How to Be Better at Almost Everything

by Pat Flynn

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  Here is a sample plan that you can use to get started on your general fitness. (See the end of the plan for more information and a link to find out more.)

  General

  Walk 20–60 minutes per day. Use the following morning-recharge/mobility routine: 2 minutes of jumping rope; 5 minutes of Turkish get-ups; 2 minutes of Hindu push-ups.

  DAY 1:

  Push, Hinge—5 sets of 3 @ 5 RM.

  DAY 2:

  Squat, Pull—3 sets of 8 @ 12 RM. Carry: 3 sets × 1 minute.

  DAY 3:

  Interval running. 10-second sprint; 30-second jog; 1-minute brisk walk. Repeat for 15–20 minutes.

  DAY 4:

  Push, Hinge—3 sets of 8 @ 12 RM.

  DAY 5:

  Pull, Squat—5 sets of 3 @ 5 RM. Carry: 3 sets × 1 minute.

  DAY 6:

  Push, Pull, Hinge, Squat—3 sets x 5 reps @ 7 RM.

  DAY 7:

  Walking and mobility only.

  Exercise Options

  Visit my website at www.chroniclesofstrength.com to find tutorials for all these exercises.

  PUSH:

  Military press, bench, dip, push-up.

  PULL:

  Pull-up, chin-up, bent-over row.

  HINGE:

  Deadlift, single deadlift, hip thrust, kettlebell swing.

  SQUAT:

  Front squat, back squat, goblet squat, split squat.

  CARRY:

  Farmer walk, overhead walk, rack walk.

  Notes

  @ RM means “at rep max,” so 7 RM means to use a weight you could lift for no more than 7 reps on that particular exercise. Intensity is paramount—be sure you’re going heavy enough.

  Recommended Additional Reading and Resources

  Intervention (Dan John); Paleo Workouts for Dummies (Kellyann Petrucci, Pat Flynn); “101 Kettlebell Workouts” (Pat Flynn), free at 101kettlebellworkouts.com. My YouTube channel for tutorials on the exercises: www.youtube.com/user/supmuhhumbruh.

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  To be a generalist in fitness is to be fit at many things, not just one. So we can say people are “fitness generalists” to the extent they can do many tasks well even if they can’t do any one task best. Everyone got that? Please put that down in your notes. This is the first principle, you see. GPP > SPP (Skill Stacking > Specialization).

  Listen up because this next part is important. Since I just made the case for why we’re going to focus on being generalists and not specialists, now I have to tell you how we’re going to go about it. And this part is going to sound a little ironic at first, but I promise it’ll make sense once we get into a couple of examples. The reason it’s going to sound ironic is this: a generalist is really just a short-term specialist. I understand that I just spent the past fifteen minutes arguing against specialization, but what I was really arguing against was not the use of specialization but being a specialist, and there is a great deal of difference between the two. The use of specialization is just focusing on something to get better at it, whereas being a specialist is a commitment to becoming the best at something because you think that’s where you’re going to find success or happiness. A specialist is someone who uses long-term specialization, then. But a generalist is someone who uses Short-Term Specialization. Here, sit up straight, and let me explain.

  The generalist—and this doesn’t matter whether it’s in fitness or anything else—doesn’t get good at (almost) everything by trying to do everything at once. That would be a fool’s assumption. Such an approach would only dilute effectiveness and cause a person to go mostly nowhere. Instead, generalists must learn to surge and maintain. They must learn to push in one area while not letting everything else fall completely to shreds. This is your second principle: a good generalist is just a short-term specialist. Mark it down.

  For example, if you want to get better at lifting weights, then you should spend a period doing precisely that, and we should make weightlifting the initial focus of our program. That doesn’t mean we can’t still run or stretch or practice handstands; it only means we’ve established a priority. It means that if we are ever caught in a situation where we only have fifteen minutes to work out, we should spend most of that fifteen minutes squatting or deadlifting or whatever. Every skill is obtained by practicing that skill specifically, so we use Short-Term Specialization to bring up whatever skill set we need as efficiently as possible, and once we’ve achieved a sufficiency at that skill, we can then toss it in maintenance mode and put our attention on a new skill. So maybe we go from lifting weights four times a week to lifting weights two times a week and focus more on running or gymnastics or what have you. These are just examples to get the principle across—don’t worry about the details yet. Simply know for now that we must devote a lot of attention and energy to whatever we want to get better at, but at the same time, we should allocate enough attention and energy to prevent everything else from deteriorating.

  The principle of Short-Term Specialization also relies on the fact that no skill is quite as difficult to preserve as it is to learn in the first place. Here’s what I mean. It takes a lot more effort to get your deadlift to double your body weight than it does to keep it there. It also takes a lot more effort to learn a handstand than it does to maintain a handstand. Some skills are surely more slippery than others in the sense that they fall off sooner than you’d like, but no skill takes quite so much effort to maintain as it does to gain. Think, for example, of riding a bike: it takes a while to learn but hardly any effort to remain fairly decent at it. This is why we put more attention and energy into building a skill than into holding on to it—that’s how this whole thing works. But at the same time, we can’t expect a skill to maintain itself; we still need to allot some amount of practice time to it even if that amount of time isn’t as much as it was before.

  If we’re looking at our curriculum, then, maybe we’ll spend a unit on strength and a unit on conditioning and a unit on flexibility and a unit on something else, and while each of those units will have a clear “specialization,” we’ll still keep up with everything we’ve practiced so far. We’ll still lift in the conditioning unit, and we’ll still stretch in the strength unit, even if that isn’t where we spend most of our time. Our greatest focus will be on whatever the theme of the unit is. Does that make sense? And have you put it in your notes? Because this is a very important principle. You cannot be a good generalist without knowing what Short-Term Specialization is and how to rotate periods of emphasis on each particular skill set.

  Essentially, what I’m saying is that if you took a snapshot of a generalist’s training program, you might assume that person is a specialist, but then when you zoom out and look at how the plan switches emphasis over time, you’ll start to see what we’re really after: becoming capable of, and ready for, almost everything.

  This brings us to our next principle, the Rule of 80 Percent, which states that if 100 percent is “best in the world” at something, then we should never go beyond 80 percent “good” at anything. This might sound even more peculiar than the last principle, but again, it will make a lot of sense if you can just sit still and let me explain it to you. I appreciate your patience, I really do. You’re such good children. And handsome!

  Imagine our goal is to become better than most people at most things (which, as generalists, it is). Then when, I must ask, do you think we will ever need to be more than 80 percent good at something? The answer is never—you will never need to be more than 80 percent good at one skill unless your goal is to become a specialist, which would obviously defeat the entire purpose of this conversation. So that’s reason number one. Reason number two is that 80 percent good at something is already so far beyond masterful that it’s hard to imagine any situation where getting better at that something will contribute significantly to any goal that isn’t lifelong specialization. For example, say you want to be generally physically fit and you can benchpress close to five hundred pounds, which is in at lea
st the eightieth percentile of powerlifting, but you’re fifty pounds overweight. Adding more weight to your bench press is not going to help you achieve the goal of becoming more generally fit. At this point, I think nutrition is your problem. I think it’s time to learn another skill.

  The Rule of 80 Percent is really set up as a sort of shockproof BS detector in the sense that it’s supposed to help us figure out what our problem isn’t. Because the closer you get to that 80 percent mark, the more you can be sure that particular skill isn’t your problem. Another example is if you can run fifty miles but can’t lift your own body weight up to a pull-up bar. At this point, it doesn’t seem like cardio is your problem—lack of strength is your problem.

  Finally, I want you to know that 80 percent is the cutoff, not the goal, since most of us will never need to get anywhere near that proficient at something to get what we need out of it. Most people don’t need to get to 80 percent of the world’s heaviest deadlift to achieve what they need out of deadlifting; they probably need to get to only 20 to 40 percent. All the Rule of 80 Percent states is that we should never go beyond 80 percent good at something, because as soon as we do, we’re no longer generalists.

  Did everybody get that? Great! Because now we can talk about our next principle, which is Integration > Isolation. This is perhaps the most complicated principle but also the one most worth understanding, because so many people get so confused about skill development, when it really doesn’t need to be complicated at all.

  All Integration > Isolation says is that you should practice whatever skills you want to improve in the context of whatever goal you want to achieve. Take an exercise like the pull-up, for example. This is a skill that can be used to achieve a variety of goals. You can use the pull-up to build strength, muscle, or endurance. But how you practice that technique will determine the effect. For example, if I want to use pull-ups to develop strength, then I should keep my reps low and the weight high by adding a belt with some plates attached. If I want to use pull-ups to build muscle, then I should do a few more reps with a little less weight. Finally, if I want to use pull-ups to increase endurance, I should do as many reps as I can. Now, I get that some of you think this example is absurd because you can’t imagine even doing one pull-up at this point. But let’s imagine pull-ups aren’t some insanely difficult thing, which they shouldn’t be, and won’t be, once I’m through with you.

  The point of Integration > Isolation is that to the extent that it is practical, we should practice every skill and technique within the context of generating an outcome. If we’re on a strength program, then we should practice only the exercises we need to build the most amount of strength, and we should practice those exercises according to the sets and reps that will make us strong. There is no use in learning exercises at this point that don’t directly attribute to our goal, even if those exercises seem interesting. For example, in this case, there’s no reason we should be spending time learning how to breaststroke. The breaststroke is a fine exercise and useful for endurance (because swimming is useful for endurance), but we shouldn’t spend most of our time during a strength phase in a swimming pool, geriatric workouts excluded. This would be like learning to draw cartoons when you want to create realistic oil paintings of landscapes.

  Integration > Isolation forces us to start with the end in mind and devise a plan based on what we want to achieve. Mostly it helps us focus specifically on the skills we need to practice to produce a particular outcome. For example, if we want to get better at running, then we should put together a plan that teaches stride mechanics and features protocols to increase aerobic capacity, and preferably we should be able to practice stride mechanics within the context of those aerobic protocols. In other words, we practice the technique of running within the running program itself. What I’m talking about is being as efficient as possible and focusing our attention and effort as specifically as possible on exactly the things we need to improve and not wasting any time on extraneous or irrelevant activity. What is extraneous or irrelevant activity? Simply anything that isn’t directly related to the goal. Bench press is extraneous or irrelevant if the goal is to become a better runner, but it’s not extraneous or irrelevant if the goal is to build a bigger chest or upper body strength. This principle requires context, and just about any skill or technique can be validated by it so long as you’re clear on what you want to achieve and what’s needed to achieve it.

  A running program probably shouldn’t focus overmuch on bench-pressing, though we should (according to our third principle) bench-press every now and then just to maintain what we’ve already earned. And probably a strength program shouldn’t focus overmuch on running, though we should (again, according to our third principle) run every now and then to maintain that particular skill. Over time, we switch back and forth to further develop each of these areas independently.

  This brings us to our final principle: Repetition and Resistance. We can’t expect to get better at something without doing that something and finding ways to make it harder as we go. In other words, if we want to get stronger, we need to do an exercise and then add weight. Keep in mind, adding weight is increasing resistance. It isn’t enough to just do any old exercise however we feel like doing it. We must do the exercise we want to get better at, and we must find a way to challenge ourselves with it. Let’s take the example of push-ups, since I think that’s something everybody should be able to do, and if you can’t, then here’s your opportunity to learn. The first thing you need to understand is that you’re never going to get better at push-ups unless you actually practice them (repetition), and you’re never going to get past a certain point with push-ups unless you find ways to make them challenging (resistance). Maybe that means doing more push-ups in a set (density) or more push-ups throughout the day (volume) or adding weight to (or changing the angle of) your push-ups (intensity) or just doing them more often (frequency). All these variables are ways of increasing resistance, and all of them work, though some may work better for certain exercises than others. But also remember that how we challenge ourselves with push-ups should depend on the principle that we covered before this one (Integration > Isolation). So, for example, if we want to use push-ups to develop strength, we should focus more on adding intensity (increasing weight or altering the leverage), whereas if we want to use push-ups to develop endurance, we should focus more on adding density (increasing the number we do per set). Again, some context is needed, but for now we aren’t trying to get that specific; I just want you to understand the principles and their universality.

  Yes, universality. Because so far I’ve only spoken about how these principles apply to skills found within fitness, but perhaps it would now be appropriate to take off my gym shorts and provide a few analogies of how they might apply to other disciplines. (Except I won’t actually take my shorts off because you either go commando or you don’t, and look, I’ve made my decision. At some point you’re going to have to make yours.)

  Let’s imagine we want to get better at writing, and we’re looking at these five principles. First, we need to determine what kind of writing we want to get better at. Do we want to become better humor writers or fantasy novelists or what? Let’s say we want to become better humor writers (Short-Term Specialization); I think that’s a fine place to start and a useful skill, especially if you ever want to start a blog or write a book, since it’s a good thing to be able to make people laugh. Then we’ve got to think about the skills we need to get a chuckle out of someone. The first, it seems, would be the power of observation, since all humor is essentially just telling people the truth in a more efficient way than what they’re used to. For example, I saw a chuckle-worthy definition the other day that read, “Charity, verb: to make an ingrate.” I thought that was pretty good because it’s something to which everybody can relate. You probably remember a time when you opened your house to people and fed them dinner and let them shower, and did they ever say thanks? No, all they did was leave dishes
in the sink and hair in the drain. Then obviously you felt like asking them to leave, but you thought about what Jesus said on the mountain about people you can’t stand, though since you aren’t a Bible scholar, you can’t remember what it was, only you’re pretty sure it had something to do with being nice.

  So it seems to me that being funny comes down to surprising people with something they already think is the case. At least that’s part of it. So maybe you start developing your humor by paying better attention to what’s going on and taking notes of things that seem ironic. That’s Repetition and Resistance. And say you’re in the fitness field like I am, so maybe you pay particular attention to whatever ironies you see in the gym (Integration > Isolation), which, God knows, offers no small amount of material. Now, I don’t want to get too far into this just yet. I only want to point out how these principles apply no matter what skill you want to get better at. And obviously humor is an example of a skill that can attach to basically anything, so it fits in perfectly with the idea of a skill stack.

  Here’s how I’d like to wrap up this section: memorize these five principles and start to think of ways they might apply to something you want to get better at. Or use these five principles to assess why you didn’t improve at something as quickly as you would have liked. That’s what’s helpful about the way we’re doing things: you can apply the principles of generalism to get better quickly, and you can employ them to figure out where or why you’re stuck on something you’ve already started.

  In the next couple of sections, I’ll begin to outline what I believe are a series of essential skills, because if we’re going to acquire a stack of skills, we need a foundation on which to construct it. And that foundation should be composed of skills that are useful and awesome for everybody. So go use the bathroom if you need to, but hurry back. The fun is just about to begin.