Patience and Ambition:  Opposite, yet mutually integral to winning.

Patience- promotes calculation, timing, discipline and recuperation

 

Ambition- promotes action, supreme confidence, aggressive tactics, and defiance of the odds

 

There are many men with ambition but no patience who quit an endeavor shortly after they start.  There are many men with patience but no ambition who settle for mediocrity and don’t take risks.

In lifting, the overly ambitious skip warmups, lift too heavy too often, or lack consistency.  The overly patient never break plateaus, train too infrequently, and shy from heavy weights.

On the battlefield of life, patience is what tells you when to prepare a fortification, pivot your forces, pull back, hide, wait for the right moment to strike and to live to fight another day.  Ambition is what tells you when to march upon your enemy faster than seemed possible, ambition is when one man’s courage can inspire an entire army otherwise ready to retreat, and ambition is slamming your sword into your enemy’s neck with such ferocious authority that he never even lifts his sword in an attempt to defy his fate.

The man who balances his ambition with patience, wins.

 

An excellent method to obtain steady progress in the squat is to alternate between front squats and back squats every three to four weeks.  This strategy has the effect of ratcheting up anterior and posterior strength and muscular development in a complimentary fashion.  This is only an approximate dichotomy as front squats are also conducive to developing the upper back, since to cave forward in the upper back during a front squat generally means dropping the weight and missing the lift.

Front squat emphasis:  Quads, abs, mid and upper back

Back squat emphasis:  Hamstrings, adductors, lower back, traps

Alternating at the three to four week interval tends to allow enough time to accumulate results in one of the lifts while avoiding the occurrence of repetitive stress injuries.  If you’ve been predominately favoring one style of squatting over the other for a long time, you may want to switch to the opposite style for a longer run of six to eight weeks to balance the body and allow time for any inflammation, pain, etc., induced by the alternative style to resolve.  After doing so, you could then settle into the recommended three to four week rotation schedule.

Think of repeatedly climbing a ladder using only one arm.  That is roughly analogous to the inefficiency of chasing higher squat numbers without utilizing both primary variations in equal measure.  Changing the style also keeps training mentally stimulating and adds a sense of urgency to pushing PRs before it’s time to rotate to the opposite style.  Switch it up and crush plateaus.

Quit thinking debt is okay.  Quit buying things you don’t need.

Some do leverage debt successfully, mostly those with deep pockets to begin with or access to more capital to shore up losses and roll another die at the roulette wheel.  If you have a solid idea and plan for a business, that is a different scenario and leveraging debt may be warranted, but I’m addressing the man who aspires to freedom and a modest level of material comfort by means of a job and career, or those who would like to start a business from a position of security to allow for time to let the business mature and yield reliable income without needing to lean on loans or unsustainable bootstrapping.

The common man without substantial external advantage must mitigate and avoid debt.  Only then can he reliably produce wealth.  Eliminating debt first and then focusing on building wealth may not be the quickest path to financial success, but it is the surest.  Imagine if you had no house, car, or student loan payments.  Think of how much money you could invest and/or save each month, even on modest wages.

Interest is extolled when earned from an investment but dismissed when constantly lurking in a mortgage or student loan and excused as ‘tax deductible’ or ‘good debt’.  In reality that interest rate and amortization schedule is a very nice business for someone who printed the original sum just as easily as you type six digits.  Think about that.  They produced the money instantly and you then spend 30 years servicing the debt.  Think of debt repayment as a stone cold guaranteed investment with returns commensurate to the interest on the loan and seize the sure thing before you spend it away on things you don’t deserve to have as a person indebted or begin taking on riskier investments.

The main reason most people don’t pay off their debt head on is ignorance.  They don’t understand the many factors involved in our debt based monetary system, including interest rates, amortization, opportunity cost, inflation/fiat currency, high frequency trading, age of retirement income bracket, materialism and many other factors that undermine the probability of attaining financial success through a conventional approach that has ever fading viability.  The financial industry lackeys and pundits can talk about time value of money and average returns in the market and normalize the ten percent to your 401k route but in the end, if you don’t take control of your debt and materialism first, this world can swallow you whole.  Your ass will just be collateral on a perpetual treadmill that you only get to step off when you’re old, if you’re lucky and shrewd.

Understand what you owe and make an extremely aggressive plan to kill it.  It will likely require substantial sacrifices for as many as five or ten years.  You will also likely have to strive to make more money during that time to speed progress.  Follow the plan, and then enjoy your freedom.  You were meant to be free.  It doesn’t necessarily mean not working a job or starting a business, the difference is you now have a level of autonomy not common amongst your coworkers or competition.  You can be free to assert your skill and identity to a greater extent than those amongst you stifled by the financial, mental and spiritual burden of knowing if he steps too far out of line, if he takes too big a risk, his precious salary might not be there anymore to pay a mortgage or student loan.

More broadly, imagine a world where people are not held hostage to immoral agendas because of their debt.  Imagine employees less afraid to walk away from immoral or simply boring companies and bosses.  A world where the righteous individual has the financial strength to resist tyranny and injustice at every level of society.  Imagine the increase in charitable acts.  Imagine the creative energy that would be unleashed.  Image being able to keep the lion’s share of your wages each month.  Imagine being able to stop working for a few months or being able to retire early.  Imagine yourself as a free person.  With discipline and sacrifice, it is possible.