Last night we had a totally age-appropriate birthday party for my wife, Jen. We went to one of those giant trampoline places, which if you have never gone are a total blast not to mention a great way to get your heart rate up for 30-60 minutes. You can just jump around on the trampolines, leap into the foam pit without breaking your neck (crawling out from which is exhausting), or try your hand at dunking a basketball on 3 different height hoops.

It was this last challenge that had everyone’s attention by the end of our time. Everyone could dunk on the two shorter ones, but I was the only one who had gotten the dunk on the highest hoop.

Jen, her friend Kim, and jumping Julie Read all had the bounce height, but try as they might they couldn’t connect it with a dunk.

One of the principles that guides my training philosophy is that of specificity. Put simply, you should train as close to the thing you want to be able to do as possible. For something like powerlifting that’s simple, you train the barbell back squat, bench press, etc. For a rugby player it’s not as simple but you’ll still sprint, push, lift, carry, etc. because there’s enough transfer to carry over to the sport.

The issue becomes, when you can’t apply specifity, what do you do? Let’s say you can’t back squat but you also can’t front squat (due to pain, or whatever). That’s when you break the movement down into components, and train the component parts. You may not be able to squat, but you may well be able to train hip extension, knee extension, anterior core stabilization, and so on. All important parts of squatting as a specific activity.

So when I saw failure after failure (at least a dozen) of the specific movement, I knew exactly what the intervention was. I told Jen to drop the ball, and go just focus on touching and grabbing the rim. In other words, a component. So she did that once.

The very next try with the ball? Nothin but net.

Sometimes we get so focused on practicing and practicing an activity, thinking that we’ll get it on the very next try, that we forget to break it down. It wasn’t even really a pregression because she was still jumping to full height, we just took a piece of it out.

Training components is a valuable way to work around issues, increase volume without compromising recovery, and speed up learning.

If you like, maybe next week I’ll talk about the next step down the training continuum for when you can’t do the specific.

Today two things happened that got my brain thinking in a slightly different way about something that I’d like to share with you. The first was when I was putting the finishing touches on a helpful comprehensive nutrition guide for one of my coaching groups, and the second was this article about stress that a friend sent. I highly recommend you read it when you have a moment.

In the nutrition guide I referred several times to the idea of “signals” to the body. So for example one of the effects of weight training is to signal muscle protein synthesis, to build muscle.

Then the article came across my desk and it got me thinking of an analogy that might be helpful:

Imagine that you have to answer a phone every time it rings. When it rings the message on the other end of the line tells you what to do next. Let’s imagine for a second that actually taking the call requires no energy and isn’t an interruption. Only what the message tells you to do has to be addressed.

What would those signals tell you to do?

Would you constantly be interrupted by emergencies big and small that you had to address? Before one was resolved you’d be interrupted to deal with another?

Would any of those calls tell you to take an hour of downtime, with no further calls coming in?

Would the calls tell you to do things like lift weights or do gentle stretching, or would they tell you to sit in front of the TV for hours?

One way to think of stress is as these phone calls. Long time readers will know that stress is something I write about and focus on often, and it’s not as simple as “stress is bad.” On face of it stress is just like these phone calls. The call isn’t inherently a problem, it’s the accumulation of those messages and what they tell you.

So another way to think of how you approach things is what calls do I have coming in? What messages or signals do those calls carry?

I hope this is a useful way for you to think about things.

Everybody knows Robin Hood, right? The centuries old mythology of the folk hero (who was probably a woman) who steals back from the greedy rich and gives it back to the poor.

Should be a pretty popular hero in the age of astronomical and unprecedented wealth inequality, but anyway that’s none of my business.

I’m here to tell you to be Robin Hood.

Which is to say, not so much that you shoot arrows into your wealthier neighbors, but sometimes you need to take a little from those who have enough to fulfill your own needs.

What I mean is, you have time for a workout, but you might need to leave work a few minutes early to beat traffic. Your company will be fine.

You can eat good, healthy food, even if your adopted stepchildren hate anything green or that doesn’t come in colorful packaging. They might just have to not like their meal sometimes.

You can take a few minutes at the end of the night to meditate, read, or otherwise decompress. Your partner will find the shirt they’re looking for to wear to an important meeting the next day, or they’ll deal.

You can pursue that interst or hobby you’ve been putting off because it’s not the right time. Whatever you’re going to steal time from will be just fine.

Who or what is being greedy with your most valuable asset, your time and attention?

Steal it back. Mythology is on your side.