Less Theory. More Action.

How hard-and-fast rules cut through excuses and pull young men toward excellence.

Oct 28, 2025

There is a quote that I think of often:

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble. —Harrington Emerson

As a strength and conditioning coach, I’ve noticed that most athletes—and most exercisers in general—only see the methods. They think progress comes from doing a lot of exercises, rather than from understanding why and how each one fits.

I used to think the same way. As a 100- and 200-meter sprinter, I remember believing that to get ready for track season I should go out for a few long jogs. It never crossed my mind that long jogs were the exact opposite of speed training.

Later, when I first began coaching, my goal was simple: make athletes tired. I judged my effectiveness by how exhausted they were at the end of a workout. In my experience, this is typical of sport coaches who haven’t had the benefit of working alongside a trained strength and conditioning coordinator.

There’s a time and place for gut-check workouts, but if that’s the default mode, you actually stunt the athlete’s ability to get stronger, faster, and more powerful. You have to balance the mental-toughness goal against the principles of athletic development.

That’s why former athletes often make the worst trainers. After years of intense team workouts, they know countless exercises, drills, and punishing routines—but without understanding the underlying principles, they tend to combine them in ways that work against their intended goals.

They focus on the wrong exercises at the wrong times or in the wrong sequence.
They pick random rep schemes and work-rest ratios.
They use agility, speed, or plyometric drills as conditioning.
They choose the wrong conditioning distances and inappropriate rest intervals for their goals.
They overtrain placing too much emphasis on making every workout unnecessarily hard, while neglecting essentials.

In short, their efforts are far less effective because they have focused only on the methods without, first, understanding the principles that would dictate when and how those methods are chosen.

It’s the same with youth development. Kids vary. Situations vary. But the underlying principles of how humans thrive don’t. That’s why, when I wrote Setting the Bar, I focused on clarifying those deeper principles rather than prescribing lots of specific actions.

As I put it in chapter 2:

…rather than give definitive directives, throughout this book I will present deeper principles of human development that apply across many contexts.

Throughout most of my writing, I have focused on principles.

But over the past couple of years, I’ve come to appreciate that principles aren’t enough.

We Need Rules

Sometimes we need rules. We need clarity. We need a clear expectation that gets us on the same page.

Life is complicated, and the constant swirl of new challenges makes it easy to lose sight of what matters. More still, in our relativistic time it is easy to endlessly rationalize why each our extenuating circumstances justifies us behaving however we want to. Ultimately, anyone can do whatever they want (within reason) because their unique circumstances somehow justify it.

Sometimes we don’t need another principle — we need a standard everyone can hold.

As Jonathan Haidt explained in The Happiness Hypothesis:

“…one of the best predictors of the health of an American neighborhood is the degree to which adults respond to the misdeeds of other people’s children, rather than look the other way. When community standards are enforced, there is constraint and cooperation. When everyone minds his or her own business, there is freedom and anomie.”

Anomie means normlessness — and it is deadly. Without shared rules and expectations, we drift into chaos, loneliness, and purposelessness.

More still, there are some hard and fast rules.

With few exceptions (none that I can think of) parents should not put a television in their kids’ rooms. This is the first thing every sleep doctor will tell you. There are plenty of hard and fast rules we could enunciate if we weren’t so afraid to look judgmental and/or hypocritical.

Rules aren’t about rigidity. They’re about direction. They anchor us when impulses and temptations pull us down. Without them, it’s too easy to rationalize every decision, to let comfort and convenience dictate our path.

Rules Get You Off the Couch

James Clear nailed this in a single sentence:

“The first minute of action is worth more than a year of perfect planning.”

Principles matter. But often the doorway into understanding the principle is just trying the rule. Doing the thing. Experiencing the discomfort. From there, the principle comes alive.

And honestly, sometimes it’s just a relief to have someone say:

Here’s the standard. Do this.

The risk in outlining rules and expectations is that as the world changes, your rule becomes outdated.

For example, in 2009 Walker Lamond published a book called Rules for My Unborn Son. Among them, he lists that you should read a newspaper every day. The underlying principle—the duty to be informed—remains the same, but the context has changed considerably in the past 15 years.

Still, rules matter. Clear standards matter. They hold us accountable and define the type of person we are going to be. They inspire our young men and call them up with specific expectations. Which is another reason, I opened Raising Men with the 10 Rules for Every Young Man which comes with a mentor guide:

👉 Download the 10 Rules for Every Young Man (PDF)

Keeping Us Honest. Pulling Us Up.

Without rules, people tend to fall into the rationalization rabbit hole…

…where you simply justify every decision you ever make. The defense-lawyer within you runs amok. Impulses pull you down, rather than ideals pulling you up. What is more, without rules, we struggle to bond with others and find purpose.

Great cultures are defined by the way they do things. They bond over mutually held values, expectations, and ideals.

Society has pulled away from rules and expectations. But as the number of temptations abounds, we need rules more than ever.

When we don’t have personal rules that force us to do uncomfortable things, like exercise, we stop exercising.

When we don’t have personal rules and societal norms telling parents not to give their kid a phone at church, then it becomes common for parents to do wild things, like giving their children a phone to play on at church.

Clarifying the Standards

People—especially young men—need clarity. They need a code. They need to see what the principles look like in action.

That’s why I created The 10 Rules for Every Young Man — a simple guide to help mentors, fathers, and coaches translate timeless virtues into clear expectations young men can live by.

These aren’t abstract theories; they’re time-tested standards that help anchor a boy’s development in strength, discipline, and character. They’re meant to be lived, discussed, and modeled. If you haven’t already, download the free mentor guide and poster here:

👉 Download the 10 Rules for Every Young Man (PDF)

I’ll be diving deeper into these rules and establishing some other Man Laws over the coming months.

The principles still matter. But sometimes, we just need the line in the sand — the rule that reminds us who we’re trying to become. The standard that calls us to be something greater.

Thank you for reading and sharing. This publication grows entirely by word of mouth, so if it resonates, please pass it along.

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