A guest on a recent podcast I was listening to, mentioned a term that I had heard a few times before.
Backcasting.
For some reason the term struck me a in a new way this time.
The short version of what backcasting means, is imagining what the future could be and then working backwards to get there from today.
This Wikipedia article on backcasting (the longer version of what I just shared), also mentions that this term was invented by someone at a University located down the street from where I'm writing this! What a fun coincidence.
Over the next few posts, I want to share some things I've been thinking about as I explore this topic for myself.
Today, I want to share why backcasting struck me in a new way and what insight I drew from that.
***
On Sundays, I workout with one of my best friends.
Each time we workout, there is always a single barbell movement incorporated into our program.
This is either a bench press, back squat, or deadlift.
Until a few months ago—when we started working out together—I had never done a single barbell workout.
At the time of writing this, we've found a pattern of doing barbell movements that we've loved.
The idea is simple. We pick a movement—we rotate between the three I mentioned—and do the following number of repetitions of that movement in a single workout session:
15, 10, 8, 5, 3, 3, 3.
The first few times I did this, I had no idea how much weight to put on the barbell for each set of repetitions.
I had a general goal of increasing the weight with each set, but I had no idea what that weight should be.
I had to forecast what I could lift at 10 reps, based on what I lifted at 15, and then forecast what I could lift at 8, based on what I lifted at 10, and so on.
Sidenote: Forecasting, unlike backcasting, is using past and present data to predict the future.
After several weeks of doing this, I was able to get a decent handle on what my current upper limits were.
In other words, I had a good sense on what weight I would be able to lift on that very last set of three reps.
This new sense allowed me to do something interesting this past weekend for the first time.
***
This past weekend, we were going to repeat a workout that we had done previously. We do this often.
Before we did, I took a look back in my workout notes at what I was able to lift during the barbell portion of the workout when we did it last time.
When we approached the workout this weekend, I started by writing down the target weight that I wanted to lift on that very last set of three reps.
Then together we systematically worked through what I would need to lift in every preceding set, in order to reach that target weight.
We were backcasting.
Funnily enough, I didn't even realize we were doing this. The podcast I mentioned at the beginning of this post was something I ended up listening to a few hours after our workout, which is why the term struck me in a new way. I realized that I had just done it.
If I've just opened a tab in your brain that needs closing, our approach worked and I was able to lift my target weight.
I will also be using this approach for all future workouts.
***
Here is the first principle of backcasting that I've been thinking about ever since this recent experience:
To do something that seems hard in the future, you have to do something that seems easy in the present.
There are obvious other questions like, how far is the future? How many steps exist between now and then?
But I'd like to leave it here for now.
