AMGRAP and Standards in Life

Another podcast idea today. I was doing EDT training by Charles Staley and it occurred to me that as many rounds as possible is best done as an AMGRAP. That's A-M-G-R-A-P and that stands for as many good rounds as possible. The reason this distinction is important is because when you practice something, what you practice, you perfect. And if you're doing anything less than good form, excellent form, ideally, then you're going to be getting less than good form, less than excellent form.

So quite often when people are doing training methods like EDT or CrossFit, they just try to get the weight, whatever it is they're lifting, from point A to point B and they don't really worry about their technique, at least not when they start to get tired. In a competition, that makes sense to a point because if the standard is get the weight from the floor to overhead, it doesn't really matter how you do it, depending on what the contest is. But if you actually are training to become good at the technique and to save your joints and to not hurt yourself, then good technique, excellent technique is important.

And then the weight, in this instance, because we're talking about exercise, is incidental to the movement itself. How this is a paradox, no. Scratch that. How this is a parallel to life is you have to decide what your standards are with your own behavior. And then the best thing you can do is practice living up to that standard. Now that might take steps. You can't just do it all at once. So if the behavior is quite complex, you might have to break it down. But then that chunk of the full skill, the full behavior, you want to have a specific and well-understood, a very clear standard.

And then you practice that. Because again, whatever it is you're practicing, that's what you're perfecting. So think about your own life and what you want to hold yourself to as a standard. And then consider it an AM-GRAP. Consider it as many rounds as, sorry, consider it as many good rounds as possible. Do that long enough with enough practice and it becomes automatic. It becomes a habit and then you don't have to think about it. Then the form, the technique, whether it's exercise or another skill in life, just is natural.