ON BEING HUMAN

Anyone familiar with my writing is most likely aware that I am a misanthrope.  My distain for humanity en masse is great, and I take great delight in pointing out the constant foibles, pit falls, mistakes and failings of humanity.  From the nature of humans to their actions to the societies they create, I am never at a loss of something to deride and denigrate.  Yet, amazingly, what I find most despicable in many humans is their constant striving to NOT embrace their humanity, but to instead attempt to shed it someway.  In something of a paradox, while I can’t stand humans, I feel like I am the only one actually trying to BE human.

Or, at least, whatever this is

“Hey, isn’t this a lifting blog?”  Yeah, stick with me, I’ll get to that.  We are a flawed race, that much is certain.  But many choose to ignore these flaws rather than to recognize them, embrace them, and then OVERCOME them.  People experience bugs and hiccups as a part of existing and are in such a rush to “fix” them and return to a state of equilibrium that they miss out on the experience of “being”, and more specifically, of being HUMAN.  There is so much concern with eliminating all feeling of pain, suffering, adversity and even mere inconvenience and boredom to manufacture a state of constant nirvana like bliss that is alien, and in doing so we make ourselves weaker.

What am I talking about?  I’m talking about how people want to know how people who train in the morning have energy for the rest of the day.  The answer?  They don’t!  They get up, they feel exhausted, and then they train and they feel miserable, and then they go through the rest of their day feeling tired.  Because that’s what happens to an actual human when you deprive them of sleep, wake them up from their natural circadian rhythm, have them engage in rigorous exercise absent of sunlight and then force them to have a full work day after that.  That is a normal human way to feel in those situations.  But people want the answer; they want the cure, the fix!  And others create the cure, and you take caffeine and pre-workouts and upper and you time your nutrients and perfect your sleeping ritual to ensure you get your maximal restful allowance and guarantee that, even though you aren’t getting enough rest, you feel rested.  What sort of abomination have you become?

I mean, this guy ALSO sees no sunlight, works all day, and seems to be constantly energized

How do I trick myself into thinking exercise is fun?  It’s not!  And yet people try all manner of hypnosis and self-talk to try to trick themselves into becoming a masochist.  They want toil and hardship and pain and misery to be fun.  To be recreation!  To be blissful.  How horrifying!  What sort of deviant have you become?  Surely not human, but some sort of sick, twisted monster that exists of pain and suffering.

What of those that refuse to suffer the indignation of a bad day? They ponder and question how they can control every external variable to ensure that they always present peak performance.  Optimal sleep, optimal nutrition, optimal time of day training, optimal recovery protocol, an optimal life for a NON-OPTIMAL LIFEFORM.  You are human; you are imperfect.  You are damaged.  Your attempts to ignore and avoid your imperfection prevent you from learning how to live with and, therefore, thrive through your imperfection.

Some of us are more damaged than others

You are not overcoming; you are simply becoming.  You do not become super-human in your attempts to become inhuman.  Relish your humanity, understand your nature, and embrace these shortcomings, because it is only once they have been acknowledged that you CAN overcome them.  You do not have a bug in your DNA; this is simply what you are.  You don’t need to cure, it; you need to endure it!  You need to beat it through persistence, determination, will and tenacity, for THESE are what make us human. 

A necessary quality of a “super-human” is in fact that of BEING human.  The super-human still maintains their humanity, and still feels the pain of training, the anguish of toil and the fatigue inherent in exhaustion, but they continue on in spite of these feelings because they are well accomplished and practiced in overcoming this adversity.  They acknowledge the pain as real, and they acknowledge that it is happening to them, and they in turn also acknowledge that it is within their power if they will continue on or stop, but they do NOT try to convince themselves that the pain is positive and a joy that they seek.  They are, in fact, still human.

On the left: alien.  On the right: human (mutant).  Note the difference.

And when it gets to be too much and you breakdown, HAVE that breakdown.  Do not hide from the feelings of shame, disappointment, pain, regret and fear.  Do not try to convince yourself that this is what you wanted.  Do not try to hide with drugs, social media, self help gurus and other distractions.  Feel these human feelings and know them, so that you know that you find them offensive and have even more reason to continue on. 

Attempting to hide from these feelings of being human is what creates mediocre humans.  The blissful nirvana that one attempts to create through the absence of human feelings is tepid and lukewarm, with no real thrills or actual feelings of satisfaction.  There is no success to be found here, because there is no failure to contrast success against.  Become MORE than human by first choosing to be as human as you can be.  

READER REQUEST: 5 QUESTIONS

Over on my training log on t-nation, reader Timetoball123 submitted 5 questions to me that I thought would make a decent blog post for this week.  I’m always happy to answer my reader’s questions and entertain topics they have, mainly because it saves me from having to come up with something for that week.  So, without further ado, here were the questions

1. How do you train so intensely not eating many starchy carbs?
2. Have you ever tracked calories? Have you always eaten high protein/high fat?
3. What is your favorite split/template? I know you’ll say the one that gets you results, but what style do you gravitate towards and why?
4. If you could start your own lifting federation, what would be your 3 strength lifts for people to compete in?
5. If you were stuck on a island with only a barbell, squat stand, and weights, what program/template/exercises would you use to get strong?

And my responses.

1. How do you train so intensely not eating many starchy carbs?

Rich in amiño acids 

I’ve never really found a need to eat a lot of carbs/starches for the sake of intensity. I will say that, from age 21-23 or so, I went through a phase of eating a LOT of food in hopes of creating significant hypertrophy, and in doing so primarily just got fatter, but I DID have a lot of energy in training. One day, I decided I was tired of being fat and made a massive food QUALITY shift, which meant less fast food and more wholesome choices, and for the first 2 weeks or so noticed a sharp decline in performance, but after that it seemed to level off, and ever since I’ve been able to find ways to bring intensity to training regardless of what I’ve eaten.

It’s also been a gradual process of getting acclimated. It used to be that I could train no matter what I ate, except that, on deadlift day, I had to have my cheatmeal before the workout, or else I couldn’t get enough energy to pull big weights. Then it became that I needed to train after some sort of meal and in the afternoon, because I couldn’t generate enough energy in the morning. And then it became I just needed a meal in the morning before training. And now I can pretty much bring intensity whenever I want. Now, I will still hit BIGGER numbers when I am better nourished/rested, but my RPE doesn’t change.

I have a crackpot theory that relates to ethnic/genetic origin that goes into this. My wife is part Korean and seems to metabolize carbs much better than I do, while I’m primarily Northern European/Scandinavian stock, and seem to be able to metabolism meat and fat better. Our appetites reflect it too. She can eat a bag of rice in one sitting, while a small bowl puts me over the edge. Meanwhile, I can eat a 2lb steak and still be hungry, while she can barely make it through 6oz before she is done.

Artistic rendition of my ancestors

And ultimately there is something to be said about the power of the mind.  In times of dire circumstances, sleep deprived, malnourishes and stress special operators have found reserves of strength and energy to get through missions.  Labor camp convicts found strength to overpower their captors.  There is a lot of potential in the body even when it is underfed and unrested.

2. Have you ever tracked calories? Have you always eaten high protein/high fat?

I find calorie counters do poorly when you enter food quantity as "truckload"

I tracked calories once in my life just to see what I was eating. It was way too much of an ordeal, and in general my fear is that I’ll be obsessed with it. I tend to have obsessive/addictive tendencies, and I can use those powers for good, but they can easily consume me as well. Barring that brief stint in my early 20s, I’ve always preferred high fat/high protein.  Fundamentally, what it boils down to is that I like to eat a lot of meat, and the meat I like to eat is fatty.  I’ll always pick a steak over chicken or fish.  Well, if your protein is high and your fats are high, it really only leaves one other macronutrient to cut down.  Otherwise, a high fat/high carb/high protein diet is just called getting fat.

I also tend to disagree with the nature of tracking calories because of how much it relies on you just accepting something as fact.  My background is politics rather than science, but because of that I know that food produces are allowed to mislabel their products up to a certain percent without getting into any sort of legal issue.  Unless I personally raised and produced my food, I can’t know for sure it actually IS what it says it is, so then trying to apply an extremely precise manner of tracking imprecise food just seemed silly to me.

3. What is your favorite split/template? I know you’ll say the one that gets you results, but what style do you gravitate towards and why?

It's actually a weightloss program....from all the vomiting

I still like the traditional 5/3/1 set-up of a day for press, bench, squat and deadlift, with conditioning/events thrown in on off days/at the end of the workout. I like being able to pick 1 goal for the day and focus on it vs having to split my attention a bunch of different ways.  I still appreciated my time with Building the Monolith, and found it a very efficient way to get in a lot of volume, but I felt like I was spending more of my time “surviving” the program rather than using it progress.

4. If you could start your own lifting federation, what would be your 3 strength lifts for people to compete in?

Oh...you didn't mean all at once?

Car deadlift, axle strict press, and Anderson squat. I like movements that are pure brute strength and hard to use technique on. The car deadlift is pretty much just strap in and stand up, and whoever wants in the most wins. Strict pressing always sucks, but the axle also makes it start out a little in front of your body, so you have to be in a good way. Anderson squats off chains require you to really tap into some inner reserves to break the damn weight off the chains. Excellent example of overcoming. Also note that none of these movements have an eccentric load beforehand, which I think does a good job of putting everyone at an equal disadvantage.
Car deadlift would be for reps, but something that no one is going to get double digits on.  Anderson squat would be a single.  Axle press I could go either way on.

5. If you were stuck on a island with only a barbell, squat stand, and weights, what program/template/exercises would you use to get strong?

I'd probably be doing a lot of this...just in case

For sustainability sake, I’d run something like 5/3/1. Could do floor press instead of bench, or push press or something like that. With that set-up you could also run an awesome 20 rep squat program. Really, that’s a lot of equipment, and the potential is pretty much limitless. That’s VERY similar to how I started my home gym, except I also had a bench. Otherwise though, it was just a barbell and some weights. In fact, my “stands” were just the bench uprights turned backwards. My very first workout was a westside barbell style ME good morning for a heavy triple, which topped out at 275lbs, because that was all the weight I owned, haha.