Barbell Logic Barbell Logic

Not all metrics are created equal. Learn about the hierarchy of metrics, including targets to improve (TTIs) & key performance indicators (KPIs) and ensure you are measuring what matters.
Not All Metrics Are Created Equal: TTIs & KPIs
Two main categories of metrics exist to help measure progress toward strategic goals and gauge the health of the company: targets to improve (TTIs) and key performance indicators (KPIs).
TTIs are your top set of metrics, which have to directly impact your strategic priorities. Your strategic priorities need to align with your tenets and core values.
If these metrics improve, you have moved closer to or met your strategic priorities. These are not monthly or quarterly (though you measure them monthly and quarterly and probably more often than that) but likely annual priorities and TTIs.
KPIs are snapshots of the health of the company. If they improve, they should help your TTIs and strategic priorities (for the most part).
Often times, these are metrics that lower-level employees may care about. The CEO does not need to get into the weeds of Instagram post performance, for example, but the social media manager does.
Some metrics will likely not move, but if they do move you need to identify why they moved (either to understand the success or address the underperformance).
For Barbell Logic this might be churn. A good example in another industry is engine temperature in an airplane. This should remain constant, but if it starts to go up you need to address it quickly.
Not All Metrics Are Created Equal: Hierarchy of Metrics
What you measure focuses your attention, so pick your metrics carefully. The CEO should not be looking at 100s of metrics. Improvements in your TTIs must actually move you closer toward your strategic priorities.
For example, if a strategic priority for you is to earn $50k in coaching revenue this year, revenue is a TTI. KPIs that align with this may be churn, clients, cold calls, and life time value of clients.
Make sure your metrics align with your priorities and your priorities align with your values and tenets. Prioritize metrics: do not measure metrics just because you can.
Not all metrics are created equal.
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How does consistency help us reach our goals? We explore the fundamental but undervalued lynchpin to success that is consistency.
Consistency: Lynchpin for Success Repeated action brings you toward your goal. Obviously, if you want to learn Latin, you need to study Latin regularly - studying Mandarin Chinese will not help.
That being said, a mediocre plan that you consistently follow is better than the "perfect" plan followed sporadically.
Fitness influencers like to argue about the perfect program, the best exercises, the proper technique, and many other things. None of these things matter if you do not train regularly.
The difficult part of this is that you have to put in the effort for a long time before seeing the results you want.
Consistency: Compliance & Technique This is about actions, not outcome, though the actions bring you to your desired outcome.
Compliance - following the actions that bring you toward your goal - does not mean following a rigid plan perfectly without any possibility or flexibility for deviation.
Rather, it means regularly performing actions that bring you toward your goal no matter what. You train whether you are motivated or not. That may mean bodyweight exercises, shorter workouts, fewer workouts, but it means you do not "go dark" for periods of time.
Consistency of technique, as it relates to strength pursuits, is also undervalued. Having a repeatable way to perform an exercise helps provide a clear measuring stick, let's you know if you completed a repetition or not, helps prevent injury, and targets the muscle groups as desired.
Pursue consistency, because nothing matters as much as this.



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Are you struggling to identify your core values? Use this bottom-up hack to identify your core values.
Struggling to Identify Your Core Values!?
Matt has heard that, despite his discuss on developing and defining your core values, and its importance, many are still struggling on how to actually get this done.
Matt was working with leadership at Barbell Logic years back on a business trip, and he and the team identified that they needed to work to identify 5-year strategic priorities.
They had extremely limited time, but using some simple techniques, they were able to establish Barbell Logic's tenets quickly, using a bottom-up approach and the pomodoro technique.
Helpful Hack to Identify Your Core Values
The team had hundreds of sticky notes and a blank wall in the AirBnB they were staying in. Separately, they each wrote down as many important tasks as they could think of.
Once done, they stood back, and began to group them together. Groups became larger groups, as patterns emerged.
What emerged from this process was the 4 tenets that Barbell Logic still has to this day: serve, grow, teach, steward.

Another tool you can use to really identify which tasks you should stop and which you need to prioritize and protect, write down your tasks in the four quadrants of the Eisenhower matrix.
These tips and tricks can help you if you are struggling to identify your core values.

This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.
Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.

Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE!
No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/

Connect with the hosts
Matt on Instagram Niki on Instagram Andrew on Instagram Connect with the show
Barbell Logic on Instagram Podcast Webpage Barbell Logic on Facebook Or email podcast@barbell-logic.com

Learn how to get beyond the sticking points, where failure and quitting too often arise but opportunity and long-term success await those who intelligently persevere.
Minimum Effective Action: Where is the Progress? PRs have stopped, you're not feeling as good as you had been, you'll not looking forward to your time in the gym like you had been.
Sometimes it takes longer to realize than you would think, but suddenly you realize things are not going as you would like them to go (and as they had been before). What do you do?
Because recovery is the limiting factor, it is helpful to think through different areas of your life that contribute to recovery and where you might be falling short or missing the mark:
sleep (quality & quantity) eating (quality, quantity, consistency) alcohol protein routine (do you have one right now?) stress You will likely identify an area or multiple where you are not doing as well as you can. For example, maybe you've fallen out of your normal routine during the summer, partly by drinking more. The drinking has reduced your sleep quality and quantity and also your protein and fiber.
Tightening things up, reducing alcohol, and reestablishing your routine can help.
Minimum Effective Action: Consistency & Path of Least Resistance Identifying the path forward when you want to make changes can be hard. Really, the simple, hard, effective way is the way forward. Focus on one or two things, and do them consistently.
The change needs to be something you can see yourself doing indefinitely. IT needs to become a habit, so that when you do not have discipline OR motivation, it is the easy thing to do.
For example, for Andrew and Niki they feel bad when they do not work or they eat bad food. It has become easy for them to eat healthier and train because otherwise they very quickly identify they feel bad and see the negative consequences.
Take the minimum effective action to reach your goals.



Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.


Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE!
No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/

Connect with the hosts
Matt on Instagram Niki on Instagram Andrew on Instagram Connect with the show
Barbell Logic on Instagram Podcast Webpage Barbell Logic on Facebook Or email podcast@barbell-logic.com

Learn how to prioritize thinking. Take time to improve your approach to those most important pursuits and aspects of your life.
Prioritize Thinking: The Importance of Thinking
Taking time out to think matters. Why?
As Matt has discussed in recent podcasts, and his his upcoming book Undoing Urgency, we need to set up habits and systems in our life that help us actually spend time with the most important things in our life.
How do we spend time with these most important things?
Thinking helps ideas arise, whether they be things we need to stop, do better or different, or start.
How does one do this, though? How does one actually take time to think?
Prioritize Thinking: When Do You Think Best?
Matt has identified a few conditions that need to occur for him to think well, and then a few different environments where he tends to think well.
Matt things best after:
he has slept he has cleared urgent work The first may seem obvious, but it is truly critical. You cannot think well if you are tired. For Matt, this occurs after a good night of sleep or nap.
Of course, Matt does not immediately wake up and start thinking, but rather after taking care of some quick tasks, making coffee, and clearing his head, he can think.
Critically, he eliminates urgent work. It is difficult to think about the important when urgent tasks are pressing on your mind.
Some of the best environments for him to think include the following:
walking (alone or with wife) long drives manual labor vacation sauna or similar quiet times Matt tends to have an initial brain dump when an idea arises, and he makes sure to take quick bulleted notes down (don't worry about spelling, format, etc. just get the ideas down).
Later, when he has more time, he fleshes the ideas out.
On a long drive, following this method, he developed the idea for Barbell Logic Online Coaching.
Prioritize thinking!
This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.
Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.

Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE!
No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/

Connect with the hosts
Matt on Instagram Niki on Instagram Andrew on Instagram Connect with the show
Barbell Logic on Instagram Podcast Webpage Barbell Logic on Facebook Or email podcast@barbell-logic.com

Learn how to get beyond the sticking points, where failure and quitting too often arise but opportunity and long-term success await those who intelligently persevere.
Get Beyond the Sticking Points: Frustration, Failure, & Quitting There is a time around 6 weeks into an attempted habit implementation, new diet, or workout routine, where people tend to quit.
The early, easy gains end; the long-term changes the person wants have not really been seen; and the path forward remains unclear.
This is when most people quit. They build a habit of quitting, not knowing how to get beyond this common sticking points.
If approached with wisdom and perseverance, these times are actually doors to long-term success.
Get Beyond the Sticking Points: Perseverance & Long-Term Success These times are great times to ask for help or dig deeper. For lifting, signing up for online coaching can be great (real online coaching where you get technique feedback and personalized programming) or go in for an in-person technique check up with a professional coach.
If you cannot afford this or, for some reason, do not want to seek a coach, you have to educate yourself and become a coach.
Piling more stress on in and of itself typically does not work. Pulling the stress back often does not work. The stress-recovery-adaptation period must be elongated, no longer one stress event with time afterword, but rather a period of time where you stress yourself, build up fatigue where fitness decreases, and then allow for recovery to allow fatigue to go down, fitness to come up, and ultimately cause more performance (hopefully a PR).
Getting through these sticking points, however, is really the key to long-term success. You have to be able to handle unexpected bad times, keep going, but keep going intelligently so you do not burn out.
Get beyond the sticking points. Learn how to build life-long health and fitness habits. Strength is for everyone. Strength is for life.



Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.


Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE!
No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/

Connect with the hosts
Matt on Instagram Niki on Instagram Andrew on Instagram Connect with the show
Barbell Logic on Instagram Podcast Webpage Barbell Logic on Facebook Or email podcast@barbell-logic.com