By: Jordan Wilcher

As we wind down one year to begin another, we frequently ask clients, friends and ourselves what we want out of the coming year.  An answer I frequently hear is “I just want to maintain”.  My standard answer is, “Maintain what?”. Common answers include things like strength and body weight. Despite my desire to take a big bounce and fly right off that diving board, I usually reign in my own tendencies and encourage people to get a clearer picture of a few things, including what they consider the acceptable floor as well as their loftiest goals.  

Acceptable floors are just as they sound and will vary from person to person. It is an imaginary demarcation akin to a low fuel light.  Examples are a 5-rep deadlift you want to be able to pull any day of the week, a certain 5-mile run time or body weight you don’t ever want to exceed. These are things that you want to maintain all the time, no matter what.  These floors typically flesh out part of someone’s value system.

This opens the door to discuss why these floors are important to an individual and if they marry up well to one another.  When considering that physically we are on a degrading arc after our 20s, the inputs required to maintain certain floors will inevitably change and sometimes we may need to reevaluate our floors depending on how much bandwidth they require. For example, if someone wants to be able to deadlift 500lbs, as time goes on the input and toll required to maintain that floor will grow (likely at the expense of other things).  There will likely be a tipping point where this floor no longer serves the user very well by becoming too costly, and things must be reevaluated in the form of altering the floor. 

The inverse is also true, if you have been training for a long time, it is likely your acceptable floors have drastically changed since you began training. It's important to set floors and equally important to reevaluate them periodically to ensure that they are reasonable when all circumstances are accounted for.

 If someone has a weight loss goal, they often focus on a certain weight they desire to sink to.  However, if life happens and the proverbial shit hits the fan, it's still a good idea to have a floor set.  Maybe you don’t hit your weight loss goal, but that doesn’t mean you can’t set a floor.   Floors do require some input, as the saying goes, “What gets measured gets managed.” This helps shift us away from binary thinking.  It doesn’t have to be you are either on the wagon or you aren’t (unless you really should be on the wagon, please stay there).  This doesn’t have to be painstaking, more like a hop on the scale once a week or so and if you have found yourself outside your acceptable limit and you see that low fuel light come on, you have a come to Jesus moment and right the ship. This requires smaller, more frequent inputs over time than hitting rock bottom and trying to crash diet, or do something like 75 hard only to find yourself blacked out in a Buffalo Wild Wings parking lot 3 months later. 

Now that we have talked about setting floors, it's important to talk about the other end of the spectrum — the ceiling. Do not, under any circumstances, set a ceiling. 

We set imaginary lines in the sand for minimums not maximums.  It is not uncommon to hear people talk about things they “used to be able to do” as some currently unattainable thing.  Sure, there may be certain instances where things like this are true — say if you have had a life altering injury, or maybe you were a professional athlete and are realistic in knowing you probably won’t be in the Superbowl again. These instances however are not the most common ones in reference to ceilings. 

Ceilings are often misleading. People assume that because the longest distance they had ever ran was 10 miles and since it was in their 20s there is no possible way they could achieve this now.  I can tell you first hand that most people are far more capable than they realize. But what about the opening of this article that talks about us turning into pumpkins as we age? While that may be true, it isn’t always possible to accurately perceive the cost of something, nor is a past performance indicative of future capacity.  

For instance, let's say you decide you want to run a 50k but you are not so sure you can do it because you haven’t really been much of a runner.  I am here to tell you, you can definitely go run that 50k.  You may not necessarily be the fastest person on race day, but with an intelligent approach you can most certainly complete the race. Or maybe you want to do your first powerlifting meet, or Hyrox competition or Skimo race or whatever other delightfully frivolous thing your heart desires.  Take stock of your floors, are they able to be reasonably maintained in pursuit of this goal? Maybe they need to be temporarily adjusted for a time.  Sometimes the cost is more than you imagined, sometimes not so much. It is always important that we do not assume the cost of an unknown. 

Floors engage the pragmatic realistic parts of ourselves that need to show up everyday, but we also need to keep in mind that with planning and determination we are capable of some serious shit and need to dismiss the notion of ceilings.  If you are a person that cannot let go of the perceived ceiling, at least entertain the idea of smashing it.

Jordan was born and resides in Nevada. He is an assistant coach at Packmule in addition to working as an RN. Jordan has a curiosity which leads him to a constant pursuit of knowledge in his interests. He enjoys adventures with his family and anything that involves bird dogs or fly rods.