Last year I wrote a post about some of my strength goals. One of them was to reach a 400 lb deadlift by the end of the year. Well, I’m a month late, but I did it. Monday, during training, I put 400 lbs on the bar and lifted it up. It was my first time trying. The most I had lifted prior to that was 375, which I had done the week before.

On 5/3/1, you don’t normally do a maximum effort lift. You basically enter your estimated 1 rep maximum (1 RM) into a spreadsheet, let it spit out some numbers, and you do the program based on the given numbers. And the program does its thing and magically your 1 RM just shifts up and to the right on your fancy progress chart as you get stronger. But you never really “see” it. My estimated 1 RM currently stands at 452 lbs. But like I said, the most I’ve actually lifted is 375. Luckily, 5/3/1 offers a deload week where you just lighten up, relax and do your thing, and this week I figured I’d give 400 lbs a try for shits. And bam, sure enough, up it went (that’s what she said…not!).

But I didn’t know any of this last year when I made my 400 lb goal. I didn’t know I would be on 5/3/1, either. I didn’t know anything. All I knew was that I arbitrarily set a goal for 400 lbs and I achieved it a month late. Some people would call that a failure. Those people are dumb. If you know these people, don’t listen to them. You see, because in the absolute sense I failed since I didn’t achieve the goal at the designated time, but in the relative sense that’s a a lot of weight to be lifting for a guy my size and my lifting experience (150 lbs and 1.5 years, respectively).

As I’m writing this, I am reminded of the time way back when I was doing Insanity and decided to climb the CN tower for charity. Again, I made a completely arbitrary goal of finishing in 15 minutes without doing any prior research or having any prior knowledge of how long it typically takes to run up the tower or what’s involved. And I ended up finishing at 15 minutes and 13 seconds, which from what I can recall was a pretty good score. That moment for me was a huge eye opener. I didn’t know it at the time, but something as simple as setting arbitrary goals has pushed me to achieve them (or come really close) in situations that I would not have been able to achieve otherwise. And it has served me very well ever since. Even if it took me 30 minutes to go up that tower, I would have been content. Why? Because that 15 minute goal set in motion the necessary actions for me to train and prepare myself in a way that I may not have done otherwise. All I needed was direction, and a goal provided just that.

Part of me wants to say rah rah you can do it. Aim high and shoot for the stars. But that’s just the rosy coloured story that you read in autobiographies and watch on movies or tv. The reality is that the arbitrary goal was just that, arbitrary. But it did help me do what was by far the most important thing, and that is show up and do the fucking work. There’s really nothing else to it. Who cares if you’re a month late, you did the work. That’s worth something.