Why YOU need a health strategy
Health is the ultimate long game. We have some version of health for the entire time we are hear. Even though good health us vital to good performance, it's pretty common for it to get squeezed by our other priorities, and as a result for our health to just drift along aimlessly, a result of our unconscious health choices over time.
When we do stick our head up from the drift and think "sh!t, how did I end up here" the common course of action is to jump feet first into the health hacks du jour.
This typically occurs around new years resolutions time when we pause to reflect. Unfortunately 91% of new year's resolutions flame out in less than a month.
Often we flame out because the health hacks we've chosen are;
Short term focused and not sustainable in real life
Awkward to fit into our busy lifestyle
Something that isn't that enjoyable
And because we haven't actually figured out what good health looks like for us, we start with actions that just don't move the needle on anything important to us.
We've gone for shiny tactics over dull strategy, and unfortunately it's shot us in the foot.
Tactics are very important. They can tell us exactly what to do in a certain situation. However they are context dependent, and won't tell us what to do in every situation. Think of the All Black's, they employ different tactics when they play the Wallabies than when they play the Springboks. The tactics for one will struggle in the other situation.
When we solely focus on tactics for improving our health, we struggle when the context changes. And with life, the context is continually changing. As the context changes these tactics don't work as well, or stop working all together frustrating us and making us think we are no good at this getting healthy thing.
Instead of starting with health tactics, we should be starting with creating a health strategy.
An effective health strategy defines what good health looks like for us, and creates a specific direction for us to move our health in.
Once we've defined what good health looks like, we can think about the overarching principles which will take us towards good health.
Want to feel strong - better do some resistance training
Want to eat healthy - lots of veggies, quality protein, and minimal crap
Want to feel calm - regular calming activities, ensure adequate time between tasks, change some unhelpful narratives
Want to have meaningful relationships - spend time connecting with important people, have conversations that go below the superficial level.
These principles don't tell us exactly what to do, but if we follow them they will lead us to good health.
The next step of your health strategy are tactics. These are the specifics of what we need to do. As we mentioned, most people wrongly start with tactics.
The overarching principle informs that tactics we choose, and the best health strategies have a range of tactical options which sit under each principle. The reason for this, so we can swap tactics in and out when context changes.
Strategy: get strong
Principle: resistance training
Tactic: gym session 3 days a week 3-4 exercises 3 sets of 8-12 reps.
Then all of a sudden "Crap, global pandemic and the gym is shut" if all we have though of are tactics then this destroys our progress straight away because our whole plan has been thwarted. If we've developed a strategy, we can see that this tactic is no longer helpful in this situation, so we bounce back up to the level of the principle "resistance training" and can explore other tactical options which sit under that. Body weight training programs, or buying resistance bands or a kettlebell and we can continue our progress to health improvement down a different tactical route. Operating this way ensures flexibility with health improvement that can adapt to most situations.
To set up your health strategy
Define what good looks like
Identify the high level principles which will take you to good.
Develop a range of context specific tactics to apply under each principle.
