And Now For Something Completely Different...

by Christian Thibaudeau - 03/24/2011

I owe this one to my friend Patrick Gagnon. We were discussing time management and he told me a story. But the story is also very applicable to training.

A man brings a big jar and shown it to a group of people. In front of them he fills it up completely with big rocks. "Is the jar full?" he asks...

People answer that it is, indeed, full.

"No it's not" he replied... and then proceeded to pour some very small rocks that fit in the empty spaces.

"Is it full now?"

"Yes, now it answer" said the crowd...

"No it's not..." he then proceeded to pour sand in the jar, there was still some room. "So now it's full, right?"

"YES!" was the unanimous answer.

"Not yet!" ... he then poured some water in there. "Okay now it really is full"... "What's the moral of the story?" he asked...

"If you truly want, you can always do more" was the group's answer.

"Not quite! It means that if you want to do as much as you can, always start with the biggest things, don't waste your time on the small stuff, you can always add that later on"....

And it's true, if you were to fill the jar with sand and water first, there is no way you would have been able to fit the rocks in there!

Same holds true for training... if you focus on minor things... wanting to do blast every muscle from every angle with a myriad of isolation exercises you wont be able to do a lot of what is the most important: big compound movements.

However if you do as much as you can on the big basics, you'll find that you have some more room for "finishing touches"... if anything doing the big basics first will activate your nervous system and will allow you to do more isolation stuff and do it better.