The Thin Red Line – Guest Post by Tom Furman

I met Tom Furman a few years ago on Facebook when I started blogging. He has been a wonderful resource of information over the years. I hope you enjoy his post. I did. – Stephen

I read an article about organization that made a real impact. Usually these articles deal with what type of pen to use with your new Moleskine. This one was effective however because it fit several categories. It was simple, it had visual impact, it had a track record, and it involved a celebrity. That should be the acid test for almost anything of importance in your life. The writer of the blog used to do stand up comedy. He wanted to increase his effectiveness and sought out someone who was already effective. He met Jerry Seinfeld at a comedy club and took a few moments of his time to ask advice and pull some nuggets of knowledge from this master comedian. Jerry told him to be a better comedian you needed to write everyday. Seinfeld had a simple, but highly effective process for this. He bought a large, yearly, calendar for his wall. He took a red marker and drew a line through each day he took the time to sit and write. Now the hard part, keep the line going unbroken. The more days you connect, the more you write. The more you write, the better you get. The better you get, the closer you are towards your goals of being an effective comedian. The rest, of course, is history.

How can you apply this to physical training or effective eating? Pretty simple. The dietary part is pretty easy. Just strike through the days you eat correctly. Don’t strike through the days where you eat a bucket of Zagnut Bars. Training however, is more of a challenge. The human body adapts to the stress of training during periods of rest. That would mean you HAVE to break the line, right? No, not exactly. Rest and recovery have to be considered part of the formula so a simple adaptation of the original idea is needed. Why not mark rest days as BLUE instead of RED? That doesn’t mean sitting on your rear and watching Celebrity Rehab. That means you should assign things like QiGong, stretching, Yoga, joint mobility, breathing exercise, and walking to your “off days”. That way they have purpose and actually weigh something.

What happens if you break your chain? Start over. See how long you can keep your chain going. 33 days, 45 days, 182 days. It doesn’t matter. If you cycle through templates, back off weeks can be all blue and you can even set dates for competition far ahead and reverse engineer your thought process. What about vacations? Well hopefully you still walk, eat reasonably, and do some stretching, swimming, and possibly more dynamic activities like hiking, scuba, or even rock climbing. There is NO reason to break the chain if it is dynamic, flexible, and embraces common sense.

I’d strongly suggest one chain for diet, and one for activity since those embrace the double edged sword that we all wield in the war of achieving physical goals.

Tom Furman has been involved in martial arts and conditioning since 1972. With an early background in wrestling and a student of the methods of the York Barbell Club, Tom immediately separated fact from fiction growing up outside Pittsburgh. Eleven members of his family were combat veterans, the most famous one being “Uncle Charlie” (Charles Bronson).  Check out Tom’s web site: TomFurman.com