On day 1 of your 101 Program we gave you an assignment… and that assignment never fades or wanes. 3 Studs and 3 Goats from every session will yield nearly every self knowable fact about how to improve your fitness. Wait… how many of you still do that? 1? 2? 10? Unless it’s every single one of you it’s not enough. Showing up was enough when you began, you’ve become a more sophisticated athlete since then. Each and every time you fill in a lacking gap you get better, and it becomes harder to get better… there’s just less holes to fill.
Your stud and goat list is an important tool it allows you to visually see what you need to work on. If you aren’t keeping a journal or a stud and goat sheet you are losing easy money. Identifying the holes is the only way you can fill them. Listen to your coaches they tell you day in and day out exactly how to fix these things… LISTEN. We want you to progress for the next 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 years. Identifying goats and studs is an easy way to build a positive mindset about how you are going to improve. Writing it down is practice for creating a brain that thinks positively all the time. Creating a positive thought machine out of your own brain which will help you improve not only in training but elsewhere in life. PR everyday!
What are studs and goats? Studs are things, individualized pieces, parts, movements or patterns of a session in which you grade yourself highest relatively speaking than all other aspects of the session Goats are things, individualized pieces, parts movements or patterns of a session in which you grade yourself lowest relatively speaking than all other aspects of the session
You arrive daily at the gym and have us tell you how to fix physical goats. Everyday you ALL receive multiple cues on your movement. You coach will tell you today, tomorrow, next week, next month… and will give you as many tools as you could ever need to change. It’s your individual pursuit of virtuosity(doing the common, uncommonly well) that is going to make you improve.
Examples of things that could be studs or goats during any given session?
Mental I felt down about ____.
I overcame fear of _____
I lacked attention span.
I gave up.
I pushed through.
I did better than I thought I was going to.
I stuck to my game plan.
I changed my game plan.
I adapted during the workout.
I pushed.
I pushed through the squats even though they are really difficult for me.
I was nervous and it improved my performance.
I was nervous and it negatively affected my performance.
I didn’t focus.
I couldn’t focus.
I wanted to focus but couldn’t.
I was mentally tired.
I forgot to brace.
I decided to get out of position to win the gold medal.
I decided to get out of position to beat Betsy at 6am.
I listened to coach and it helped.
I listened to coach but didn’t understand what she meant.
I was extremely coachable today and it helped me get better.
I learned a lot.
I just tried to get by during mobility today.
Physical(can be general or specific to a movement, section of body, joint so on…)
My CV Endurance was not lacking today.
I felt very powerful today.
My run was a bit sluggish today.
I missed the wall ball target too many times, I did an extra 25 reps.
I couldn’t change direction from going to depth to coming back out very quickly.
I felt like I could lock the weight in and it never wavered.
I felt like I could move exactly where I wanted to, when I wanted to on the snatches.
I could have squatted a house today!
I thought I could do all the push ups broken each round, but I broke them down into 3’s and 2’s.
I think I could get under the bar better if my ankles weren’t so tight.
Doing more than 5 pull ups at a time was difficult because my arms wore out.
Butterfly pull ups were tough to execute.
Snatching 135 for 3 reps was easy in warm ups.
Doing round one under 3 minutes which was a little slower than I hoping.
Found good rotation at the shoulder during the push up helped me last longer through 80 push ups.
I did the entire workout unbroken, next time I’ll have to cycle reps faster.
I was tired, but I gave it everything I had.
I was hungry and it seemed to slow me down a little bit.
I ate too much before I came and I thought everyone might see my lunch.
_____ before a workout made me feel nauseous.
My hands gave out on Pull up #____.
I felt a pinching feeling in my right hip.
I felt strong in the bottom of my squat, but I had to bounce out of the bottom to stand up.
I could feel my shoulders roll forward in my bench press.
I was breathing out of sequence and it caused me to fail my last Deadlift.
That’s is just a sampling of studs and goats from my own workout journals over the past 5 years. Looking through them there is some of them that were in my journal multiple times which then prompted work on specific tasks. As you begin to compile your own list you will begin to find common themes then you simply need to create a plan to solve the given problem. As a reminder your coach has already given you multiple cues as how to do this… pay attention, if it’s not a goat on your list and coach says something maybe you just don’t realize it’s a goat… pay attention.
So you have a physical goat and don’t know what to do? Talk to your coach they will give you all the verbal advice you can soak in or they may write you a monthly program specific for you(available here). Follow it! Your coach built that plan based on their expert analysis of what you need to improve that goat. Your skill, strength, volume and mobility will all play a very important roll in how your coach writes a program. Pay attention to what, how and why.
So you have a mental goat and don’t know what to do? Guess what you aren’t the first athlete and you won’t be the last. In fact almost every athlete will have some sort of mental deficiency while training at some point or another. You’ve probably heard us say "PR everyday". You have to be extremely positive and mentally tough to do this and believe that you did. Here is how you are going to start… -Imagine we did “Fran” today and you cut a minute off your previous time. PR! Done, that was easy! -Imagine we did “Fran” today and you added a minute to your previous time. No apparent PR. We are going to need to dig deeper. But you did the first 21 of both thrusters and pull ups unbroken… BAM Pull up PR, 95# thruster PR! -Imagine we did “Fran” today and you added a minute to your previous time. No apparent PR. We broke all the sets of thrusters and pull ups. Today you came in and you didn’t feel like being at the gym, you didn’t want to do “Fran” today but you did anyway… PR showing up when you didn’t want to.
No one here is saying that you need to celebrate your “I showed up PR” in the same fashion as “I cut a minute of my Fran time PR”. But we need to walk away from most of your training days with a smile on our face. Some days it’s easy to see the results, some days you have to stretch a bit. Remember though, every day you’re at the gym, you’re there and getting better. When you look back through your studs and goats remember to get better at getting better and work to place yourself in an environment in which it’s easy to get and stay positive.
Practice this at your next session: 1. Write down your 3 studs and 3 goats. 2. Write down your PR for the day.
BZ
Are any of these your goats? Sign up for a free intro session, we can help!
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