I’m nearly a mile up in the air sitting in the open door of an airplane. It’s nighttime. I’ve got fireworks strapped to my leg. On my back there are a couple hundred square feet of nylon that are supposed to save my life. Nylon and fire don’t usually mix well. Down below, I’ve got a square of concrete not much bigger than a basketball court to land in, surrounded by people and multi-million dollar airplanes include the Navy’s Blue Angels. I don’t feel like I can do this. I could climb back inside, and while it would hurt my pride tremendously (and my team in terms of completing their performance) at least I wouldn’t be taking an ambulance ride (or worse) if I failed.

But I’ve been here before.

On basically every skydive I’ve made before I’ve landed in the same size area or smaller – over 800 times. I have the skill and the ability.

But I’ve also been here before when I’m supposed to run 3 miles as fast as I can to test my heart rate.

I’ve been here before when I’ve gotten under the bar for a new PR squat.

I’ve been here before when I’m pulling on a PR deadlift, the bar isn’t moving (much) and I’m wondering if this is when I find out all those rumors are true and your spine will really shoot out your ass from deadlifting.

I’ve been here before when I’m on the first mile of a several-mile tempo run and I’m sure I can’t possibly keep this up.

I’ve been here before when I’m stepping out on the platform to attempt a weight I may have never done before, or is at the very edge of my limits and everyone is watching.

It’s okay to feel that anxiety, that fear, that nervousness. There’s no sense in pretending it’s not there, because it is. And it’s either going to stop you from taking action or it’s not. So feel it. Let it flow through you. And then go do it anyway.

If you can’t do it, take a small step backwards to whatever makes you just a little bit less nervous and then do that.

But if you’re not stepping through that anxiety sometimes, you’re not winning. You’re not finding out what it feels like when you overcome that anxiety, when you inform your senses, your intuition, your judgement that you are in fact capable of more.

This weekend I started getting emails back from the first group of individuals that bought my most recent kettlebell program, the Dellanavich Kettlebell Regime when I first released it.

Incidentally, email feedback from people who go through my programs are one my truly favorite things to receive and they really make all the hard work to put these things together worthwhile.

Anyway this one guy emailed me the journal entries from all of his workouts for the program and he literally doubled the number of reps he was able to do. Truly staggering progress.

So then his question was, how do I move forward? Do I move up to a bigger bell, and then after that move down to a smaller bell and go longer?

YES, EXACTLY YES!

This one question about one particular program so perfectly encompasses the entire training paradigm.

When it’s too easy, make one part harder.

When that part gets easy, change a different part and make that harder.

And on and on.

This constant dance if two steps forward one step backward is almost the extent of what you need to know about how to train effectively for long term progress. Sure, programs can be great because an expert can lean on their experience to know exactly what kind of overreach is possible and how much to step backwards, but the general principle is exactly this. What you see as a pattern in the micro of one program or training cycle can be applied to the macro of training in general. Or of course you can apply it to other movements.

Don’t make things too complicated.

Simplify, and execute.

I’ve been talking a lot about exploration, play, and eschewing rigid objectives this week so I thought it would be a good time for another weekend workout challenge.

A few weeks ago I had a deadlift challenge that a lot of people had fun with, so I figured we could do the same with squats.

My buddy and fellow gym owner Marshall Roy had the same idea about a week ago and filmed a great video of 38(!) squat variations that might give you some ideas, click over to the video here:

The idea is to figure out how many different ways and implements you can find to squat with. Marshall came up with a stunning 38 variations and he honestly didn’t even scratch the surface.

One of my favorite “weird” squat variations is squatting with a rotated upper body. Imagine trying to squat down and put your chest onto just one of your quads. It feels fantastic, usually especially in one direction more than the other.

Like I said last time if you came up with 20 variations and you did 5 reps of each you’d have done a hundred squats in all different forms and I’d wager you’d get a pretty good, and fun, workout.

Let me know how many you come up with and what you experience.