I’m personally not a huge fan of many fitness challenges. There are a lot of gimmicks and unnecessary rules. They also typically include buying products you don’t need from fitness influencers you don’t like. I am however a fan of a Jolt. jumpstarting a new phase in your life or sprinting toward a goal. This is therefore not a challenge, but the Jolt of discipline you need to recenter yourself.
Moving your center is a powerful concept that involves being more extreme for a brief period of time in order to shift your “normal” to being more regimented. The point of the January Jolt is to redefine what normal is for you.
Perhaps after the 31 days you’ll start drinking alcohol and eating processed food again,
You may not read as often anymore,
You may not workout 7x/week,
But these habits will likely be better than they were in the past since you’ve executed them religiously for an entire month.
That’s the point.
Pillars
January Jolt consists of three pillars: Nourishment, Empowerment, and Enrichment. There could be more rules added to these pillars and if you’d like to add more for yourself you can. Use these rules below as a base.
“What happens if I fall off track one day?”
Forgive yourself and move on. Jump back in. Nobody is perfect, you should demand high standards for yourself but also give yourself grace.
I. Nourishment
i. Abstain from alcohol intake.
No alcohol of any kind for any reason is permitted. Be clear of mind and substance.
ii. Eat high quality, minimally processed, whole foods. Limit yourself to meat, eggs, fruit, vegetables, nuts, potatoes, and rice.
If you tolerate dairy well and find it’s a good way for you to hit you protein targets you may keep dairy in the diet.
Similar to the Paleo style of diet. The point isn’t necessarily to eat like a caveman, but to cut out the noise. Eat only the foods that bring you good health and provide necessary energy for your daily activity.
iii. Fast on weekends.
Every Saturday and Sunday limit yourself to eating only 2 meals after 12pm. Give your digestion a break and reduce your reliance on constant energy intake.
II. Empowerment
iv. Train 7x a week.
This does not need to be an hour session every time and not necessarily daily training. You could train twice on one day and take another day off, just accumulate 7 sessions in the week. However, I prefer you make it a habit to train daily unless it’s not possible.
Training could be micro workouts. Bang out a bodyweight protocol or pushups, set a 5-10 minute timer and pick one exercise to perform as many reps as possible with, find a week point you’ve been neglecting like your core, ankles, knees, hips, flexibility etc and train it for 5-10 minutes.
III. Enrichment
v. Read a minimum of 10 pages daily of a book. Audio books and online articles do not count. Challenge yourself to maintain focus, to learn more about a topic, or to enrich your mind with good literature.
Some of you may be down for the ride but only if X rule doesn’t apply. Listen, i’m not your dad. If you want to do it your way, then do it your way. I just ask that you have a good reason for it.
If you’re up for the Jolt, join the chat and drop a comment to let us know you’re in. I’ll be posting my daily workouts in there during the month of January along with some notes. Hopefully we get a group of a couple people to do the same to encourage each other.
When it’s all said and done crack a cold one.
Stay Strong,
Patryk
www.Overloadstrengthtraining.com
