Like it or not, there are times when you need to sell yourself, especially when you’re in business or even when you want to attract someone romantically. One of the more insightful books I have read is Pre-suasion by a guy named Robert Chaldini. It’s enlightening for business owners who need to acquire clients as well as anyone who otherwise wants to influence people’s perceptions and decisions.

The main idea is that you can predispose people to be receptive to persuasion by using psychological cues that unconsciously affect what feels most salient and important to them at any given moment. When you do this effectively, they think what you want them to think before you ever ask them to think it. Hence, you “pre-suade” them.

That got me thinking about the ways that keeping a nice physique cues people to think favorably of you. I emphasize that you need to be in visibly great shape because, frankly, human beings love eye candy. If you work out all the time but not intensively enough to have transformed your physique, your appearance alone will not have as much persuasive effect as it would if you were clearly a physical specimen.

It’s smart to be aware of these persuasive powers because, regardless of whether you’re selling anything or trying to influence people’s decisions, life is easier for you when people presume great things about you. So, let’s consider how your best body can set the table for a favorable response from others, even before you’ve ever interacted with them.

1 | Proactivity

No one gets in excellent shape by accident, so when people can see you’re physically fit, it tells them that you’re proactive. This primes them to believe you’re someone who does what needs to be done. Obviously, you don’t want to be seen as a procrastinator, and a nice physique is like a billboard signaling to everyone that you embrace responsibility. This weakens the natural inclination some would have to distrust you.

2 | Discipline

Maintaining an impressive body requires that you train frequently and consistently. Even people with no interest whatsoever in fitness know this, and when they see you, they perceive you to be highly disciplined. This is all the more so because most people struggle with being disciplined, especially when it comes to doing something arduous and non-compulsory. Discipline is a universally respected character trait and, as such, is arguably the most deeply persuasive power on this list. It signals that you’re reliable under challenging conditions and over the long haul. 

3 | Confidence

Having strong muscles, joints, and bones makes it easy to support your own weight. This manifests as good posture, which is underappreciated for its influence on social interactions. I say this because most people don’t work on improving either their static or dynamic posture. A straight back and shoulders. A long stride. A gaze set forward instead of down. These fundamentals of good posture project confidence from a mile away. Picking up on your confident air, others will be more primed to listen and cooperate with you.

4 | Competence

Directly related to no. 3, the fact is that being in good shape does genuinely build your confidence. It is not merely a projection, and a bonus is that people will be more receptive to you because your confidence hints that you’re also competent. They can see that your efforts have achieved an impressive outcome. With no other evidence to the contrary, the impression is that whatever it is that you do, you do it well.

5 | Energy

The energy you invest in training creates even more energy for you because it both increases the number and grows the size of mitochondria, the power plants of most cells in your body. This makes you significantly more energetic than the average Joe and Jane, and energy is magnetic. It draws people to you because it radiates positivity. Donald Trump torpedoed Jeb Bush’s presidential candidacy simply by labeling him “low-energy” in a live debate, but you need not utter a word to effect the opposite impression of yourself. An abundance of energy shines like a beacon to others around you.

This is knowledge you can apply to improve the outcomes of your interactions with people, but there is a caveat. While they’re more likely to presume good things about you because you look great, it’s up to you to demonstrate those finer qualities. Ultimately, the proof is in your behavior, and you must follow through. Here’s a hint: when you’ve already made a favorable impression, much like a top-quality steak about to go on the grill, it’s more important not to mess it up than it is to make it better.

Sayonara until next time.

*This message has not been authored in whole or in part by any artificial intelligence tools.

Have you ever thought about how spotting someone can help you understand relationships better? One of my recent talks on the Bounce Pep Channel was about spotting and networking, so I wanted to write about it in more detail for my readers. By the way, if you’re not subscribed to the Bounce Channel, you’re missing out on valuable insights, so get subscribed and stay inspired.

Spend enough time in the gym, and you’ll see someone spotting another person who’s lifting. You may even have been a spotter for someone before. The two primary reasons for spotting someone are to help them complete their most challenging reps and prevent them from injuring themselves while doing so. Safety is paramount, especially when lifting heavy weights. No one wants to fail the last rep of a bench press, for example, and have all that weight come crashing down onto their chest.

As a spotter, you operate in a spirit of goodwill. You’re there as a helper, and you show care and compassion to the lifter. Care, because you want them to overcome their plateaus and achieve gains. And compassion, because you don’t want them to injure themselves in the process. Your focus is on what the lifter can achieve.

This has two downstream effects. The first is that you establish or strengthen a connection with the person you’re spotting. He or she allows you to connect with them by trusting you. In fact, the spotter’s help and the lifter’s trust are key components of the next effect, which is a sense of community. People in healthy networks, like healthy communities, help and trust each other.

To summarize, we can say that spotting shows caring and compassion, and it builds connection and community. This is the spotter's 4C framework for networking that can help anyone become a person of influence.

Here’s the bottom line if you want to be a better networker: it’s about how you can help. A lot of people hate the idea of networking because they believe it’s contrived, robotic, and transactional, and it is when the person initiating it is not doing it to help someone else. If you approach networking as a mere means to get what you want, you will never be great at it because the other person has no reason to be interested.

Be a helper first, and the other person is more likely to want to help you out in return. When help becomes reciprocal, it establishes and expands networks. So, now that you understand the 4C framework, go out into the world and make it work for you. 

Sayonara until next time.

*This message has not been authored in whole or in part by any artificial intelligence tools.

I was doing walking lunges a few days ago, starting with just my body weight, and it was smooth sailing for the first set. Then I grabbed some dumbbells for my working sets, and things quickly got uncomfortable. The additional weight transformed the experience, and in each set, the closer I got to failure, the more I had to focus just to keep my balance, much less push up away from the floor. 

If you bench press, you can almost certainly press 30 kg while simultaneously thinking about dinner, the weather, or some other irrelevant matter. It’s easy, leaving your mind with plenty of mental bandwidth to wander. But press a much heavier amount of weight, say 150 kg, and nothing else matters in that moment. It’s because heavier weight necessarily sharpens your focus. 

The caveat is that you must commit to it first. When you lie down on the bench and worry yourself to death about how heavy the lift will be, it only compromises your commitment. You psyche yourself out before you even start. That is why you must commit, whether it’s easy or hard, before you attempt the lift*. 

You can break a heavy lift into four phases: you commit, start lifting, overcome resistance, and follow through. Commitment itself requires some level of focus. Then, as you progress through the lift, and the heavier the resistance, the more intensely you fight to overcome it. You invariably find that the amount of resistance you face and your level of focus are positively correlated.

In life, focusing can be hard. Many times, you have to attend to mundane matters that deliver no sense of personal fulfillment. On any given day, there are countless opportunities for your mind to wander, not least because the world is full of distractions whose purpose is to keep you entertained and comfortable. And not just you. We all sometimes seek an escape from the real world. 

But your time is limited and invaluable, and comfort itself becomes a problem when it lulls you into being complacent. You cannot be complacent and focused at the same time, and if you want to sharpen your ability to focus on getting important things done, embracing discomfort is a powerful approach. 

Think of discomfort as a heavy weight. It’s any matter you must tackle that requires a degree of struggle. But discomfort does not necessarily come from the difficulty of doing something. Many times, it’s due to unfamiliarity with it. Changing your behavior or attempting to do something new, even when it’s objectively simple, can require a mental shift that feels unnatural. Overcoming your internal resistance is the real struggle. 

When it’s hard to focus on something that must get done, think back to your bench press. Committing to fighting through discomfort will be key to sharpening your focus on any endeavor. The fact is that not everything you must do to elevate yourself or impact other people will be pleasant or easy. Do what others don’t and won’t do. Commit first, and your focus will follow.

Sayonara until next time.

*In a real lifting situation, for your safety, have a spotter on hand to help if there’s a risk of dropping the weight on yourself.

*This message has not been authored in whole or in part by any artificial intelligence tools.

Proper form is about no wasted effort and maximal effect with every rep. It requires that you slow down a bit and focus on doing and feeling the right things. It’s about more than just moving weight.

The lat pulldown machine is a showcase of people throwing proper form to the wind. Though they deserve kudos for doing something to stay in shape, you’ll see people swaying back and forth with each rep as if they’re in a rocking chair. The problem is typically that they’ve never learned the proper form in the first place. They’re focused on moving the weight by any means necessary, but the excessive motion takes away from training the lats properly.

The point of targeting a muscle is to train it effectively. Ideally, no effort is misdirected, and every rep is a building block towards growing or strengthening the muscle. And I know that if you’ve read this far, you’re going to be super motivated to keep good form the next time you work out because you don’t want to be in the gym wasting time and energy, right?

If that is true inside the gym, it must be equally true outside of it. Even if your form is always great when you work out, here’s the big question: how’s your form outside of the gym?

As I pose that question to you, I assume you are not a lazy loafer but actually trying to accomplish big things in your life. You see yourself as a producer. So ask yourself whether you’re focused on doing the right things with enough repetition to produce the outcomes you seek. If, for example, you’ve been working on something for the past year, then you should be seeing some progress in your life as a reflection of those efforts.

Your network of friends and contacts is supposed to be growing. That app you’ve been developing for the business you’re launching should be in beta testing already. You’re supposed to have applied at least one useful idea from every book you read over the past year to see if it works well for you. In fact, the book you’re authoring should be finished by now. I’m sure you get the point.

If you’re not making progress despite working on things, it’s likely because you’re doing things with poor form. They're efforts that are ineffective. Perhaps you’re convinced that you’re squeezed for time when the truth is that you’re busy doing things that lead nowhere in particular, much like doing those rocking, rolling lat pulldowns. So ask yourself how much of the time you’re spinning your wheels or how often you’re busy for the sake of being busy.

Looking at your behavior with a critical eye is the first step towards improving your effectiveness. Some things you do can be delegated or eliminated altogether. If they’re not moving the needle towards a flourishing life, it’s time to redirect your focus onto activities that do. The same goes for unproductive habits. You can break them, but the first step is to identify them. Think about the things you might be doing without thinking about them. Ask other people about the questionable habits of yours they notice.

Your form will suffer at times despite your best efforts because focusing is work, and work eventually brings on fatigue. It could also be that you’re climbing a learning curve and some missteps are inevitable. Or maybe a relationship is not as productive as you want it to be. I deal with these issues too, so I know it’s not easy to be efficient and effective all the time. But if you’re a producer, you’ve got to keep perfecting your form.

Sayonara until next time.

Are you a starter or a finisher? Doing anything requires starting it in the first place, so both starters and finishers initiate action. But there’s a big difference between the two, and here’s a hint: finishers are rarer than starters. It’s only finishers who are committed to the follow-through, and the follow-through is the basis of what I call the “eccentric principle." 

You can think about it in the same way as performing a barbell curl. One rep is one complete cycle of movement, and each rep requires both a concentric and eccentric contraction of the muscle you’re targeting. In simple terms, the concentric phase of a curl is the lift. That’s when you’re squeezing the muscle to overcome the weight of the barbell and lift it against the force of gravity. 

You’ve probably seen someone in the gym before curling at a hundred miles per hour, and that happens because they’re fixated on the concentric, or starting phase, of each rep. The eccentric phase is a mere afterthought if they’re thinking about it all. But they should be, because it’s about practicing proper follow-through. 

During the eccentric phase, the muscle stretches out, resulting in a lowering of the barbell back to its starting position. That entire contraction is the follow-through of the rep. The eccentric phase is important because, by slowing it down, you stabilize the weight as you lower the barbell, sharpen your focus, and maintain good form, which is important for preventing injuries. 

Furthermore, you can control more weight during the eccentric phase than during the concentric phase. More weight is akin to more responsibility, which requires more care. Treating the weight with the proper attention and care during the eccentric phase sets you up to perform another rep effectively. 

At Bounce Pep, the eccentric principle states that there can be no sustained success unless you follow through on the endeavor you start. Following through requires commitment and focus after the initial action has been taken, and you must care about the quality of the outcome. Once you’re aware of this principle, you can practice it in the real world. 

For example, if you run a business, you will recognize that making the sale is the "lift"; it’s only the concentric phase. The thank-you to the customer, the delivery, and the after-service are the follow-throughs that, if done well, can lead to another sale to the same customer in the future. All of that is part of the eccentric phase, and it’s your opportunity to distinguish yourself from all the fly-by-night operators. 

Or, if you’re in a relationship, consider everything you do before the wedding to be the concentric phase. The flowers, courtship, and wining and dining are the “lift” that so many couples fixate on, but the marriage, when the real test begins, is the eccentric phase. That’s when you must follow through with patience, attention, and care to make the relationship work long-term. 

Remember that the concentric is just the start of things. If you really want to level up, if you really want to make a positive difference in someone else’s life, or if you really want to build something great, be very intentional about the eccentric. You'll be the rarer breed. 

Sayonara until next time.

Carbohydrates are fundamentally molecules of sugar, and they’re a primary energy source for your body. “Carbs” get a bad rap for leading to weight gain and chronic illnesses, but they’re not inherently bad for your health. Your body needs them to function properly, in fact.

The problem is that natural carbohydrate foods, which start out whole, get "refined" by industrial food manufacturers. Refining strips the nutrients from whole foods, so when you hear that carbs are bad for your health, it’s those refined carbs that are the problem. Junk food and prepackaged, industrially manufactured meals are typically full of them. Food manufacturers often artificially fortify their products to add nutrients back into them, but, for the consumer, it’s just a consolation prize. Nutrients, as they come in whole foods, are already naturally balanced in the correct proportions for your body to efficiently digest and use as energy. This is referred to as the high bioavailability of nutrients.

And then there’s fiber. It’s another thing that gets stripped out of whole foods when they get refined. This is a big driver of weight gain and illnesses such as diabetes because (1) fiber, being indigestible, makes you feel full, and (2) it slows down the absorption of sugar into the blood stream. When the fiber is stripped out of foods, your body loses out on those benefits.

That is to say, carbs from a donut and carbs from an apple do not affect your body in the same ways. When you eat fiber, it passes slowly through your stomach and small intestines, which makes you feel satisfied for longer. But you’ll probably be tempted to eat more than one donut because it lacks the fiber to satisfy your hunger. That makes the habit of eating donuts and other highly processed snacks a major risk factor for excessive caloric intake and weight gain.

On top of that, the donuts will spike your blood sugar level because there is no fiber in them to slow down the release of sugar into your bloodstream. As your pancreas tries to produce more and more insulin for the cells of your body to absorb the sugars, the cells can start to get fed up with the bombardment of insulin and resist it. So if you’re eating a lot of ultra-processed snacks on a daily basis, the sugar concentration in your blood can get out of control, hence the onset of type 2 diabetes.

The carbs your body naturally craves are the ones that come with dietary fiber. Fiber is contained in whole fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and most people don’t get enough of it in their diet. That’s why I recommend eating salads frequently and snacking on fruits and nuts. The less industrially manufactured the food you eat is, the healthier your body is going to be.

Sayonara until next time.

Metabolism is the conversion of food into energy that your body can use. If it’s high, you burn calories quickly and are probably on the slender side. If it’s low, the opposite is probably true. Your rate of metabolism is largely genetic, and you may feel as though you can’t do anything about it, especially if it’s low. However, there are things you can do to increase it, and here are three that I consider to be the basics for anyone ready to do something now.

Start with exercising, because it’s the foundation for building muscle. Exercising causes your body’s cells to produce heat, which is a process called thermogenesis and requires a higher energy expenditure than if you were relaxing. However, even at rest, muscles require more energy to maintain than fat does, which means they burn more calories than fat. Therefore, the more you increase your muscle mass, the more you raise your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is the rate at which you expend energy at rest merely to maintain vital bodily functions.

The next thing you can do is increase the amount of protein you eat. That means eating more foods such as fish, meat, legumes, eggs, and nuts. When you eat protein, it requires significantly more energy to digest that fat or carbohydrates. Plus, protein helps you retain muscle, which, as already explained, raises your BMR. Perhaps you're noticing how all of this interconnects.

But arguably the simplest thing you can start doing right now is to drink more water, specifically cold water. Let’s go back to that word “thermogenesis.” Every time you drink a glass of cold water, your body needs to spend energy heating it up to body temperature. Simply by drinking plenty of cold water throughout your day, you’ll bump up your metabolism periodically and increase your total calorie expenditure for the day.

Those aren’t the only ways to increase your metabolism. You could also sleep more and cut your intake of alcohol, among other methods. But, just to get the ball rolling, a simple formula is to get more exercise, more protein, and more water. And never ever believe you have no control.

Sayonara until next time.

Recently, someone who’s been reading my books asked me what the word “action” means to me, and the question really got me thinking. Of course, there are actual definitions of action in the dictionary, but that wasn’t what I was being asked about. The question was, really: What is the significance of action to me?

At the surface level, action is obviously a means to produce a desired outcome. For example, someone who wants to get in better shape or get swole can’t just think about it and expect it to happen. At some point, they'll need to act by exercising and eating in a way that can produce the outcome they seek.

But the significance of action is also something deeper than that. As I see it, taking action does two things that are more powerful: (1) it demonstrates our identity, and (2) it builds our self-esteem. Action as a one-time undertaking is not what this is about.

Who you truly believe you are—your identity, if you will—is evident by what you do repeatedly or customarily. A propensity to take committed, consistent action in pursuit of continual self-improvement is one of the great differentiators among people. It means continuing to act even when there is a lack of measurable or observable progress. If you lift weights, you know that just because you lifted a dumbbell yesterday, it doesn’t mean your arms are going to be bigger today. Even if they are, it’s more likely because of the dumbbell you lifted weeks ago.

So, though it’s inspiring to hear stories of people’s massive success and seemingly overnight accomplishments, people rarely hit a grand slam home run in life. The truth is that most efforts, even those of highly accomplished people, produce bunts and base hits that accumulate into something notable over time. If persistence, for instance, is a part of your identity, you’ll be that person who keeps on bunting until they get the result they seek.

As for how action relates to self-esteem, just think about the tendencies of procrastination and paralysis that seem to afflict so many people. Some typical reasons a person would have for not taking action are a lack of ambition, an unclear path forward, or an uncertain outcome. Whatever the reason, I can tell you that when a person knows they should do something important or meaningful but resists taking action, it never makes them feel good about themselves.

Self-esteem is a real thing that produces real outcomes, whether they’re in the gym, in your bank account, or in your relationships with other people. If you want it to be healthy, stop waiting and do what needs to be done. Have a sense of urgency. You may not be able to do it perfectly or see several steps ahead, and the outcome you desire may not be guaranteed. But just do what you know to do now, and the next step will reveal itself. Your self-esteem will thank you for it.

Sayonara until next time.

Get your complimentary copy of the action book “Belief” at this link:
BELIEF | A Fitness-inspired Guide to Taking Action Now Despite Your Re – Bounce Pep

Being that it’s now late December, you may be thinking about new goals you want to achieve next year. Hopefully, you’re excited about taking your health and fitness to a higher level. And one goal we should all have is to stay out of the hospital and off medications for as long as we can. To that end, I hope you’re setting some ambitious goals for your dietary habits and workout regimen.

But there’s an underappreciated prerequisite to goals that you shouldn’t skip while planning your personal transformation. It’s called “standards,” and understanding the relationship between standards and goals will increase the odds of your success. And by “standards,” what we’re talking about is standards of conduct.

The big distinction is that a goal is finite, and a standard is perpetual. Once you achieve a goal, you can check it off your list and put a feather in your cap. A standard, on the other hand, must be maintained as a demonstration of your beliefs about yourself. Who you are at your core is evident from the standards you operate by. So while thinking about your goals may excite you more, your standards are more important, and by setting high standards of conduct, you can avoid setting yourself up for failure.

Fitness goals end up being too lofty to achieve for many people because their standards of conduct are lowly in comparison. Many people don’t even think about what their standards should be. Let’s suppose there’s a guy who’s a novice lifter with a goal to raise his one-rep max on the bench press by fifty percent next year, and he works out once or twice per week for thirty minutes each session. The goal is high, but the standard is low because he doesn’t train frequently enough to accumulate enough gains over time to achieve the goal.

Now, let's get back to you. Since the New Year is so close at hand, your homework for the next week is to think about the standards of conduct you need to demonstrate next year. What are going to be the actions you take consistently and purposefully? What values are you going to uphold? Decide on those first things, and set your goals next.

Sayonara until next time.

p=mv. In physics, that means mass (m) moving at some velocity (v) produces momentum (p). The formula also works physiologically when it comes to increasing your muscle mass and improving muscle definition. Yet, if the property of momentum is so simple to understand, why can building momentum be so hard to do? Why is it that a person can work out repeatedly and not see any difference in their appearance?

It’s because p=mv, while a succinct formula, is more nuanced than it appears. Within the equation, there are a couple of implied but unspecified variables, namely consistency and time. In other words, momentum inherently requires consistent motion and time to build, and an extended lapse in either one of these implied variables therefore negatively affects momentum.

But let’s set aside equations and mathematical jargon. The layman’s formula for momentum is even more succinct: KEEP GOING. Remember that consistency and time are inherent to building momentum, so when you stop training for several days or weeks in succession, you break your momentum. Of course, you can rebuild it, but you’ll first have to recover the gains you lost while on hiatus.

Despite the sensation of hyperemia, or the “pump,” while you train, that is not when your muscles grow or become more defined. The workout you do today may not noticeably show in your physique until weeks or even months later. Visible muscle development, as such, is a lagging indicator of the work you put in at the gym. In the meantime, keep going.

The first part of this is consistency, and that means training frequently enough to make a difference. Believe it or not, there are people who think lifting weights once a week means they’re putting in the work, but that is not the standard for achieving a transformation. They may get a little stronger, but training once a week consistently, even over a span of several months, is still not frequent enough to change one's physique much, if at all.

Time, the second part, is ultimately a question of one’s commitment to working out in perpetuity. That means no quitting. People are often full of fire and desire when they decide to start training. Then, when they see little to no change after a couple of months, they get discouraged and take their foot off the gas, so to speak. It’s a shame because what they were doing may well have been working. But just as constructing a skyscraper from the ground up takes a lot of time, so does building muscle.

So just keep going. That’s the standard of performance and the only way to get momentum working in your favor.

Sayonara until next time.

Pep is a special kind of energy, and the more of it we have, the better. But to understand what pep is, you need to understand what it isn’t. It all has to do with energy states that every one of us carries. They can be physical and emotional, and we can both emanate and absorb them. 

In the first place, pep is inherently at odds with low energy. Everyone enters a low-energy state of being sometimes, and it’s not inherently problematic. It’s just those occasions when we don’t want to do or think about much in particular. The question for you is: are those occasions too frequent or too prolonged? And how often are you allowing low-energy people into your space? 

Let’s set aside cases where a person has chronically low energy levels due to a legitimate medical ailment. Instead, this is about habitually low energy. That’s when someone who is of otherwise sound body and mind lives a sedentary, lazy, distracted, or uninspired life. It requires little to no effort or intent. After all, lounging around is much easier than leveling up, and that makes a habitually low-energy state a breeding ground for stagnation. 

Still more pernicious than low energy is negative energy, which often manifests as complaining, worrying, whining, and blaming. These are all expressions of a foul mood. Of course, life is not perfect, but what’s to be gained from pissing and moaning about it all the time? Some people revel in advertising their hard-luck stories, as if their struggles are unique. I know they just want to be heard, but you’d be wise to keep people who are chronic complainers and worriers at arm’s length because it’s negative energy that you don’t need in your life. More importantly, don’t let yourself be that person. 

Despite its challenges, life ain’t all bad, and there are still things that must get done regardless. When you’ve got responsibilities, goals, and aspirations, high energy and enthusiasm make it easier to move the needle, if not the mountain. In fact, the combination of high energy and enthusiasm is exactly what the “Pep” in Bounce Pep is. 

When you have pep in your step, you move with a purpose, pace, and positivity that set you apart from the loafers, pessimists, and complainers. You emanate that energy state, and people around you feel it. At the same time, be intentional about keeping yourself in the company of other high-energy people who are in shape, inspired, and living with a clear purpose. If you’re going to absorb energy from others around you, it needs to come from them. 

The good news is that high energy is something you can create. My book, Be The Total Package, has a whole chapter about it, but the science of it is this: working out physiologically creates more energy in your body through the process of mitochondrial biogenesis. But don’t get caught up on the big words. The gist is that if you want your default energy level to be high, just keep working out frequently and vigorously. It's the best way I know of to rev up your body and mind simultaneously. 

As for enthusiasm, it comes from having something to look forward to. That means you should always have aspirations and rewards planned for a job well done. Those are different things for different people, but just having something to anticipate in the future keeps you going on those days that aren’t much fun. It can even be something simple. In the summertime, I love to reward myself with a generous portion of watermelon after a big workout. That alone increases my motivation to train. What, then, are your aspirations? And what rewards are you looking forward to enjoying? Be sure to always have something on your horizon. 

So now you know what “Pep” is. Put it together with some “Bounce,” and you'll be a force of nature. 

Sayonara until next time.

“Bounce Pep” is not just a random phrase. It actually means something, and I want you to embed it in your psyche. So this week’s Pep Talk will be about bounce. 

You may not realize it, but every time you train, you summon a little bounce. Think about it. When you rep until failure, do you quit your whole session after finishing just one set? Of course not. You rest briefly to recover some strength and endurance, or perhaps to catch your breath, and then you begin another set, right? That resilience, the ability to recover and keep striving, is what bounce is.

Bounce is something we all need to summon from time to time, whether in the gym or outside of it. It’s about how we react when situations get challenging. If you know someone who has no bounce, tell them to get some quick because they’re going to need it sooner rather than later.

Life throws curve balls we’re not prepared to hit. You’ve undoubtedly dealt with a frustrating setback before and had a moment when you felt dumb, discouraged, or even defeated. If you’re human, you’ll have those moments. In case you didn’t know, roughly 110 billion people have lived on this earth, so no matter what setback you’ve encountered or how insurmountable you believe it to be, it’s been experienced by many others across the millennia.

Just don’t let the negative emotions fester. Understand that many things that happen just happen. The happenings have no target, and therefore don’t happen to you. It’s your interpretation of the happening that creates your negative experience of it. You can roll with the punches and recover from the situation with your wits intact if you resist personalizing it. “Why did this happen to me?” is not a question to preoccupy yourself with.

When you have bounce, you won’t sulk too long over oversights, failures, or even personal slights. A small setback may slow you down, and a big one may bring you to a halt, but the bounce in your spirit will compel you to come out swinging again. That curve ball you didn’t see coming will be something you can reflect on and learn from. Keep swinging, and you’ll figure out how to hit it.

Sayonara until next time.