Physical exercise plays a big part in my life and it is something I try to prioritise daily. My new strength routine follows a simple structure of daily bodyweight exercise (push-ups, pull-ups, squats) and was inspired by a trainer I follow on YouTube called Kyle Boges.

Last week, he released a video that really resonated with me. In it, he discusses the concept of a mastery mindset. And although he is referring to a mastery mindset within the context of physical training, I believe we can apply his lesson to almost anything in life.

I’ve transcribed, with a bit of editing, his YouTube video below. Hopefully, you’ll find this just as interesting as I did.

Pursue Mastery

“Plateaus are an inevitable part of the training process but how we handle them will greatly impact our long term gains.

When we start training callisthenics we’re able to make pretty rapid progress and pretty rapid increases in repetition count and this can be very satisfying.

But we can fall into the trap of anchoring our idea of progress to an ever-increasing repetition count.

Eventually, that linear progress is going to come to a stop.

At this point, it is a common compulsion to want to jump into a completely different training program, with completely different exercises, so that you can start to see some sort of progress again.

By doing this, you certainly will see some repetition count increase, but it’s not real.

By adopting something new you’re fundamentally making yourself into a beginner again just so that you can see those beginner gains and satisfy your need to increase your repetition count.

But instead of chasing beginner gains pursue mastery.

Plateaus are a signal, and they signal that your beginner gains might be coming to an end. They provide an opportunity to let go of rep chasing and focus on movement mastery and unlock the potential that the movement has to transform you as you work towards a higher expression of that movement.

If for instance, you’ve stalled out on your basic pull-up and chin-up variation. Take the time away from trying to add repetitions and instead use the plateau as an opportunity to improve your movement mechanics, your range of motion, your control, your mind-muscle connection and over time the process of consciously refining your technique to the point where those refinements are fully integrated and natural with every repetition.

That will result in huge improvements in strength and muscle mass. All of these gains happen automatically over the arc of the movement development without chasing repetitions, but if you hop around from one exercise to the next every time you plateau you’re never going to give yourself the opportunity to develop a deeper level of competence.

It’s like if you had the goal of learning a second language and every time your progress slowed down and things got difficult you quit and picked up a new language just so that you could feel like you were making progress again.

And then guess what, a few years go by and what you have is the ability to count to 10 and say hello in 12 languages but you’re not conversational in any one of them.

You’ve essentially made yourself into a dabbler with just a superficial understanding. But real gains lie in mastery and mastery requires a different approach.

That’s one where you let go of chasing beginner gains and give yourself the opportunity to develop movement quality that requires and displays a rare level of strength, control and precision and that’s only developed through discipline and consistency.

And while everyone else is bouncing around from plateau to plateau, staying the perpetual novice their entire training career, you’ll have learned how to get the most out of every repetition.”

Source: Muscle Building and Plateau Busting – The Mastery Mindset