AND THEN?

I tend to have something even greater than a 30,000 foot view, more along the lines of a 30,000 mile view, as my propensity to engage in nihilism/stoicism/absurdism tends to make me not appreciate the present at all as I’m already living in the era where I’ve been dead so long that not even the memory of the memory of my memory even exists.  But goddamn if some of you folks need to learn how to have at least a 3 foot view.  I swear some of you folks can’t see 2 hours into the future, let alone weeks, months and years, and it’s severely hamstringing your ability to progress and grow.  When you can’t see the future, not only can you not plan for your success, but you also are unable to truly realize the significance of your failure.  Specifically, just how INSIGNIFICANT your failure will be.  When discussing the immediate future, you must never forget to ask yourself the follow-up "and then?”

Do people still get this reference?

I’m gonna start with what originally prompted this post today, and something that shouldn’t shock my regular readers: injuries.  Oh my god do I lose my mind when trainees talk about these, because they absolutely do NOT exercise “and then?”  “If I do that, I might get injured!”  Ok, great…and then?  Your story does not end with an injury.  It’s not like you get injured and then fade to black.  This isn’t a goddamn movie.  LIFE GOES ON.  What is the “and then?” of your injury?  Will it be the kind of injury where you just shut down the workout for the day, go home and ice yourself and come back tomorrow?  Will you be out for a week?  Are you going to need surgery?  Physical therapy?  And guess what: those are RECOVERABLE!  Your “and then” is that you get injured…and then you heal, and then you continue to get stronger.

But these folks aren’t thinking in the future, where they’ll be healed, big and strong again.  No, most these people are so in the immediate that their only fear of the injury is simply the PAIN they’ll experience as a result of the injury.  They don’t want to get injured because, for one incredibly brief moment in their existence, they’ll experience a moment of pain.  This is why people will terrifyingly BEG internet strangers to tell them how to know when they’re close to failure on squats, because they don’t ever want to run the risk of failing a set and having to dump the bar.  What if the knurling scrapes their skin!?  What if they conk themselves in the back of the head?!  Christ folks, live like 15 minutes in the future at least, when they owie no longer smarts and you’ve already stripped the plates off the bar.

and fired your coach

And this phenomenon continues to exist outside of this realm of my personal annoyance: it bleeds into training in general.  So many trainees exist in the absolute and most immediate present that they have zero ability to appreciate the future and working towards it.  Trainees want PRs NOW, rather than building toward something much MUCH greater in the future.  And so they’ll constantly be grinding away at max weights, setting tons of Instagram PRs and ultimately making zero REAL growth over the span of weeks, months and years, all because their ego can’t handle the idea of taking some weight off the bar, accumulating some serious volume and building up to something insane.

I know I’ve become a Deep Water zealot as of recently, but it’s been a great example of long term thinking in effect.  I was handling weights that were around 60% of my 1rm for 12 weeks: a situation that would drive so many internet denizens absolutely bananas since they NEED those PRs NOW.  However, once I completed the program and transitioned to something with greater intensity, I started absolutely crushing some old PRs, to include ones I had set prior to blowing out my ACL.  I became stronger than I had ever been before, and it was because my plan included an “and then”.  “I’m going to run Deep Water, and then I’m going to make use of that volume to hit an intensification phase and set PRs” vs “I’m going to set a bunch of PRs in training and then…I don’t know.”

Seems like a good plan

The “and then” is always present, and it’s incumbent upon you to ask the question and provide an answer.  If you don’t, the future is going to catch you flat footed, and you’ll have to REACT rather than be proactive.  Don’t be at the mercy of the future: decide your own fate IN ADVANCE.  Know how things are going to play out and already have a plan in place.  And when there are multiple paths, have multiple plans.  Have a plan for how you’re going to succeed if you succeed and how you’re going to succeed if you fail.  If your “and then” results in you getting injured, have an “and then” that is how you’re going to train and recover from that injury.  If your “and then” is that you’ll soon have a compressed training schedule, have an “and then” that is HOW you’re going to get all of your training done with less time.  Don’t be at the mercy of an unpredictable future: go SUPER big picture and recognize just how potential is out there.