to chase balance with everything that we do. It's like, oh no, everything is gonna be perfect. Like, why don't we just balance a little bit of strength, a little bit of conditioning? We'll do these lifestyle things. Oh, we'll balance nutrition, make sure you're sleeping eight hours a night and everything is just bliss. Well, that is not the reality, at least in my from my perspective. And I know that I can't say about you, but I know for me, every single time I've chased balance or perfect balance, I've failed, right? Every single time. I don't care what the program was, or I try to do like a tactical program, you know, balance it with work, with um being in uniform, with uh all the client demands, all these different types of things. And it's like, hey, we'll we'll just chase balance, right? Everything is going to be good. No, we are going to fail every every day of the week, in my opinion. So it's very, very important that we kind of almost get rid of that 50-50 mentality with all the different tasks that we have to do and figure out how we can rack and stack those things, right? I think about back uh back to me when I when I was working working nights, and I'm like, okay, this is a perfect opportunity. I'm working nights, I'm not sleeping, um, having you know, probably too much melatonin. So I could try to get sleep, right? It just absolute chaos working nights. Um, a ton of different demands there. Hey, let's balance um 12 different taskers from work. Let's let's try to you know balance sleep, let's do some training, let's lock in on nutrition. And I was definitely an idiot. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna sign up for a powerlifting competition. It's like, what are we doing? Right. Because everything, everything was perfectly balanced, right? And then I look at that and I did well in the powerlifting competition, but still, it was definitely not the season for it. Um, and you know, again, chasing that balance is a is a recipe for disaster. Or the the times that I think back of like, hey, you know, let's do six days a week, let's let's lock in with nutrition, let's make sure we're balancing lifestyle, family, friends, um, cookouts, all those different types of things. And and hey, we'll we'll also make sure that we're doing all these different habits um while we're doing all these things and and just just keep going, right? Everything's 50-50. We'll eventually like the schedule will eventually open up. And it's like, no, it it most likely won't, right? So the idea here is okay, how can we figure this out? How can we rack and stack and actually put prior a priorities and a priority meaning singular at the top, and then we we have everything else where where nothing else falls off the map. So what I wanted to talk through, um, especially the the main points here is is some training, is some nutrition, is some lifestyle stuff where I'm gonna give you kind of like a problem solution framework um that I've been faced with, that I've kind of gone through, and I hope that uh hope that you can apply it um if you've gone if you're going through these things or have gone through them in the past here. Um so the first one, again, talking about training priorities. Obviously, this is always on people's radar, which I absolutely love. And you start thinking about okay, training priorities as a tactical athlete. Yes, we need to inherently be hybrid athletes, right? We can't let anything fall off the map. We need to make sure that we can run, we need to make sure that we can lift, we need to make sure that we can handle our body weight, right? But I've found that, you know, at the end of the day, if we have 12 priorities and it's like these are the 12 priorities, then that usually means that nothing is the priority, right? If everything is a priority, then nothing is is actually the priority here. And I see this all the time where it's like, oh, I want this crazy total and I want these really fast runtimes and this power output, and I want these for my calisthenics. I'm going to do this for nutrition and this for lifestyle and all those things. If all of those are maxed out, again, I'm gonna show you how we can prior to prioritize those. But if all those are maxed out, you will be holding on for dear life. And I say that with love, I say that with experience. Um, so the idea here is figure out okay, where where can we rack and stack what is our actual weakness? So instead of worrying about the X's and O's, and I'm gonna grab this strength training program and this conditioning program, these lifestyle habits because somebody said they were good. Um, these this cow, these calisthenics, maybe this wad or five through one, different things like that. And we're going to smash all those together and go 110% on them. And again, that is a recipe for burnout. So before we get into the specific tactics, or before you get in the specific tactics, the X's and O's, the eight reps or 10 reps, the um 45 minutes or 60 minutes, zone two work, right? It's like, no, let's let's start thinking about the question of who do you actually need to become in this process? So, especially with tactical athletes, I would ask you, what does your potential worst day look like? Right. And I I love this concept from the book Be Your Future Self Now. It's essentially like, hey, let's write a letter to your future self, like five years from now, 10 years from now. Let's be extremely vivid, let's be bold. If we're not uncomfortable with it or um we're not a little bit intimidated or scared, then I would ask you to do it again, right? So the idea here is okay, let's paint that picture. Where do we actually want to be? Now we can start defining it. Like what does that person, what does that person look like? What kind of characteristics does that person have? How does that person, you know, uh figure out the the work demands? How does that person eat? How does that person act? How does that person endure barriers, right? Answering all those things from a very like minute detail perspective. It's like, okay, let's really unpack this. Now we have a specific North Star or we have a quote unquote why of why we are going or why we are doing what we're doing, right? So now we have a specific direction with our strategy. People, I think, a lot of the times mess up strategies and tactics, but I like to look at it as okay, strategy is which direction we are facing, where we are headed. Tactics are okay, we are going to segment that and and piece that together. So we are taking steps in that direction. And I think a lot of people just go straight to the tactics. We are moving, we are making or what we think is is progress and we are moving, but we don't even know which direction we're heading in. So it's very important. Who do you need to become? And now I would ask you, where are we? Right? What is our starting point? So a lot of people, again, it's like, ah, I don't really know. Or I used to be able to do this. Uh, this is what I've had on my my PT score, or this is what I this is what I did in the academy. And this is uh these arbitrary, you know, bench numbers that you definitely couldn't hit. A lot of people inflate those numbers. Um, but it's like, what is your actual starting point? Again, I don't give a shit about what you used to be able to do, what you think you can do. It's like, no, let's prove it. Let's test where we're at. So, just for an example, like that program that I was telling you about in the beginning, I'm doing like six rep maxes uh on the um on the dumbbell bench. I'm doing three RMs with a front squat and trap bar deadlift. I'm doing work capacity sets of a 15-minute emom of um five chin-ups, 10 hand release push-ups, and 15 kettlebell swings. I'm doing some aerobic capacity assessments. I'm doing some repeat assessments, right? So now I know exactly where I am. And it's like, okay, this is what we are working with. Let's figure out how we can prioritize and improve from there. But again, if we don't know where we are actually at it, where we're actually at, it's gonna be very hard to program going forward based off of what you need. So who do you need to become? What specific you know, components of fitness or where is that person from a physical capacity standpoint? Now we can reverse engineer it and fill in that gap. So, what I like to say with training for tactical athletes, especially, I like to have seven uniform standards that we go off of and things that we can target on a week-to-week basis. So, with all my programming, I make sure that these seven things are within the week of training. Some of them are trained multiple times per week, but realizing that nothing falls off the map. So, with these and with this episode, we are not saying, hey, you need to perfectly balance these seven uniform standards. It's like, no, after we define the starting point and where we need to go, how can we rack and stack and prioritize these based off of what you need specifically? Right. So the first one, exceed personal standards, right? This is from a mental capacity standpoint. This is from a day-to-day standpoint. Like, what do you do on a day-to-day basis? What standards do you hold? Number two, fuel the machine, making sure you are actually eating enough to fuel the demands that you're asking of your body. Number three, train violently. So we're gonna be jumping, hopping, throwing, moving, you know, multi-directional. We're gonna be explosive, we're going to train like an athlete. Get strong and handle your body weight, move fast, slow, and practice pacing, right? We're going to move at multiple different speeds, multiple different uh, you know, paces, all those different types of things in five. Number six, work capacity on demand. So we can actually fire, we can operate with, you know, um in the the readiness evaluation, obviously there's an end in sight, but really figuring out how to pace throughout time durations. So if we are working for 15 minutes on that uh that AMRAP example, if you just come out of the gates, absolutely, you know, blasting through, you are going to burn out and it's going to get ugly. But how can you pace certain demands there? The last one, recover and be able to do it again tomorrow. So again, making sure that we are able to fire and we are able to show up tomorrow and actually repeat um a high effort or a high performance there. So with those seven targets, it's very important that that is one system, right? It's not seven different goals, it's not very specific goals. It's like, we'll make sure that we are hitting these seven standards multiple times per week. We're going to make sure that you have enough rest. We're going to make sure that you are hitting strength, you are hitting hypertrophy, you are moving at different paces, you are training explosively, you are eating to fuel those demands. You are exceeding your personal standards from a confidence and command presence perspective. Now, what I would do from this point is start looking. So the solution here is to start thinking about okay, what is my primary focus where I could target the biggest leverage point where I could target my specific weaknesses, right? So if you don't have a weakness, you don't know where to start, I would say that it's most likely the aerobic capacity. So in this example, maybe we're going to uh target our aerobic capacity, we're going to, you know, work on run times. Maybe that is the priority. From there, the secondary, we're going to maintain your strengths. What are you really good at? If you are good with strength training, you are strong relative to your body weight. We are going to maintain that and make sure that we can, you know, still build some strength because we're actually recovering. So people see that, like, oh, maintain. I don't want to maintain, I want to get stronger. You will, because we're starting to improve your aerobic capacity. You're going to be able to recover. You're going to be able to handle handle more volume, right? So that is the perspective here. And it's not saying, oh, we're going to maintain, we're just going to be in in kind of uh a circular pattern here. It's like, no, we're still going to make progress, especially if you train hard, but maybe we're going to bias aerobic capacity, right? Tertiary, hey, we're going to understand that nothing falls off the map. So if you think about that from a perspective of the seven uniform standards, we are going to train those things every day's every, every uh, every week, right? Those are going to be worked in and nothing's going to fall off the map. So if you have a very high power output, maybe we just stick and move with some power stuff, right? Maybe it's a a couple stuff, a couple things to prime the CNS before we start lifting, right? But we're still hitting it. We're still moving explosively, right? With pacing or with running, it's another huge one. We're not going to just be doing, um, you know, it depends on the person. Obviously, there's nuance here, but for the most part, I would like to work to get to a certain point where we're not only running, you know, conversational pace the entire week, right? Maybe we're doing some hills, maybe we're doing some repeats, those different types of things. So we are actually practicing different paces. Because the end of the day, if you think about tactical athletes, say a law enforcement officer, for example, you have law enforcement, they're only doing easy work, they're only running slow. Now they have to get out of their car and go essentially on an 800-meter sprint, right? That is a blown hamstring if I've ever seen one. So again, nothing can fall off the map, but it's very important that we rack and stack based off of who you need to become and based off of your starting point. So that is how you you start chasing different priorities. And again, understanding that we're not chasing perfect balance, right? We've already talked about how that doesn't necessarily exist. So now we can give, we can start focusing on your leverage point and essentially bring up your bottom line. So say you do that for eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, whatever that may be. Now you you put in the work, right? Now we can retest that same readiness evaluation. We can evaluate, and now we can restart that process with a new bottom line. So maybe we were biasing conditioning. Oh wow, our conditioning improved. Okay, let's start biasing calisthenics or let's start biasing or let's ramp that up. Maybe we go a little bit more uh harder in pacing. Maybe we throw in some tempo or some threshold stuff, right? But again, we're figuring out, okay, that we we improved that, cool, let's stick and move and focus on something else. So again, a very important concept when it comes to training, that we are not just saying everything is is balanced, right? Everything is good, everything is awesome, right? We're going to make sure, hey, we're racking and stacking and firing from there. So that would be from a training perspective. And it's something that, like I said, it really helped me from a perspective of uh we're not chasing everything, we're not doing separate programs, we're not like kind of you know smashing things together. It's like, okay, what is my single priority? What is the one thing that I could improve right now that is going to help everything else? Right. And like I said, it's usually the aerobic capacity if you do not have anything glaring. The second one here, we're going to talk about nutrition, which is another huge one. And I've jacked this up many times, and I know many people that I've worked with have in the past. It's like, okay, nutrition lock-ins. I would tell you right off the bat, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being dialed in, right? And I and I think that everybody should go through at least a couple of seasons of really getting lean, kind of feeling what that feels like, going in a deficit. Like I think that people should, you know, go through that every once in a while. But the idea here is hey, we also need that that flexibility, if you will, to be baked in so we can actually sustain and repeat the the current season that we're in. Right. So I think that's a big point. It it starts with understanding your current season and your specific targets, right? So if you want to lose weight and you are not tracking, you have no idea what you're eating, it's probably you're you're probably gonna get a little bit frustrated or progress is gonna be a little bit slower. Not saying it's impossible to do without tracking, but it's it's always a good idea to be like, okay, let me at least get a baseline, let me see where I am currently at. Just like the example that I gave when I was an idiot and did the powerlifting competition. Probably not the best season to go through a powerlifting competition and make sure that I'm fueling for that when I'm working on nights, right? When it's just a pain in the ass to meal prep and all those different aspects, right? So again, we need to make sure that it works with your uh your your current season that you're actually in of life. If you have a ton of different stress, a ton of things going on, you're completely overwhelmed and you're at a good spot from a body comp perspective, maybe that is not the time to get extremely lean at this moment, right? Um, if you're biasing performance, you have some really aggressive performance targets, that's probably not the best time um to go in a big deficit, right? So just kind of thinking through that and understanding your current season. So my solution that's really helped me with it is that sliding scale. So I talked about this before, but I like to look at this at it from a sliding scale perspective of a one to 10, right? So I would look at that as okay, one is we are completely off the hinges and we're eating like a child. Ten is hey, we are about to step on stage for a bodybuilding or physique competition, right? So obviously those those two are extremes, but again, that sliding scale is like, okay, let's figure out where we're at. If we can sit at, you know, the eight or nine, the majority of the time, we're going to be in a very good spot. Maybe it's seven or uh six, depending on where you're at from a performance perspective, right? Maybe you are on a possible vacation or TDY, food quality is is inherently going to have to drop a little bit. Maybe you can't meal prep. You got to kind of go with um faster food options. And I'm not saying fast food there. Maybe that hit you have to hit that sometimes. But the idea is like, okay, we're we're not going to get, you know, perfect micronutrients or whatever that may be. So yeah, maybe we're dropping down to a five or a six, or maybe up to A seven, depending on your your current season. Again, some of that can be mitigated with some intentional prep work beforehand, but that's besides the point. Right. And then again, if you you were to think on the low end, if you are at a three, then I would you would need to manage expectations and expect poor or subpar results, right? That is just the reality. So if you think about that sliding scale and you are hanging out at the bottom and you're frustrated with plateaus or you're frustrated with the weight on the scale or whatever that may be, I would challenge you and say, hey, well, maybe we need to ramp it up. Maybe we need to be more intentional, right? So that process has been super helpful for me from a nutrition standpoint and understanding the current season and the training that I'm in. And we can, we can kind of, okay, or we're at an eight or nine approximately, right? So it's almost like that, the RPE scale with um with nutrition that that is usually used for um strength or conditioning there. So the third one here is the lifestyle portion. So very, very important. This is something I've seen videos on it, and I've seen or uh Instagram reels, different things, and you see it all the time. It's like, hey, these are the 10 habits of you know, super successful entrepreneurs, or these are the 15 things that every successful person does every single day, or whatever that may be, right? Um, so we can't chase those things for our day to be a success because again, if you wear a uniform, you know that's a little bit unrealistic. And I've done it before where it's like, hey, um, I talk, I've talked about this previously with journaling. I'm like, okay, I think journaling will really help me. I think it will help, you know, create uh all the things that I need to do. I think it'll help kind of detach and create some psychological space. So in in my fashion, I'm gonna journal for 45 to 60 minutes a day. And it's like, okay, we do that for a couple of days, and then it's like I avoid journaling like the plague. But if it's like, you know what, I'm gonna incorporate five minutes. I'm gonna incorporate bullets, I'm gonna incorporate creating my task list where now I can look at all those tasks and start prioritizing, not trying to balance everything, but prioritizing those tasks. So very, very important that we don't get kind of sucked into that. Hey, I'm going to do this, I'm going to, you know, crush this. And then all of a sudden in a couple of days we miss. We're falling off with our compliance, our confidence is crushed, we're avoiding it like the plague. And then I would start, or I would say, hey, now the now we're going to initiate the uh the burnout sequence. Right. So that's not it's not real life trying to accomplish these unrealistic standards or measuring yourself against an arbitrary standard. And then, like we do best, beating ourselves down because we missed an arbitrary standard that that we set or somebody else set for us. Um, so what I would do from a lifestyle perspective, I always say, hey, three standards that you do not negotiate with, that you get done every single day before your head hits the pillow. That's it, right? Those are the small habits or the small daily disciplines that you will be able to execute on a day-to-day basis that you can sustain and that will have influence on nutrition or training, whatever you're really working on. Just three. Whether that is reading 10 minutes a night, whether that is journaling for five minutes, whether that is 8K plus steps, whether that is half your body weight in ounces of water, right? Those different types of things are things that we know that we can crush. And again, never lose that momentum. Right. I will tell you from experience, forward momentum doesn't care how small these steps are. It matters if you are consistent and compliant with them on a day-to-day basis. So that is what I would do from a lifestyle perspective. Now, the last one here, again, kind of targeting the overall kind of synopsis here of the entire podcast. Unrealistic balance. We can't be targeting it, right? We already kind of talked about this, but it's like, oh, perfect sleep. We're gonna get eight hours uninterrupted. Um, everything is going to be good. We're gonna have no stress, we're gonna PR every session, nutrition's gonna be effortless, and I'll be able to get that every single day, right? I would tell you that like that expectation isn't a standard, and honestly, it's probably feeding mediocrity uh because the reality doesn't match. So if you think about that from a perspective of everything is going to be perfect and we're going to do everything, you know, right, everything's gonna be seamless. You are indirectly or maybe unintentionally leaving room on the table for growth because everything is at say five or 10%, right? But if we start, okay, this is going to be 90%, this is my season that I'm in, and everything else is going to kind of piece together after that. But again, you you only have 100%, so we can't just full send it. Now, I would say from this reality or this solution, I think we need to realize that there will be sacrifice, right? And sometimes this might sound counterintuitive coming from a strength and conditioning coach. Sometimes it might be training, right? I have uh I have a client now that's that's coming to mind, just had a newborn, first newborn is going through a lot, going through a move, um, going into a new unit, all these different types of things. And you know, it's like we can't just be like, hey, we're going to really step on the gas with training. Here, we're going to make sure that we're progressing everything and we're going to full send. By the way, don't miss a session. It's like, well, that that's not really realistic. And again, if we talk about priorities, his family, his travel, his making sure his house is in order. That stuff in this season is 1,000% and should be the priority, not training. So what we've done is we've dropped some training days, we've dropped the RPE. So more of a movement, right? We're focusing on full range of motion, we're focusing on hitting the main movement patterns and getting out. We took out a lot of different accessories. We we changed the intent of these sessions. Instead of doing, you know, a bunch of tempo or threshold work, it's like, hey, we're we're gonna do easy conditioning if able, right? This is going to be optional. So now again, that that balance there doesn't exist. But if he was to chase a perfect balance with everything, that is again the recipe for disaster. So realizing there's going to have to be sacrifices, and you know, sometimes it's we're we're not going to be the biggest fan of it, but that is how you can kind of squeeze the most out of what you actually have for availability, for time, for energy, and for effort. I will also say with that comes some lonely chapters at the end of the day, right? If you are in a uh dialed-in period with your nutrition, right? You you might have to sacrifice some things. Maybe this isn't the opportunity to or the the time of year to go out to eat every single day or or go out drinking with everybody, right? Again, there's going to have to be sacrifices. And I would say obviously, don't just embrace the the lonely chapter. I'm saying that kind of tongue in cheek, because obviously you need somebody in your corner. I uh I would never recommend somebody to endure something alone. That's not how we operate. We don't run solo missions. So we shouldn't do that. But I will say, like, there's times when it's like, damn, like I, you know, even for me, it's like, damn, I don't want to be necessarily working all the time, but I'm at that season where it's like, okay, well, I need to ramp it up. I need to finish this task before the end of the day. Like, that's just the reality. And then the the last one here is make sure that we're protecting the seasons where where certain qualities need to come first. So I just gave you that example with the client. If we have a PT test coming up, like and and we're maybe struggling with it a little bit, the full full board strength training might take a little bit of a back seat. Maybe that's in maintenance mode, and we need to prioritize runtimes or calisthenics, right? So understanding, hey, you know, this is my current season, this is what I'm in, and yeah, I need to sacrifice some things. Or if you are in that dialed-in period with nutrition and you are really trying to cut and you are dead set on it, yes, you're going to have to sacrifice some things. You're going to have to sacrifice time to make sure that you are meal prepping, to make sure that you are prepared, to make sure that you have a plan. You're going to have to sacrifice some nights out to eat, right? That is just the reality. Um, but you know, kind of to wrap this up, I would say, um, kind of going off of this whole episode, that balance, in my opinion, is a fool's goal. And I say that uh respectfully, right? We need to understand that, hey, we need to prioritize certain things and realize that priorities are a moving target. We need to actually learn how to manage that skill and practice it, right? If we try to be perfect with everything or we have, you know, all these tasks that we want to be complete, we need to realize, okay, what is asking the question of what is the one thing that I could crush here and here and here to make sure that this day was success? Really to really paint that picture. One thing that I've been doing for years now is every single night I write down, I brain dump, I write down everything that's on my mind from a task list perspective, from things that I need to get done. Now I have that long ass list. I start looking at it. Okay, what are three things that I could crush for tomorrow? Out of those three things, what is the one priority that I cannot negotiate with that I need to get done regardless? Right. So now we start looking at that. Now we time allocate those things. So now we are good to go and everything is priority. Everything is prioritized, and now I can start looking at that. I hit those, I hit that one priority, good. We got some momentum, we got a win. Now I hit those other, those other things on the list, and it's like, okay, I got those two other things done, huge success. Oh wow, I still have time. Let's let's revisit that task list and go from a priority standpoint. What are three things that I could do in addition to what I've already done? Right. That is how we keep momentum going. And that is the mentality that we also need to take to strength training, to new nutrition, and to our overall lifestyle. So, last thing here that I wanted to end on, you know, at the end of the day, if you don't decide your priority, someone or something else is going to decide it for you. And that is what happens every single time when we try to chase a person, uh perfect balance here. So, like I said in the beginning, I learned this the hard way. These, you know, four things really help me get out of the hole. So I hope it helps you if you are in that tough season. But just remember that perfect balance doesn't exist. We need to rack and stack, and that is how we need to execute on a day to day basis with all things performance.