What is Your Performance Limit?

What I want to talk about today are the practical limits to training performance—in other words, how far can you go?  What is the maximum limit that you can achieve?

I could tell you a general platitude: the sky is the limit, the limit is where you set it, there are no limits, anyone can be president (in America).  These are ideals that are created because people as a whole have a relatively small understanding of what becoming motivated is or how to achieve the goals.

We all know that these statements aren’t true.  If they were, everyone would be at the peak of their abilities.  Are you at the peak of your abilities?  Have you achieved everything you are capable of?  Do you know how to get there—to tap the best part of you?  Only by focusing on the truth, and stepping behind the mask can a person actually advance.

Actions taken and behaviors control the level of performance that can be achieved in anything.  Those behaviors are much more important than limits imposed by a lack of talent or even the physical condition of the body.

So the platitudes are in theory correct.  Rarely do people pursue anything far enough to reach their real limit--the limit that is built into them.  So, in theory with the right behaviors and the right actions, anyone can become president, and the sky is the limit.

The limits of action and behavior are real, however, because they are the real things that restrict people.  Ignoring them ignores the things that must be controlled to perform well.

The most important action is repetition.  Doing the same task, properly varied, over and over again.  Performance for anyone can be increased by increasing the reps.

Eventually, behavioral and lifestyle limits will pop up.  Your life needs to engineered to allow you to do high repetitions.  You need to have the behaviors in place that will have you do those reps.  The truth is, you can’t simply do reps and expect everything else to bend around your desire.  You have to control yourself and your life to permit those repetitions.

The first major performance limit that you will face is dependent on the number of repetitions that you are able to complete.  The starting point for a person, whether it’s high or low, is unimportant.  A training system should be able to easily adapt to even very bad positions.  So, get excuses based around your starting point out of your head.  “Ohh, I’m not strong enough.  I’m not talented.  I’m too old.  I’m too young.  It’s too different?  I’ll look stupid.”  I’ve heard these excuses thousands of times, and made them even myself. These are unimportant reasons. 

If you can only do a thing once, every other day to start, then that’s your start.

Your maximum skill level is determined by repetitions.  Without moving steadily up in repetitions, skill level will not change.  That is the simple truth.  Repetitions determine how far you can progress—not starting point.