Since last year, I've been trying to keep up the trend of reading a book per month. Recently, I worked through Coach Dan John's Never Let go: A Philosophy of Lifting, Living, and Learning. A model that Dan John likes to talk about is breaking up your training cycle into "Park Bench" and "Bus Bench" periods. While he's specifically talking about athletic training, the underlying philosophy applies to just about anything we talk about here at The Everyday Marksman. Defining the Problem Nobody is really capable of doing everything all of the time. It's a sure path to burnout, which often sets us back even further than when we started. The realities of life mean that we typically have to choose one or two goals at a time to do well. Otherwise, we just do a lot of things poorly. When you want to bear down on a specific goal, it usually requires sacrifice in other places. Whether it's time, energy, or letting other skills lag behind, you know something else has to give. That means you can also only keep up on that focus for relatively short bursts. The Bench Analogy Dan John's "Park Bench" and "Bus Bench" philosophy addresses this issue in a way that makes total sense to me. It's akin to baseline training and sport-specific training. The park bench is where you like to go and sit to hang out and enjoy your time. You can spend a lot of time on the park bench and feel good about people watching, eating a meal, or doing whatever. On the other hand, the bus bench means you're looking to go a destination. You want the bus to be on time so you can arrive at a specific place and time- your goal. Bus Benches The thing about the bus bench is that you know you can't spend a long time there. You've got other places to go and things to do. In the grand scheme of things, it's a temporary activity before you get on with the rest of your life. For athletics, Dan John says this is about six to eight weeks of focused training towards a specific goal. Longer than that and you start to burn out, get injured, or the other areas of your life that you've put on the back burner so you can pursue this goal start to catch up to you. In athletics, this might be a specific competition, meet, or even trying to get your best "beach physique" for vacation. Whatever the event is, you know that it requires a particular set of skills or capabilities, so you adjust your training to focus on maximizing those skills at the expense of others. In thinking about it, I also believe this applies to other skills and capabilities. Take, for instance, two-month block of focused dry fire and drills preparing for a big USPSA match. For a PRS-style match, you put it time with bolt manipulation, position building, and working dope. Or maybe you're going on a camping trip and need to work up your backpacking, fire making, and field cooking skills. These events all represent scheduled point-in-time places where you want to arrive prepared to succeed. Since you know where and when you need to arrive, you can work backwards by six to eight weeks to your start point: the bus bench where you begin the journey. Dan John thinks everyone should have a bus bench goal at least twice per year, which would consume about four months total. Park Benches The park bench is what you do with your time the rest of the year. In a workout sense, this is your day-in-day-out-check-the-box programming. It's where you hang out building or maintaining your a href="baselinehttps://www.everydaymarksman.