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time-bounded journalling for focus and periodization

your goals, trends and journal are defined by a start and finish time and packaged into what’s known as a training block or simply “block”. We do this because open-ended goals which aren’t defined by a finish time aren’t real goals (I will do this by then), and the things you want to track are likely to change throughout the year. Whilst some trackables will reappear in most if not all blocks, like total hours of sleep and sleep quality, you may want to throttle accountability settings, change goal trendlines, increase your services by finding a coach for competitions, etc. Blocks allow for natural periodisation, short-sharp focused sprints, or feel free to create a year long block for those daily things you want to monitor.

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pivot and progress through different blocks and services

In traditional apps you are essentially locked into whatever that specific coach uses for their coaching; be it their own app or commonly a spreadsheet. It is natural for us, the client, to swap coaches, increase or decrease our commitment, increase our goals beyond the coach’s scope or drop off completely. The problem is that you are essentially vendor locked by the platform; not only do you have to hurt your coach’s feelings, but when you move away you can’t take the data with you. Hence either you continue with a service not right for you, you implement an alternate journalling system, or your data belongs to your app graveyard and ultimately becomes fragmented and unusable to you. Because we do things in blocks, and because each block is built from your data, in Block Bear we empower you to “Pivot and Progress”. This is the concept of forecasting your goals, availability and levels of commitment so you can find a block for you. Some blocks are easy, some hard, some will be baseline monitoring and some will be your “lock in David Goggins get it hell yeah PEAK” block. This is the core of our service and weekly subscription design. Build-A-Blocks for baseline periods, Bear Blocks which have preset configurations for common goals to get you going quicker, or more expensive Boss Blocks developed by the community should you want tailored expertise for those ramp periods.

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start, stop, pause, and schedule

Our lives aren’t as straight as the target trendline, and unforeseen schedule commitments are amongst the leading causes for us not hitting our goals. That’s why all the blocks have the scheduling options you need to keep critical alignment between the journal and your schedule.
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Unscheduled
The block does not have a start date. Goal trendlines will not be able to be calculated as the start value is not known.
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Scheduled
The block has a start date in the future.
You don’t have to start a block straight away. Schedule blocks at critical times, like if you know you have a stable work period in Quarter 4, or you need to get surf-fit for the Bali Indo trip
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Scheduled After
The block is scheduled, or chained, after another block.
Schedule blocks after each other to unlock “goal chaining”. More on that below.
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Active
The block has started and we’re getting after it.
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Paused
Paused until you resume again. Pickup where you left off. Life happens, Block Bear can slide with you
Work springs an unexpected trip on you derailing your fitness plan? Pause and start your blocks completely or flatten your goal target trend with goal phases. Add new cards and add notes to remind you that you were doing the best you can with what you had in the hotel
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Completed
View your overall performance, archive or schedule again.

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mult-block scheduling, chaining and projections

Having your data in one place (not fragmented in your app graveyard) and the ability to pivot and progress through blocks allows you to build your schedule and to create advanced forecasts on your goals. By scheduling blocks after each other you do two things:
  • Start and Finish Dates Slide. If you pause your current block, the start and finish dates of all blocks scheduled after will also slide. Every time you pause, start and stop, we actively recalculate the schedule.
  • Goals can be linked through your blocks. In a new concept known as goal chaining, you can set the start point of a goal to the forecasted finish value of your previous goal. No matter how many blocks in the chain, you can link them all together if the goals exist. As the schedule slides; we’ll recalculate your projected trendlines too.
    Use goal chaining for those often lofty goals which involve multiple different blocks. For example long periods of body recomposition often have a brief block such as a micro-cut or refeed before re-assuming the body recomp: in this example this would be three different blocks with a chained bodyweight goal. Other examples include long-distance running which feature deload weeks; here chaining your weekly running distance target between your build and deload blocks would be a good approach.