Many concepts in life are universal. We might learn them in one context, and when we remove the specifics of that context, we’ll find the concept applies to almost anything in life. While writing the last observations post, although it was about guns and shooting, some words from powerlifter Jim Wendler came to mind.

I wrote of how I felt some students would be well-served to step back to a beginners/fundamentals class before progressing further. I mentioned how that sort of thing is hard, because it’s a blow to the ego. Jim writes about “starting too light”:

My coaches emphasized this to me when I was in high school, but unfortunately, I didn’t listen. Hopefully you will. Starting too light allows for more time for you to progress forward. It’s easy for anyone – beginner or advanced – to want to get ahead of themselves. Your lifts will go up for a few months, but then they’ll stall – and stall, and stall some more. Lifters get frustrated and don’t understand that the way around this is to prolong the time it takes to get to the goal. You have to keep inching forward. This is a very hard pill to swallow for most lifters. They want to start heavy, and they want to start now. This is nothing more than ego, and nothing will destroy a lifter faster, or for longer, than ego.

Forget that he’s talking about weightlifting. He’s talking about keeping your ego in check. Start lower than you think, start lighter than you think. Maybe you think you’re the best shooter around, but you’d still be served well to take the school’s intro class — even if it’s well below your perception of your skills, there’s something to be learned. If you try to jump in at too high a level, that’s just ego and will ultimately destroy you.

I wrote:

Sometimes improvement requires taking a step back and regressing down the ladder a bit, but only so you can make your foundation more solid. To expand upon that metaphor, if you realized your ladder was planted in sand, how high do you think you could climb? But if you started up the ladder, realized things were getting shaky, then climbed back down, poured some concrete around the legs, then climbed back up, how much higher do you think you could now climb? Don’t be afraid to back down and pour concrete.

To bring it over to lifting, a hallmark of a good program is progressive/incremental resistance: the program always strives to add more weight, more reps. If you look at the Wendler 5/3/1 program, it’s divided into 4 week cycles. When the next cycle starts, you increase your weights by a certain amount (e.g. 5# on bench press) and continue along. While a 5# jump on your bench press every 4 weeks doesn’t sound like much, over the course of a year that can mean a 60# increase, which is significant!

The reality of lifting, however, is that the linear progression will not always happen — you will stall. What’s the solution? Back down. There are numerous ways to calculate this. One thing Jim writes:

You’ll eventually come to a point where you can’t make any more progress on a lift. You won’t be able to hit the sets and reps you’re supposed to hit, and the weights will start to get too heavy. When this happens, I simply take 90% of my max (either a 1RM or a rep max) and start all over again.

[…]

If you’re really starting out with 10% less than your actual maxes, you can expect to go through 5-7 cycles at a minimum before you stall out. I’ve gone through 8 before having to back off.

You see, it’s actually expected that you’ll stall, that you’ll have to back off. You don’t have to back off far, just “90%” of what you were doing, but paring yourself back just that slight bit helps you make longer term progress. If you allow your ego to remain in control, you’ll only try to forge ahead, will eventually hit a wall, you’ll never get over the wall, and ultimately you’ll fail to achieve your goals. If however you back off, if you go “beneath your skills” and maybe take a beginner class (again), you’ll come out of it stronger and able to progress further.

And so, the same with shooting. Back down. If you get to an intermediate-level class and find yourself struggling, take the class again, or maybe take the previous class in the curriculum progression and reestablish some fundamentals. Ultimately this will allow you to progress longer and ultimately reach higher goals and loftier heights. If you continue to be ego-driven, you won’t achieve your goals. Taking 2 steps back so you can take 5 steps forward only helps you in the long run.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about shooting, or weightlifting, or anything else in life. The principles are universal. Keep your ego in check, be honest with yourself. Never be afraid to take a few steps back if that means over the long term you’ll progress further.