SACRIFICE NOTHING

A literary theme I’ve always found particularly interesting is the notion of trading humanity for power.  We saw this classically with Faust and the typical “deal with the devil”/selling of one’s soul, but it’s been a persistent theme for centuries and still finds home in contemporary sources as well.  What tends to be interesting about these instances is that it is either a villain or someone who begrudgingly makes this sacrifice that is the focus of this theme, and in both cases, the message conveyed is clear: no rational, heroic, GOOD person ever makes this sacrifice.  You are either black of soul or put in a situation where you have no other choice to make this sacrifice, making you either evil or pathetic.  But here is what is interesting: heroes are EXPECTED to make sacrifices: just not THAT one particular sacrifice.  Heroes are supposed to sacrifice time, self-interest, and in many cases glory and riches, in order to achieve heroic ends: it’s just the sacrifice of humanity that is deemed “unacceptable” due to the value that we place on humanity as an entity.  In this, the message is clear: in order to make acceptable sacrifices, one must not value those things that are needed to be sacrificed and, in turn, the power an individual has is the power to alter their values such that they, ultimately, sacrifice nothing to reach their goals.

It's a pretty safe bet this guy didn't mind sacrificing his sanity for power

That was a mouthful, and in full disclosure I was just trying to shoe-horn the title in there.  Breaking it down, it boils down to this: the value of a thing is fundamentally a quality that YOU can decide upon.  Yes, many other entities can weigh in on the matter, and some may even weigh heavily in their influence by force of law or societal pressure to hold the same value as everyone else, but, fundamentally, the decision on what you value and how much you value it is ultimately up to you.  In turn, this means that, the degree of significance of what gets “sacrificed” in pursuit of your goals fundamentally rests within you as well.  This is Nietzsche’s “revaluation of values” in action: a conscious decision to re-order and prioritize the things that you hold valuable and do so in a manner that fundamentally benefits you and your goals.

In the instance of those that sacrifice humanity in order to achieve power, those that hold humanity in the highest regard will see such a sacrifice as abhorrent: nothing is worth that. But what if the truth of the matter is that those that were seeking such power ultimately held little value for humanity.  What if they felt humanity was the one thing holding them back from achieving their goals?  They’d gladly jettison humanity, for power, sure, but hell, maybe for anything.  Maybe they valued it so little they’d trade it for a sandwich, and they were just happy with how good of a trade they got on the matter. 

Oh please no, anything but that...

This is what “giving up what others are unwilling to give up” really boils down to.  You don’t need to make bigger sacrifices than others to get ahead: you can simply value things they value less than they value them.  Can you imagine what you could achieve if you didn’t value your time?  You could train like it was your job, quite literally, spending 8-9 hours in the gym, with prodigious rest periods and insane amounts of volume.  If you didn’t value our money?  Imagine the unfettered access you’d have to the greatest gadgets and toys, meal plans, etc etc.  Don’t value your health or longevity?  That is the training equivalent of “trading humanity”: sacrificing your “self” in order to obtain as much strength as possible.  And if none of these things hold any value, you wouldn’t even really need to sacrifice them at all: it’d be considered a sucker’s trade.  You got something for nothing, assuming that is how you regard these qualities.

And this also means having an honest self-assessment when determining a training plan.  People make so many empty claims, saying things like “I’d give ANYTHING to train at Westside Barbell”, yet when pressed to quit their job, sell their house, drive across the country to Ohio and go train there, they rebuke the advice and offer excuses.  Be honest: you won’t actually give anything.  In point of fact, you’re willing to give very LITTLE to train there.  You’d give anything to get jacked…except lift weights 4 days a week.  Ok, then be honest: you’re more willing to sacrifice getting jacked than you are to sacrifice training only 3 days a week.  There’s nothing wrong with HAVING these priorities: the only issue exists when we refuse to acknowledge that THESE are the actual priorities.  Sacrifices are for martyrs: we just need to figure out what our values are here.

Clearly not safety. Or effectiveness.  Or dignity.

The big takeaway is that it’s borderline ridiculous how empowered you are when it comes to determining your fate.  This is Sartre’s “radical freedom”: terrible, oppressive, choking freedom.  It’s far easier to make yourself a slave and paint yourself as powerless than it is to accept just   how much YOU are the reason for your limitations.  And it’s only when we view our decisions with regret that we find the situation disagreeable: if we are at total peace with our decisions, we have nothing to regret and have reached our max power and potential under the conditions we have decided to permit to ourselves.  When we take owernship of the fact that we have decided that certain things hold higher value than our success in pursuing a specific goal, there is nothing to lament, but when we delude ourselves into thinking WE are not the ones that made this decision, the dissonance between reality and the delusion we live under will constantly cause frustration.  Make the decision, figure out what you value, and sacrifice nothing.     

SUCCESS CAN’T BECOME OBSOLETE

It most likely shocks no one that I’m not an “early adopter” as far as technology goes.  I didn’t get text messaging until 2013, and that was only because my work was sending schedule changes by text and I wasn’t getting them.  I still don’t own a tablet.  I write these blogs on a laptop I bought in 2015, and I also use that same laptop to play through my 300^th playthrough of Fallout and Diablo (man, 1996-1997 was a GOOD era).  I’m still driving the first car I ever bought back in 2008.  Examples abound, the fact of the matter is, when something works, it doesn’t really matter to me if something better comes along: I only tend to make changes when I need to.  But here’s the crazier thing about this: this is me not adopting new technology in the face of the fact that obsolesce is a real concept in the world of technology and still achieving success.  So why would you need to change how you train to avoid obsolesce?

This is the exact look I imagine I'd get from him after he read that

Where is this rant going?  Specifically, I’m rallying against people that read one article or watch one Podcast (say, the Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Pavel Tsastouline or Rob Oberst) or one study (abstract of course) and suddenly decide that their entire training protocol needs an overhaul and everything needs to be thrown out.  These trainees discover that any rep above 5 is “garbage volume”, or that they should never do deadlifts, or that they should never strain in training, or that they need to train bodyparts twice a week, etc etc.  And I ask them “Was your training working PRIOR to this discovery?”  And what do I get in response? 

People act like that question is completely immaterial to the conversation at hand, and that, quite frankly, is insane.  And not the kind of insanity that I champion, of Viking berserkers charging headlong into battle against mounted armored cavalry wearing nothing but bearskins, but more the “tinfoil hat to keep the government radiowaves out of my skull” kinda insane.  The primary goal of training is to achieve your goals: THAT is why you train.  If your training is achieving your goals, IT IS WORKING.  If you are getting bigger and stronger training a bodypart once a week, you have demonstrated that this method is a method that achieves success.  If a study comes out that says otherwise, THAT STUDY IS WRONG.  At least, insofar as it relates to you.  The same is true if you’re the kinda dude that squats until you puke and find out that submax training is what works, or if you’re a walking JPS meme and have “there is no reason to be alive if you can’t do deadlift” tattooed on your body and discover that you’re not supposed to deadlift: if it works for you, then the “new technology” is wrong.

“But I want to be optimal!”  Oh my god, shut up.  I think I had plans to make this into a paragraph, but honestly, that about says it all.

Folks, the human body is not evolving at a rate that you can perceive, to include by the decade.  Things that worked in the 1920s are going to work in 2020, let alone things that worked in 2010.  Sure, there are a few mutations roaming around, but you’ll know if you have one pretty quick, and unless you’re a new X-man, it means that methods that work will work for you.  This includes things like “bro splits”, which were just called “splits” back in the day, because people somehow were less stupid despite having access to less information and “knowledge” back in the day and didn’t need to give derogatory names to a way to train.  It includes HIT, Heavy/Lights, Arnold’s Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding training, Abbreviated Training, Heavy Duty Training, Dogg Crapp, and yes, EVEN the first edition of 5/3/1 (so you can stop getting upset that Jim released newer editions, because you can still use the old one if you want to).  Simply because new information came along doesn’t somehow invalidate the success of that old information: it just means there’s even MORE ways to achieve your goals now.

And let me just make the observation that, the more I see trainees try to follow the “new rules” of training, the more I see trainees failing to make results.  One of the most popular programs I’ve seen recently is a 6 day a week Push/Pull/Legs program.  Since push/pull/legs would only train the muscles once a week (taboo, you see), this means trainees need to run the program 6 days a week, in order to hit that holy “2 days a week’ for training muscle groups.  And every time I’m online and I see someone say that they’re stalling in their training, I ask them what program they’re running and they reply with this.  And I can’t help them.  Primarily because I grew up in an era where, if you told any dude you were lifting weights 6 times a week, their immediate reply would be “stop doing that: it’s too much training”.  Primarily because there was an expectation back then that you were absolutely slaughtering a muscle group when you trained it, and that you needed to rest it so it could recover and grow.  And now we’re told that idea can’t possibly work, in spite of the fact that it does, and that instead, this new idea is what works…in spite of the fact it doesn’t?

I suppose I've seen crazier ideas...

And before I get flooded by people that want to defend their holy PPL program, LEARN the lesson of what I’m writing here.  If I’m writing a blog saying your program can’t work, and your program HAS worked for you: that means I’m wrong.  BUT, if someone wrote that the program you’re following will work, and it’s NOT working: that means THEY’RE wrong.  Success can’t become obsolete, but failure is a SURE sign that something needs to get evolved.  And maybe, sometimes, evolution moves us backwards or sideways instead of forward.       

NIGHT SHIFT BULLET POINTS

- Gonna kick off with the sensitive topic of drugs, but not what’s usually discussed when it comes to lifting.  I often see people ask the question about the impact of marijuana on lifting.  My follow up question is always “If you found out it had a negative impact, would you stop using it?”  I’ve never seen a single person respond with an affirmative to that, simply that they would use LESS of it, or that they’d try to time their use better.  What the hell is the point of this question?  We’ve now run into that weird bit of pseudo-optimization where we want to do everything in our power to maximize gains…except of the things in our power to maximize gains.

Not pictured: a steak

- On that note, let’s discuss being “drug free” here.  People use that term to mean free of performance enhancing drugs, but consider taking it a step further.  The only drug I’ve ever used recreationally is caffeine.  I never got into drinking (to the point that I’ve never had a drink), no nicotine, and nothing illegal.  I’ve used pain killers when I was in pain, with a doctor’s prescription, and even then, sparingly.  I’ve managed to accomplish some things that some folks in the internet community insist are only possible with the use of performance enhancing drugs.  Perhaps it’s worth considering what the impact of being drug free has as it relates to training and achieving physical results.  I’ve never been hung over, I haven’t imbibed controlled poisons for prolonged durations, haven’t filled my lungs with smoke, haven’t made poor nutritional choices as a result of an altered mental state, etc etc.  I don’t say all this to be holier than thou, as hedonism is just as valid a decision as asceticism when we see things as an absurdist, but it’s more something worth considering when we view what is possible.  When we talk about the limitations of “drug free trainees”, as we really thinking of trainees that have been “drug free”.

- Diving down even further into discussion on natural limits, I observe a direct overlap between those individuals that claim that a natural trainee achieves their max potential after 2 years of training and those same individuals that want to optimize their training to the greatest degree possible.  I genuinely don’t understand how one can hold both of these beliefs in their head at the same time.  If you’re going to reach your maximal potential within 2 years of training while training the most optimal way possible, how long will it take you to reach those same results training just a little sub-optimally?  2 years and 3 months?  2.5 years?  A mere pittance really.  Why not just train the way you want to train vs worrying about being as optimal as possible?  You’ll get there soon enough.  You’d imagine the only people worried about training as optimally as possible are those folks that will admit that a natural trainee can grow for over 2 decades of training, because in THAT instance you wouldn’t want to waste any of your training time: eventually, your body will be too aged to make the most of your training.  In THAT situation, you’re up against a clock, but 2 years?  Hell, it takes longer to graduate high school.

- Paul Carter is pissing some folks off right now talking about how volume isn’t the answer to growth, but instead it’s intensity of effort that drives it, referencing back to DoggCrapp style training.  I had to admit: my experience agrees.  Now, that having been said, Deep Water is still, in my mind, the most effective program I’ve ever done, and it has tons of volume, but it ALSO mixes it in with an insane degree of intensity of effort.  But left to my own devices, I tend to favor a lot of “single set” work.  It can get a little confusing to the outside observer, as what I’ll consider to be a single set will, in fact, have a significant degree of rest pausing and dropsets in it that one could make the argument I’m really doing several sets with short rest periods instead, equating to an argument FOR volume, but I feel that a trainee with experience can tell the difference between the two.

And if you REALLY think of it, time between reps is an illusion anyway

- Let’s talk about that experienced trainee above though.  One of the biggest arguments AGAINST single set work for a new trainee is that they simply lack the ability to push themselves hard enough to get anything out of just 1 set of work.  I’ve had SEVERAL trainees talk to me about the Super Squats program and ask if they should do 2-3 more sets of squats after that first set, at which point my eyes bug out of my skull and I ask them how they can even THINK about squatting after the 20 reper in that program.  But the fact of the matter is that they can’t push themselves hard enough to actually dig in deep and get as close to failure as someone with more experience under their belt.  So we tell these trainees to just get in as much volume as possible because, in the absence of intensity of effort, one can substitute with an abundance of training volume.  But now we also have arguments that reps below a certain percentage of 1rm are “junk volume” and don’t contribute.  So now we have trainees that can’t train hard enough to make use of single set work, because of that they also have no conception of what their real 1rm is, and when they push for volume sets they’re staying so far from failure that they aren’t getting in effective reps.  So should we just tell new trainees not to train?

- I came up with the ultimate “weight gain plan”: 2 cycles of 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake, a 1 week deload, Building the Monolith, 1 week deload, Deep Water Beginner then Deep Water intermediate.  Boils down to 26 weeks of training: half a year, all mapped out, and there’s even an eating plan detailed 18 weeks of it.  Well, in watching people implement this program, it looked like I forgot to include one important piece of instruction: don’t f**k it up. 

- That I have to say “don’t f**k it up” blows my mind.  I can’t tell if it’s a sign that I’m smart or that I’m stupid, but I don’t have any issue with program compliance.  A program says “Do X for Y”, and that’s what I do.  But I observe trainees who hire coaches and pay them money and STILL go off program.  “I know today was supposed to be 80% for triples, but I was feeling really good so I set a new 1rm!”  Hey, genius, the reason you felt good was because your coach was PROGRAMMING you to feel good: so you could set that 1rm in a competition.  But no, it’s cool: now it’s on Instagram.  That’s all that matters, right?

One day, you're gonna wish it was never posted online

- I genuinely, truthfully, do not understand the current claims about unrealistic male body image expectations in the media.  Some 40 year old dude recently got in shape for a Marvel movie and there was a bunch of backlash for it because of the expectations it set for young men.  Did we forget the 80s?  Did we forget Arnold, Stallone, The Barbarian Brothers, Dolph, JCVD, etc etc?  If anything, the male image has been getting SMALLER, not bigger.  It’s becoming MORE realistic.  How come no one cared when the ideal male image was absolutely bonkers? 

- I’ve had a few requests for me to voice my thoughts on “evidence based training”.  I suppose first I have to learn what the hell that is.

- I remember when we were concerned about the results training had on US, rather than the results it had on other people.

- I’ve noticed a direct correlation between someone having leaked 5/3/1 Forever online and a rise in very stupid question about the book.  Almost as though paying for a book promotes more careful reading.

- I am going to show my ignorance on this one, but are English speaking authors (and primarily Americans) really the driving force behind all things health and fitness related?  I ask, because the common complaint about 5/3/1 Forever is “international shipping is expensive”.  Don’t folks in other countries have their own dudes putting out material?  Like, Jim Wendler doesn’t seem like he should be that big a deal to reach world-wide acclaim.  And I say that as a guy who is a big fan of his work, but fundamentally we’re talking about a dude that was in one of the most niche sports ever with unlimited-ply powerlifting.  You don’t need 5/3/1 Forever: you can use a different book and still get big and strong.

I bet THIS guy has some cool things to say on the topic of training

- “You protest too much” is such a stupid thing people say, yes, even if you’re paraphrasing Shakespeare.  It’s typically when it comes to accusations about using steroids, where if a trainee doesn’t argue against the accusation it’s guilt by omission, but if they argue against it they “protest too much” that it’s a sign that they’re being too defensive and, therefore, are guilty.  There’s no winning on that situation, which is typically the intent of anyone that makes the accusation in the first place.

- I’m getting sick of people thinking strongman is a sport where you eat a lot of food and lift weights on occasion.  I’ve seen more photos of food than I have of lifts on certain sections of the internet, and you got dudes who absolutely REFUSE to lose any weight.  Remember how we started exercising to get healthy? 

   

UNLOGIC AND BRO SCIENCE: THE CASE OF CLEAN EATING AND MUSCLE CONFUSION

In having a recent conversation with someone that, I can only hope, was arguing in bad faith, I found myself once again expressing the concept that it’s possible to arrive at correct conclusions despite using flawed logic.  That is to say that simply because one’s logic is flawed (and thus containing one of the dreaded and deadly fallacies of logic) does not necessarily mean that what they say is incorrect: simply that it is correct for the incorrect reasons.  This is where the discussion of “bro science” exists.  And before continuing, allow me to address this phrase, and it has, once again, become mutated.  “Bro science”, in its original inception, was about the things meatheads said in the gym that had the faintest of scientific inklings behind it, but was fundamentally just something based on experience.  Multiple meals a day to stoke the metabolic fires and keep them burning, high reps to lose fat and tone, no eating at 7:00pm, etc, these were all “bro science”.  The term has now been taken to mean any matter of science that an individual disagrees with that relates to physical fitness, and, in turn, the term has been muddied.  I have no intention of discussing the abstracts of studies performed on 20 college kids as it relates to operating within 80% of one’s 1rm on the leg extension: that’s stupid for entirely unrelated reasons.  No, today I wish to discuss two long-standing bits of bro science, and why the conclusions are correct despite the methods taken to arrive there: specifically the case of “clean eating” and “muscle confusion”.

Whereas some combine the two and confuse the f**k out of their eating

To begin, people already get stupid when they hear the term “clean eating” and will say stupid things like “what, you washed your food?”  Much like the case of pornography vs art where “I’ll know it when I see it”, those of us that aren’t children are typically able to discern a clean food when analyzing nutritional choices.  But as it relates to bro science, why are certain foods considered the “clean foods”?  The specific examples being chicken breasts, egg whites, rice, and olive oil.  New trainees look at these foods and wonder if they have some sort of magical bodybuilding qualities, while the “educated” on the internet mock the bros for eating the egg whites and throwing away the nutritious yokes, or eating the chicken breasts and now the fattier cuts of the bird, losing out on valuable hormone regulating dietary fats.  Oh these stupid bro.  All they have to show for this work is decades of success and achieving mind blowing physiques and incredible feats of strength.

 …wait, crap.  What’s the deal?  It’s not that there’s some sort of inherent “cleanness” in the food that results in superior results compared to less clean options (though, typically the super “dirty” foods come with excess baggage like excessive amounts of transfats and zero micronutrients), but moreso that these “clean” food sources are effectively a sole source of a single macronutrient.  Why egg whites instead of whole eggs?  Because if you’re the kinda dude calculating macros, it’s far easier to just factor in pure protein from egg whites than having to crunch the numbers on how much protein is in an egg vs how much fat and track and balance all of that.  White rice is pretty much entirely carbohydrates, so when calculating your daily values, it’s easier to just put some scoops of rice in a tupperwear than try to figure out the value in something more complex like a burrito, casserole, pizza, etc.  And yeah, sure, for those of you that are foodies, you can diligently weigh out all the bits and pieces and construct the macro perfect recipe, but when you’re eating like it’s your job, you quickly get sick of that s**t and just mass produce a bunch of chicken and rice so you can be over and done with.  And with that we unravel the mystery of “clean” foods: they work because they’re pure macro sources and make the calculation of nutrition far easier than trying to use more complex recipes.

And sometimes you get even simpler by eliminating an entire macronutrient

Speaking of greater complexity, let’s transition to muscle confusion.  The bro science on this one operates as follows: when the body gets used to training, it stops growing, so the way to ensure that your body keeps growing is to confuse the muscles by changing your program.  Rate of change prescriptions vary, with some folks adamant that they never perform the same workout twice while others recommend changes every 6, 8 or 12 weeks.  In either capacity, it’s not the notion that one needs to change that’s debated: simply the frequency.  One can change the reps, sets, exercises, exercise order, or completely overhaul the entire program, training with more or fewer days, 2 a days, etc etc.  The idea remains the same: one has to confuse or shock the muscles semiregularly to prevent stagnation and continue growth.

Folks: this is periodization, plain and simple.  People chide the bros over the stupidity of the idea of muscle confusion, but all this boils down to is a great idea expressed poorly.  And even then, one can argue that the bros did something that tends to be the truest demonstration of intellect: taking a complex, multi-faceted idea and reframing it in a manner that it can be understood by the most junior of trainees.  And yes: one can take a much more detailed and structured approach to periodization, making use of accumulation, intensification and peaking blocks, but for a non-athlete, whose simply interested in getting bigger and stronger, there’s really no need for all of that.  A very basic periodization approach is more than sufficient, and that’s what “muscle confusion” is: training in a certain way for a certain while, getting what you can out of it, and then chasing after a different goal with a different manner of training for a while.

I've used this in periodization, where I did it once in 2006, and then never again for the rest of my life

Ultimately, the lesson here is that sometimes the conclusions are worth listening to irrespective of the premises utilized to arrive there.  Exercise science is still a fledging field, with not nearly the degree of research, funding, or legitimization afforded to other scientific research communities such as those dedicated to eradicating cancer or STIs, primarily because the world will always consider these to be higher priorities than maximizing how jacked you can get.  Hell, I’d wager that the research on curing baldness is most likely more robust.  In light of this, often we lack the scientific explanation needed to explain regularly observed phenomena.  Some bros took it upon themselves to invent a science to explain it away, in much the same way primitive people created gods and religion to explain nature (and, in that regard, in much the same way many embrace science as their own religion in light of their own inability to explain the world), and though it may not make any sense, the outcome remains the same: it works.  Instead of deciding that a conclusion cannot be true because the premises are false, look at if it’s possible that a true conclusion has been realized and we simply need to find the premises that actually support it.