PURITY

There is beauty in purity.  The pure is the uncorrupted, the untouched, the essence and very spirit of an object.  We admire purity when we observe it, and we seek it in its absence.  It is with this understanding that we should in turn endeavor to be pure in our dealings, actions, and persons.

What I am arriving at is not a question of morality.  I am not speaking of steroids or cheating or any such ethical debate.  That is a personal choice, and not my place to judge or advise.  What I am instead speaking to is the idea that one must embrace what they choose to be, and in turn choose to be something that they would endeavor to embrace.

Within lifting, many trainees spend their time wallowing in regret and pining for a different approach rather than committing to their current gameplan.  These are the people that pay lip service to abbreviated training while they are simply bidding their time until they can move on to a “hypertrophy program”, or people who are in a “bulking phase” that just want to have a six pack.  Their actions may tell one tale, but their minds tell another.  While they may be married to their plan, they commit adultery in their minds by lusting after the future.

Clearing your history doesn't help when she's been watching you the entire time

We have to live in the moment.  This is not a call to hedonism, but to living our training.  When we decide that we are strength training, we have to exist purely for the love and want of strength.  We cannot strength train in the hopes of accidentally improving bodycomp along the way, but purely to become stronger.  When we cut weight, we must exist purely for the need to cut weight, with no backward glances at getting larger or stronger.  Our commitment must be 100% to our objective, as we give it all of our mind, body, spirit and soul.

Those trainees who cannot accomplish this are yo-yos.  They are the children who declare with much bravado how they are going to cut, spend 2 weeks losing weight, become terrified when they appear to be growing smaller, and go back on their plan, repeating the constant process of wheels spinning.
 They are the ones who sell the party line and say they endeavor to build up a strength foundation before moving on toward physique training and then attempt to sneak in 14 different movements into an abbreviated program, leading them to question their own lacking progress.  They are impure, and in their impurity they achieve mediocrity.  We seek the pure because it is rare, and those who succeed in this world of the impure will in turn stand out among their peers.