We were slowly turning into robots.
At least that was the complaint.
It was the ninth time we had rehearsed the ninety-minute long presentation and the team was getting agitated.
Finally, someone spoke up.
“John, if we just keep reciting this line-by-line it’s going to sound like a script. We aren’t going to come across as genuine. There will be no spontaneity. No one is going to believe us.”
At that moment, John placed his hands gently on the table, took a deep breath and delivered a piece of wisdom that has since permeated my business career, my training approach and even my hobby of guitar playing.
“The only way to truly be spontaneous is to be perfectly rehearsed.”
John was the CEO of our sister agency when I was working in advertising prior to making the leap to fitness. Sure, our office was located in NYC and John’s shop was headquartered in a nowhere town in the mid-Atlantic. But the lack of fancy address didn’t stop his agency from being more financially successful, having the better clients and producing work that filled the awards annuals. In fact, that agency still produces work you see on television today.
John and his team were brought in to help us pitch a new piece of business that we desperately needed. Clearly, we were going to do things his way.
There is a prevailing belief that for a person to be successful, truly successful, they must be a natural. They must be touched by the finger of God and endowed with wonderful talent from birth. Or what they refer to in the educational system as being gifted.
In fact, we are so convinced that talent is genetic that we often believe that the gifted person isn’t even aware of what it is they are doing. No way Lebron James actually studies game tape or considers strategy. He just goes out there and performs. In fact, as fanatics, we might even believe we understand the game more deeply than he does.
Same with the 13 year old playing a note perfect rendition of Rachmaninoff’s “Prelude in G Sharp Minor”. There’s no way that she understands music theory or song structure. She’s just a savant who intuitively understands these things without needing to apply any thought.
With rare exception, nothing could be further from the truth.
Of course genetics play a role. It’s very hard to imagine Lebron being as successful of a basketball player if he wasn’t six foot nine. But just because athletes or musicians exhibit mind blowing skills and performances it doesn’t also mean that they aren’t students of the game - being thoughtful about their approach, structuring their practices and researching historical context.
It takes a lot of structured practice to be good at improvisation.
Yet, so many of us come to the gym and think we should be able to do everything that is in front of us with maximal levels of technique, strength and athleticism. That our range of motion should be optimal on day one. That we should be able to PR our lifts every time we touch the bar.
And if we can’t it’s a matter of us not having the gifts to do so.
But certainly - and hopefully as you learned quickly - that is not the case. That bench press PRs and full range of motion squats do not just happen automatically.
To bring it back to CEO John they need to be rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed so that when the moment does come and PR weights are on the bar you can trust in what you’ve developed, not necessarily what you’ve been gifted, let it all go and perform.
Now, there are two more very important tips I can give you here beyond just showing up for rehearsal or, as we call them in the gym biz, training sessions.
The first is that you must focus on achieving and reinforcing optimal technique. Putting in the work is great but if you are putting in the wrong work, well, that isn’t going to help you much. In fact, every shitty rep you do takes you further and further away from optimal technique. And, last I checked, optimal technique is what delivers maximal results.
A lot of people don’t have the patience to work on technique. They want to believe they move the way they move. That they just want to grip it and rip it. And I should know. That was me for a long time. But if I’d had more patience to actually focus on how I was moving I’d probably have more gold medals around my neck and look a lot better in a tank top by now.
The second is to follow a thoughtful and sensible training program. This will ensure that you are getting a training effect and appropriately challenging and progressing your capabilities. A good program also ensures that you don’t YOLO it every time in the gym - trying to PR every lift and failing as many lifts as you make.
There’s a time for PRs. There’s even a time for technique to break down. But the rehearsal should really revolve around makeable percentages of lifts performed with a real respect for developing and reinforcing great technique.
Nothing would wrap this story up better than telling you that we nailed the presentation (we did!) and won the business (we didn’t) and the agency took us to Disneyland to celebrate (have still never been).
No one won the business. They pulled the plug on the project rather than awarding it.
But to this day it was the best presentation I’d ever been a part of.
We did the work. We were well rehearsed.
And that put us in the perfect position to just let it all go and let ‘er rip.