When I was 23 years old, I was obsessed with deadlifting 600 pounds.
It wasn’t a want. It wasn’t a nice idea. The need burned in me. Although, at the time, I couldn’t have told you exactly why.
For three years, I pursued that goal, finally deadlifting 600 pounds in the winter of 2012. When the weight touched the ground, my body and mind exploded in catharsis. A burden that I carried for three trips around the sun evaporated from my shoulders. The burning in my guts extinguished. But where the fire burned, a hole remained.
That hole went unfilled. I searched and searched for the next thing. The next burning. The next finite training game. But nothing came. No goal caught hold of my heart and mind and pulled me to struggle.
I considered training for a 700-pound deadlift. But the thought made me nauseous. I’d have to extend the hyper focus I’d had for the previous three years for another year or more. Worse, in the process, I’d likely have to take steroids, break my body, or both. Even though I was a young meathead, I knew that my 80-year-old self would despise me for that kind of Tom Foolery.
I was a fitness wanderer for years after. Passionless, I showed up to train because I knew that I should–that the older version of me would thank me for it. But I didn’t give half of a shit about the day-to-day workouts. I had finished a game and I didn’t know how to start playing the next one.
The truth is when I learned how to play an infinite fitness game, my training, my focus, and my life improved. I believe you’ll find that the same is true for you.
Before we move on, let’s define finite versus infinite games.
Finite games have a clear beginning and ending. They have players vested in an outcome. It could be that the players are trying to win a team sport such as football. Or it could be an individual working to achieve a specific goal.
Infinite games are, well, infinite. And they are played for their own sake. When it seems as though the game is about to end, the rules are changed so that the game continues. The player(s) are having fun and/or they know that the best-case scenario is for the game to continue.
Most people play finite fitness games, aiming at a specific outcome—a certain body fat percentage, an ideal body weight, or lifting a personal record. If they achieve what they’re after, many people experience the same feelings I did after I deadlifted over 600 pounds. A ball of existential confusion that culminates in the self-posed question: now what?
The problem is that many people lose momentum as they search for the answer to the question. They stop training because their initial hunger for training was satiated by achieving the goal. Now what becomes nothing.
I wasn’t fully aware why deadlifting 600 pounds was so important to me. Because the reasons were murky, I couldn’t connect them to a longer game that I was playing. I did the thing, then the thing was over.
But time and improved introspection dredged the reasons to the surface. I wanted to be world-class strong. I wanted to be a person that knew what they were doing. Deadlifting 600 pounds was the outward expression of both of those wants. And each of those wants was the manifestation of something that I’ve felt since I was a little boy: the need to be more than I currently am.
That discovery illuminated the central value of my life: continual, consistent growth. I know who I am—the guy that persists in becoming all that he can be before his time is up.
Maybe that seems heavy for a fitness article, but it’s relevant.
I’ve been a coach for 15 years—nearly my entire adult life. During that decade and a half, many of the people that I’ve worked with have either:
- had start and stop fitness careers focused on superficial goals without connection to anything meaningful (or at least the awareness of the deeper meaning)
- or they’ve quit because the process of transformation seemed too hard.
Each is based on a finite game: the only purpose is the outcome.
However, those that attached their specific goals to a greater purpose—to their values, or to a manifestation of an improved identity—have thrived. They are typically more consistent with their training. They more often achieve their goals. And they have a lot more fun in the process.
Now what, for them, is an easier question to answer.
There are, however, deeper questions to start with as you examine the finite fitness games that you want to play and how they support your infinite game:
What is it about the goal? What is it about this specific achievement that is an expression of my values or a mile marker on the road toward the person I ultimately want to be? Why is it important to me?
Maybe an easier question to answer:
what do I love, and how will fitness keep me doing the things that I love?
For me, it was the return of my first youthful passion—hunting. It filled the hole where powerlifting burned and gave me a lifelong pursuit that would take me to beautiful, rugged places. And since my central value is growth, my focus is on growing to be as good a hunter as I can be. My fitness found purpose again. Because I can’t be that hunter in those beautiful, rugged places without being fit.
Your answers will give you a clearer picture of your values, or at least the value that fuels the desire to achieve that goal.
Define your values. Define who you are and who you are becoming. Then you can play an infinite game where all of the milestones along the way support your theory of self. You are the person that you believe yourself to be… and you will continue to be them.
Whatever the event or goal is: fat loss, a canoeing trip, a deadlift personal record, each that you accomplish is evidence that you are who say you are and that the game will continue—albeit with slightly different rules. The rules are established by your change in focus. You find that focus with follow up questions:
What do I want to learn next? How do I want to improve? What do I want to do? How do all of these things support my values and identity?
The great news about those answers is that they don’t necessarily have to lead you down an entirely new training path. Maybe they’ll only alter the approach you’re taking to the type of training you’re already doing.
But the answers give you the next phase in the game. New rules, same process. The game goes on.
And you keep playing because your fitness supports the ultimate infinite game—life.
