Yes, I’m sure you know George Thorogood’s classic “One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer.”

I remember first hearing this song sometime when I was in middle school. It was playing on the ice rink’s overhead as classmate John Ursu performed the role of power skater for our game of “crack the whip.”

The song itself had been out since Thorogood’s debut album release in 1977 and unless I am terribly mistaken became an instant classic.

Ok, now why would I want to talk about throwing back three drinks for “the last call for alcohol,” in a blog devoted to personal improvement?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

See, I want you to think of the “buzz” you would get on day 1 of pounding all three of these libations in short order, versus if you made it a habit and what the effects would be a week, month, quarter, and year later?

With respect to the intensity of your buzz, you would receive what economists would call “diminishing returns.”

Well, with respect to fitness the same thing happens.

Imagine the results you would get from doing 50 push-ups and 50 sit-ups on day 1 versus their effect after their same exercise after a week, month, quarter, and year.

Very similar, right?

At first you would be sore and later you would just bang them out and their would be hardly any effect … unless you stopped.

At some point, you would have hit a plateau and any additional benefit would be so infinitesimal as to amount to zero.

This is why one needs to always be seeking to make one’s workouts just a little bit harder.

The term the fitness industry bandies about is: “progressive overload.”

My understanding is that this amounts to making the habit of pushing up to and just beyond one’s current limit.

In this way, instead of stagnating we get progressively better.

Improvement rarely comes all at once. But, slight improvements compounded over time can have massive results.

And the really cool thing about physical fitness is that when you start to see results from your efforts, you realize that these same principles can be applied to other areas of your life too.

So, whether you had a scotch, a bourbon, a beer, or all three last night at last call or not …

Make a decision to do something to get physically better each day and soon your life is going to be on the upswing!

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Have a great Wednesday! Again, my apologies for not getting the Tuesday blog out on time. But, as they commonly say, “better late than never.” And an even better saying is: never allow a good habit fail more than one day. Cheers!