PLANNED INEFFICIENCES & NUCLEAR OPTIONS

  

Let’s go with some video game nerd stuff this time.  “Metal Gear Solid” game out on the original Sony Playstation in 1998.  Some of my readers were born in that year, and it makes me shudder, but meanwhile me and some buddies from school were playing the Demo Disk that came as part of a Pizza Hut promotion (already living that “getting big” lifestyle with some stuffed crust) and getting absolutely blown away with the revolutionary stealth gameplay.  All that aside, there’s a great bit of dialogue in the game between the protagonist, “Solid Snake”, and the technical genius support character Otacon regarding the construction of the war machine in the game (the eponymous “Metal Gear”).  Specifically, Otacon reveals that he designed the weapon in such a manner that there is a way to destroy the computer control system by forcing the operator to open the cockpit.

 

Snake: You intentionally designed it with a weak point?

 

Otacon: It's not a weak point--I like to think of it as more of a character flaw. People and weapons just aren't complete without a character flaw, don't you think?

 
I just wanted to prove to you that these things really did exist

Long video game lore intro aside now, this scene must have had a significant impact on me, because I am a big fan of designing intentional inefficiencies and flaws in my plans.  Why?  Because having those at the START means that, when times get tough, you can remove them and have some room to progress.  It’s the ultimate escape hatch/in-case-of-emergency parachute.

 

Examples?  Sure, let’s do that.  Nutrition is where I do this a LOT.  When gaining weight, there are SO many options that are available to get in a ton of calories quickly and painlessly, and I use NONE of them at the start.  I intentionally do things inefficiently, just gradually increasing the amount of meals I eat or slowly adding food to those meals (reference my “The Nutrition Post” for a more fleshed out description).  It is only when I’ve exhausted those means that I then start bringing out “the big guns”: processed and refined carbs (hello pop-tarts), dense creams, weightgainer products, etc etc.  Were I to have introduced those things at the START of the weightgain and try to do everything as efficiently as possible, I’d have nothing to fall back on once things got actually tough.  By intentionally running things inefficiently at the start, the easiest part of the process were getting results requires minimal effort, I can shift to a more efficient approach once needed.

 
Follow me for more weird tricks (that your employer will hate)

And then, when it comes to fat loss, those things that were once efficient are now INEFFICIENT, and I can just gradually chip away at them as needed.  When you’ve got a pre-workout meal of 2 pop-tarts and you want to lose fat, you can eat literally the exact same way you’ve been for months and just cut out the pop-tarts and lose fat.  It’s totally and completely painless, there’s no struggle, no suffering.  I save the suffering for when I am in DEEP into the fat loss.  If I just pulled a total and complete 180, cut out all the junk all at once and radically reduced my calories, what the hell would I have to fall back on once I hit a stall?  By having those planned inefficiencies in my diet, I can just keep chipping away at them gradually, making the smallest changes necessary and achieve my goals while still having “nuclear options” readily available for when they are needed.

 

It’s the same with training too: there’s always room for more volume or intensity modifiers when one is training in a weight gaining phase, and including ALL of them at the start just means you have no room to use them LATER when you need them.  By starting out the training in an inefficient manner, there’s something to attack later when you need to attack it.  And then, when it’s time to drop fat, you keep all that nonsense you introduced in the weight gain phase and just slowly chip away at it until you’re eventually doing the bare minimum necessary to hold onto muscle/make growth in new areas.  Hell, I go a step further: doing fat loss phases of training, I employ inefficiencies by training NEW movements: ones that, I PERSONALLY am inefficient at executing.  I can see growth in these movements week to week simply because I’m getting better at them, which is a big morale boost compared to watching your core lifts sink with your bodyweight.  Right now my supplemental work for pressing is weighted dips and behind the neck pressing: stuff I haven’t done since before I went into my weight gain phase.  I’m seeing improvements in them week to week, even though I’m sure my “strength” is dropping.  You can add chains to old movements and alter the strength curve to the point that it no longer compares to what you’ve done before as well: there’s all sorts of way to make things new enough that you no longer have proficiency in it.

 
Take this guy for instance

To go “anime nerd” now, we’re talking the analogy of the Dragon BallZ weighted clothing: we do it on purpose, and remove it only when we need to.  This breaks the brain of so many kids that will ONLY do things the most optimal and perfect way 100% of the time and where there’s only two worlds that exist: optimal and garbage.  Instead, you have to condition yourself to be at peace with NOT doing things as best as possible, because the truth is, the body can only change SO much in a given period of time.  It can only lose SO much fat, only gain SO much muscle, etc etc.  And so, if you CAN hit that cap while employing inefficient methodology, why wouldn’t you?  If the most you can score is 100% and there’s no extra credit, don’t break out the Adderall and study groups if you know you can skate into class and ace it with a little bit of cramming and memorization: save those absolute most perfect methods for when you NEED it. 

If you go full nuclear at the start of the war, you’ve got nowhere to escalate from there, but if you save it until you absolutely need it, it can be the perfect weapon at the perfect time. 

 

 

ON “BRO SPLITS”

I, to the shock of absolutely none of my regular readers, am a total curmudgeon and pedant and, in turn, hate the majority of language that is employed by trainees when it comes to the topic of getting bigger and stronger.  Primarily because the language employed tends to oversimplify things to the point that it drives people to incorrect conclusions which is then perpetuated by inexperienced and otherwise ignorant (in the literal definition of the term) trainees.  I’ve rallied against “bulking”, “cutting”, “IIFYM”, and hell, even the idea of “strength” is honestly pretty nebulous when you start drilling down into it.  So it should, again, shock absolutely no one that I totally loathe the term “bro split”, as it is a recently adopted term employed derisively to describe a manner of training that has worked for DECADES up until the internet only recently decided that it no longer works.  As is often the case, people are attempting to weaponized language, and it’s resulting in a lot of people overlooking a whole slew of viable training options in order to achieve their goals.

 
Let's take a moment to consider that Arnold got so goddamn big from using bro science that he had to LOSE muscle to play Conan...

If, you are fortunate enough to not know what it is that the internet deems to be a “bro split”, allow me to define it for today’s purposes: it is a training split for lifting that has the trainee focus on 1 muscle group/body part per training day, resulting in once a week frequency for a muscle group.  There’s billions of examples out there, but something simple could be “Monday-Chest (naturally), Tuesday-Back, Wednesday-Shoulders, Thursday-Legs, Friday-Arms”.  For some reason, people that design bro splits don’t train on weekends, I don’t know why.  And also, I’d hate to put a barbell on my back to squat the day after training shoulders, but whatever, you get the point.  I feel weird having to write this all out, because when I was growing up, this was simply THE way people trained: you had an arm day, a leg day, a shoulder day, etc, but with the explosion of the internet and lifting based media, this method of training is going the way of the dinosaurs…unless, of course, you are paying attention at your local gym and watching how any of the big dudes train.

 

Which is kinda the point here: this type of training works.  It’s why it was deemed “bro split” by those trying to mock it: it’s the split USED by “bros”.  The same bros that employ bro science that ALSO works: even if it doesn’t make sense or conform to current scientific research.  Primarily because, as we’ve observed time and time again, commitment to a non-optimal method with skull splitting intensity and dedication over a long period of time trumps a weak willed attempt to train optimally in 100% of all instances.  The dudes that are focused on busting their butts day in and day out in the gym, absolutely killing their worksets and chasing stupidly high protein intakes are getting results that the kids following their perfectly and precisely prescribed 3x a week frequency for the whole body can only dream of.  Must be steroids and genetics, right?

Couldn't possibly be from doing squats once every 14 days...

 

Hey: here’s a dirty little secret about bro splits: they DO train the muscle groups more than once a week.  Yet again: people get so stupid about looking at programs on paper they forget you have to actually run them for them to make sense.  Just like how people say you don’t need 10x10 to get results and don’t understand the complete and total transformation of the SELF that occurs when you run Deep Water, if you actually ran a bro split vs just looked at the words “Chest, Arms, Back”, you’d get how it makes sense.  Unless you have rigged up a way to train that ONLY uses isolation exercises, training ONE muscle group is going to necessarily result in the training of OTHER muscle groups.

 

It’s Monday: chest day.  You start off with flat bench (of course).  Hey, doesn’t that train the chest AND the front delts?  Why, I do believe it even requires the triceps to come into play too.  And then we do some incline benching?  Holy cow: even more front delt work.  That’s so weird.  And we could round it out with some decline benching, which calls in some triceps, OR, since everyone knows decline bench is silly and weighted parallel bar dips are better, we do those: which hammer our triceps.  Finish up with some flyes: those are just for chest, sure (although they can make my delts ache).  We do back day tomorrow: why do my biceps get such a pump on back day?  Weird.   Also, my rear delts are burning from all the rows.  Hey, are the rear delts shoulders or back anyway?  I mean, they’re ON my back.  Might as well do some band pull aparts.  And then I have shoulder day after that?  Lets do some overhead pressing: there go my triceps again.  The same triceps I’ll train with some close grip benching on arms day: which hits my chest.

God forbid we do anything like this on the split

 

About the only muscle group you can argue doesn’t get trained 2-3 times a week are the legs, which, given this is a bro split, fits the narrative.  HOWEVER, there’s a few things to keep in mind here.  1: if you’re only training the legs once a week, this means you can train them with the craziest, most stupidest amount of volume and intensity you can possibly manage, because you have 6 full days to recover.  Think about what you saw get done in “Pumping Iron”: squat till you drop, then chase it with some leg press stripsets and all other manner of burnouts.  2: for you more athletically inclined individuals, this means you can get in more leg training via your conditioning.  The prowler and sled are king here, but if you’re doing a bunch of explosive jumping and moving through some actual sports, that’s great stuff too (dear me: did we just go conjugate by having a day for dynamic effort stuff AND a day for heavy stuff?  Those crazy bros).  Might be a great time to try some strongman stuff too.

 

I write all of this because, yesterday, it dawned on me that my training is a 4 day a week bro split.  I have a chest day, a back day, a shoulder day and a leg day.  It boils down to a day focused on benching, a day focused on deadlifts with a bunch of back work for supplemental/assistance work, a day focused on pressing overhead and a day focused on squats.  Outside of the lifting, I have conditioning work that hammers various parts of the body, depending on what needs focus.  The only “cheat” here is that, even though I have a day dedicated to training the back, I also train the back every single time I lift, and frequently go through periods of engaging in at least 1 daily set of chins, primarily because a big strong back is awesome and never goes out of style.  I don’t have an arm day, and just do 1 set of Poundstone curls on my bench day, because my biceps are getting trained with all the back work and my triceps with all the pressing and benching work. 

And when you do it right, one set is enough

 

This style of training works.  If you want to brave your own, give it a go.  Come up with something brutally heavy and stupid for your leg day, train your back every time you’re in the gym, and go nuts on one bodypart per day.  Grow big and go kick some sand in the face of people reading training studies at the beach. 

FAT LOSS BLURBS

  

I am sure I’m annoying many of my regular readers these days with my focus on nutrition, but it’s also most likely obvious by now that my writing tends to come in waves based on whatever it is I’m currently doing at that time, and right now my focus tends to be geared toward fat loss and nutrition rather than training to gain and compete, so here we are.  I wrote a “fat loss secrets from the trenches” post about 5 years ago, and have a few more lessons and ideas I wanted to pass on that I’ve learned from this process.

 
No camp required

--- 

-Broken promises.  This is an interesting bit of psychology that keeps working for me.  I tend to promise myself things in the future that I rarely have to deliver on.  This is especially helpful whenever cravings hit.  Whenever I see something that causes  me to have some sort of nutritional meltdown (a good looking pastry, some delicious new Taco Bell product, box of donuts, Pop Tarts at the grocery store, etc etc) I tell myself that I will eat that: later.  Back when I had a programmed weekly cheat meal (Friday’s dinner), that’s when I would say it would happen: on my Friday cheat meal.  This would satisfy the craving at the time: the idea that I WOULD get to eat that thing, just not right at that moment.  Meanwhile, when Friday rolled around, it was a rare instance that I was still feeling that craving.  If I was, I’d indulge it for sure, but otherwise I’d just have whatever I was in the mood for on Friday and be good to go for the week.  If you have no programmed cheat meal, you can still make promises: say you’ll do it tomorrow, or in an hour, or whatever the case may be, but make that promise to yourself.  If you have to fulfill it, that’s fine, but often you’ll find that your cravings have been memory as it relates to promises.

 
Sometimes this can fail

-Pack extra snacks.  Sounds counter intuitive, but it relates to “broken promises”.  I pack all the food I need for work, and it’s exactly what I need (keeping in mind I don’t count calories or macros, nor do I weight my food, so it’s all based off some nutritional Kentucky windage), but also in my bag is an extra quest bar that is not part of the equation.  I tell myself that is there in case my hunger is all consuming and I NEED to eat something, because it will be a better choice than anything in the snack bar.  This helps alleviate the anxiety of going hungry and having nothing to eat AND the anxiety of making poor choices when faced with such hunger, yet, in truth, I’ve never had to actually eat the quest bar.  It’s just a security blanket, there in my backpack, reassuring me and allowing me to stick with the plan.  Of course, this DOES require the necessary willpower to not eat food just because it’s there, but if your concern is more the anxiety of lack of preparation, it goes a long way.

 

-I chide people for always wanting “quick/easy meals” because of the inherent laziness of the question, but I’ve actually got some for you that I use.  Canned chicken breast is the baseline here for protein.  You can get that at Costco or Sam’s Club, and your local grocery store most likely carries it as well.  It’s already cooked and chunked and tends to pull apart easily.  It’s cheap too.  From there, mixed it with some riced cauliflower (several places sell this in an easy to microwave form) and/or whatever canned veggies you like.  I’m a fan of tomatoes and all the various permutations of them you can get (fire roasted, mixed with green chilis, with garlic, etc).  Salsa also works.  Sauerkraut is a fantastic zero prep vegetable, but the odor can be offensive to those not eating it, so exercise caution if you’re bringing this to a work area.  You can mix in whatever seasoning and low calorie sauces you care to.  This is a stupidly easy meal to make and is basically pure protein and veggies.  It microwaves easy if you want it warm, but you can also eat it cold and run no risk of health issues.  This is what I pack for work when I don’t have any leftovers around the house.

Canned chicken breasts, riced cauliflower and sugar free BBQ sauce

Canned chicken breasts, riced cauliflower, canned tomatoes Frank's red hot

 

-More lazy meals: I haven’t made a real breakfast in decades.  I’ll gladly eat one if someone wants to make it for me, but I don’t go through that kind of effort in the morning.  My go to used to be a quest bar, but I’ve tried to make that less of a staple in my diet and more of a treat, so instead, first thing in the morning, I take a 3/4 cup of fat free greek yogurt and mix it with PBFit powder (a dehydrated peanut butter powder with reduced fat).  It’s simple, has a decent amount of protein, probiotics, and is low on sugar and fat, and I find it very satiating for something fairly low on calories.  If you want more protein, mix it with protein powder instead of PBFit.  It turns into a pudding.

 

-Many times cuts “fail” because the trainee simply didn’t have any muscle to begin with.  I don’t say “enough”: I say “any”.  And that might seem ugly, but we gotta be honest with ourselves here.  Muscle is HARD to grow, it takes a long time and a lot of effort, whereas fat can be gained and lost rather quickly.  Often, trainees “bulk”, chase scale weight, put on some well proportioned fat that they want to REALLY believe is muscle, lose that fat and just look like a smaller version of themselves.  In 20 years of lifting, I’ve cut down to 180lbs 3 times.  The first time, I looked like a smaller version of my fat self: almost the exact same proportions, simply smaller.  The second time, I finally saw some abs and some muscle through the process (which actually dates with the start of this blog).  The most recent time, I looked BIGGER at 180lbs than I did at the starting 210lbs.  This isn’t a call to go on some stupid “forever bulk” and justify getting sloppy, but it IS about expectation management.  If you finished a fat loss phase and end up just looking like a smaller version of how you started, you didn’t screw up the cut: you’re just too junior in your training for the results to be impressive. 

It goes both ways

 

-It’s honestly worth recognizing and appreciating that the majority of diets/dieting tricks are less about managing weight loss and more about managing HUNGER.  That seems to be the biggest variable for people to overcome: they don’t ever want to feel hungry.  Lots of “eat all you want, never feel hungry, still lose weight” promises.  If you’re willing to just let yourself feel hungry, you’ve suddenly made fat loss radically simple and can pretty much eat however you want to achieve your goals.  Although I’d still aim to keep protein on the high side to spare your muscles.

 

 

 

MY PRINCIPLES

 

I’m finding myself with an abundance of reading time these days and have re-introduced reading about lifting into my life.  Typically, since my reading time is so compromised, I stick purely with philosophy, but now I allow myself some “fun” reading.  I’m primarily rereading at this point, and have once again circled back to Powerlifitng Basics Texas Style, Complete Keys to Progress, Super Squats, and the recently reviewed/panned Tactical Strongman book, but getting back to 5/3/1 Forever reminded me that Jim opens with a section wherein he lays out his principles for training, and it made me realize that I’m about due to do the same.  I’ve been lifting for 20 years now, and though I’m still no one special, I’ve done it long enough that I know what works for me, and, in turn, how I approach training.  None of these are “thou shalts”, carved in stone tablets and passed down Mount Sinai, but these are the things that shape my training and nutrition and make sense to ME.

 

 

1: The way the body gets bigger and stronger is by being subjected to a demand to grow.  

Not literally...although I suppose it could help

If the demand is not intense enough that growth is required, the body will not grow.  This, in turn, is why most of my training during periods where growth is the goal (vs, say, fat loss or technical skill improvement) is incredibly brutal, and why I am such an advocate for programs like Deep Water, Super Squats, and 5/3/1 Building the Monolith.  I fully and completely acknowledge that sub-max training must somehow work, because there are people out there getting results from it, but it just plain does not make sense to me and, in turn, I am unable to fully and effectively implement it.

 

I am more than certain there is some sort of science out there that explains that I am wrong and that sub-maximal training makes more sense, but, once again, this is how I understand things.  The body likes homeostasis.  It does not LIKE to change.  The only way you can make the body change is to subject it to such significant trauma that it undergoes change as a means of necessary survival.  If you do 20 rep squats for 1 workout, the body will go “wow, that sucked”, and then do nothing.  When you show up 2 days later and do it again, it’s going to start to sweat, and after the third workout it goes “Well sh*t, I guess the maniac is going to keep doing this: I better add some muscle QUICK!”  This is also why muscle gain and fat loss cannot be measured in a predictable linear fashion: one cannot always guarantee they will create the necessary stimulus on a consistent linear pattern.  Some days you’re going to go in and blast your body with a workout and it’ll go “well that was pretty awful but we got enough muscle to get through another dozen of those if we need to”, whereas other times you’re going to overreach enough that it forces adaptation.  And sometimes you’re going to create enough of a deficit that the body is willing to let go of some of its precious fat to keep you going, and other times it’s going to be stubborn and see if you REALLY mean it of if you’re just holding out on the cookies.

 

2: Whenever possible, do not mix carbs and fats.  

You knew this was coming

I’ve seen enough people say that there is research to back this up that you can easily look for some if you want to.  Some say it’s because carbs tend to be fast digesting while fats are slow digesting, and so you screw up your digestion, especially if protein is in the mix and you’re trying to feed your muscles.  I’ve seen others say that it has something to do with insulin.  And then, of course, there are the folks that say a calorie is a calorie and none of this matters.  I genuinely don’t know what is “true”, but I DO know that, once I started abiding by this policy, I made MUCH better nutritional choices in my life.  When you look at anything that is considered traditionally yummy, its carbs and fat put together, typically with very minimal protein.  Ice cream, French fries, donuts/pastries, the entire Taco Bell menu, grilled cheese sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, etc.  Same with condiments and toppings: butter AND syrup on a waffle, ketchup AND mayo mixed together, etc etc.  Once I decided that it’s either carbs with protein or fats with protein, but never carbs with fats, I had eliminated a lot of nutritional mistakes and laid out a super simple nutritional principle to follow.  It also makes cheat meals easy to figure out: I’ll have some carbs and fats put together.

 

3: Only eat carbs around training.  

Maybe not this close though

As I wrote in my “The Nutrition Post”, my 90s Atkin’s roots shine through, and I’m a blatant carbophobe, but I DO still permit myself to eat them: it’s just always around training.  These days, I still keep the intake light, and actually have been experimenting with a higher fat/no carb training meal on my lighter training days (bench and press), so that I’m only really ever intaking carbs before squat and deadlift days.  So far so good.  During Deep Water, I’d time my weekly cheat meal to be the night before the squat and deadlift days, since I trained first thing in the morning and figured that’d be close enough, and tended to go with fried rice and some Chinese food before that, but that was also a VERY intense program.  For day to day training, my pre-training carb meal is 1.5 cups of rice chex or life cereal mixed with 3/4 cup of Fairlife skim milk and 3/4 cup drinkable egg whites, with some PBFit mixed in and 1.5 tablespoons of raw honey (spread on toasted ketobread if you can find it at your local Costco, otherwise, just take it off the spoon).  When I’m really focused on gaining, I’ll have carbs in the post-training meal too, but I don’t do that these days, even though I’m a blatant believer in the post-workout shake and all THAT pseudo science.

 

4: Balance with training cycles; not IN training cycles.  

Speaking of balance...

By this, I mean that it’s not necessary to ALWAYS have enough pull work to balance out push work in your current training program.  It’s perfectly fine to have a training block (or several) where things are imbalanced.  You can focus on benching or pressing or deadlift or whatever.  Just have a plan to sometime LATER go back and get some balance in.  While I was running Deep Water, I was doing WAY more pushing than pulling, and I continued that trend for about another year leading up to hitting my all time best strict press of 5x241 and 1x266 with an axle.  Now that I’ve hit that, I’m doing significantly more back work.  My lats have also come out of hibernation and I’m looking much wider from the front than I was before. 

 

Trainees get too worried about imbalances during a training cycle that they end up perfectly balanced: every part of them sucks.  It’s totally fine to have GOOD and NOT GOOD body parts while you’re focusing on achieving a goal: you can always come back later and fix it.

 

5: Eating supports training, not the other way around/Train MORE when you’re gaining weight, train LESS when you’re losing it.  

Anyone else in the mood for 12 eggs?

This tends to be backwards compared to many other folks out there, but it’s always been what works for me.  When my calories are up, I can recover from much more training, so I train much more.  When my calories are down, my recovery is compromised, so I train less.  Doing it the other way tends to result in over-recovery in the first instance (also known as “getting fat”) and under-recovery in the second (also known as “getting hurt”).

 

6: If you want it to grow (bigger OR stronger), train it directly.  

See, this guy gets it

It’s weird I even need to have this principle, but it’s apparently something that others don’t believe in.  I very often see questions like “do I need to train my abs/neck/grips/biceps/rear delts/etc etc”.   If you want them to grow: yes.  I’ve tried the whole “compound lifts will hit everything” approach, and the results were unimpressive.  Meanwhile, after training problem areas with direct training (which means the dreaded isolation exercise), they grew bigger and stronger and, in turn, my whole body ALSO grew because now my weak links had become strong.

 

7: ALWAYS find a way to progress.  

I learned a LOT from this show

Too many trainees get fixated with weight on the bar as the sole means of measuring progress and, in turn, they crash HARD in their training, get dejected and give up lifting when they had SO much more potential to realize if they just changed paradigms.  I’ve dropped 30lbs of bodyweight since March: very few of my lifts are seeing improvements in sheer weight moved, yet I’m making progress EVERY training session.  You can always do another set more than last time, or take shorter rest times, or move the bar faster, or be under a greater state of fatigue than before, or tag an extra exercise onto a giant set, or set a PR by bodyweight, etc etc.  Never walk away from a session without having, in some manner, progressed from the previous workout.  Just like principle 1: you NEED to create a stimulus to grow in some way to the body.  If you come in and nothing progresses, the body figures it’s doing a good job.  Don’t let it feel that way.

 

 

I’m gonna cap it at 7, because this could easily become a tome, and as I’ve been writing my thoughts down for almost 8 years now, there’s a LOT more that could come out.  See if these resonate with you and, if not, sit down and come up with your own principles. 

MAGIC THE GATHERING AND LIFTING: COLORS

 

 Once again, I divulge just how much of a nerd I am by discussion Magic the Gathering.  I picked up the habit (I use that phrase because it really was an addiction like smoking, right down to going through packs a week and having no money) in elementary school and got full tilt into it in middle school, and have recently picked it back up again with the release of “Unhinged” as a way to teach my kid some reading and math.  Get ‘em hooked young, once again, like smoking.  In re-discovering the game, I’m now able to observe the parallels between it and training and how, through the game, I went through a very similar evolution as I did through my lifting.  Before I continue, I’m going to preface in saying I was a casual player, having played in only 1 local tournament, and that you super nerds out there are most likely going to get extremely upset at my noobness and the terrible ways I summarize the game, but since it’s my blog I get to write what I want.

I'm nerd enough to know that there is no escaping nerd rage

 

For the people that didn’t spent their middle school lunches having food thrown at them by the popular kids while you and your degenerate friends played cards, here’s a super quick summary of magic: there are 5 different colors of cards (white, green, blue, black and red) that each focus on a specific element of the game.  White is holy and focused on protecting the player and gaining as much life as possible (each player starts with 20 life, and when you get down to zero, you lose, but you can get above 20 with certain spells, like the stuff in white).  Red is fire and focused on chaos, destruction and direct damage with powerful spells.  Black is unholy, fixated on death, sacrifice, disease, and the cessation of life.  I only intend to discuss those three colors, but just to not leave you hanging, green is nature and focused on lots of creatures and growth, and blue is deception, misdirection and countering.

 

The reason I intend to only discuss white, red and black is because that’s the evolution my playstyle went through and, in turn, something I realize is the evolution that training goes through as well.  When I started playing, I gravitated toward white.  White made the most sense: it had cards called “circle of protection” that made it that certain color cards simply could NOT cause you damage.  How crazy!  And then a bunch of cards in white made you gain life.  What?!  How can you lose?!  You’re going to be protected from everything AND have the most life.  It’s pretty much broken.  How is this color even allowed in the game?!  Yeah well, it turned out that this was a REALLY boring way to play the game and I still ended up losing a bunch because, surprisingly, NOT losing is not how you win: it’s simply how you stalemate.  You know what kept kicking my butt?  Red.

This is how you tell someone to go f**k themselves in MtG

 

Red, of COURSE: the way you win the game is to get the other guy down to zero life.  What better way to do that than with a color built around dealing DIRECT damage?  I even had a “burn deck”, which at the time was a super taboo deck that had no creatures in it and ONLY direct damage spells.  These decks were hated by other players because it seemed almost entirely indefensible: you just kept getting pounded with damage every turn.  Red, with its intensity and rage and fire, surely the answer to everything.  And yet again, it eventually got boring to just play the exact same game every single time, and people eventually wised up to burn decks and developed specific counter measures to prevent that.  In addition, something I observed with both red and white decks was that, whenever I’d play with more than 1 other person, I was targeting by the other players to be removed from the game quickly so that I was no longer a threat.  It was about denying me a chance to gain momentum.

 

This is when I discovered black: a color I had written off since the beginning.  It seemed like every single black card I read involved the word “lose X life”.  What the hell: who wants to do that?  I wanna stay alive so I can WIN…right?  But then I started reading further, and realized that the life I was losing for these cards was in exchange for VERY powerful effects that no other color could grant me.  While a red card might do 1 damage to 1 creature or player, a black card, at the same cost, would do 1 damage to ALL creatures or players: self included.  I realized this was a HUGE return on investment.  I built a deck around a very common card called “Pestilence”, which allowed me to damage all creatures and players for as much damage as I was willing to spend for, meaning I could effectively wipe out the board if I were so inclined.  Suddenly, my play style shifted entirely.  I no longer cared about winning the game: I just wanted to make everyone else lose.  It frustrated people immensely, because I’d just kill us both and end in a “tie”, but to me, it was a victory because it ended on MY terms.  And suddenly, on multi-player games, NO one ever engaged me on the offensive, because it was understood that, as soon as I took some sort of damage, the gears were set in motion and I’d say “well, if I’m going to lose 1 life, I may as well lose the other 19…everyone else too”.  Sometimes, the best self-defense is self-destruction.

 
See this guy gets it

Man, this post is already getting long, but hear me out: this is EXACTLY what happens in lifting.  You can observe it on your own.  Pretty much every new trainee comes into the game a white color player: all they’re concerned about is self-preservation and protection from damage.  “What’s the safest form of exercise?” “How do I prevent injury?” “How do I keep from overtraining?” “What’s the best thing to eat?” “What’s the most optimal X”, etc etc.  And, just like a white color player, you don’t WIN the game of lifting by playing this way.  Playing NOT to lose is not the same thing as playing to win.  Playing in this style is just going to result in a stalemate which, as far as lifting goes, means no progress, just maintenance at best.

 

And inevitably the lifter becomes a “red player”, upset with their lack of progress by playing it safe they turn to passion and rage as the solution.  These dudes are memes: amped up on pre-workout and heavy metal, screaming at the weights, PR or ER, constant maxing, etc etc.  And just like playing that red burn deck, it sure seems effective at first, especially compared to back when we played white.  And just like that red burn deck, you’re regarded as annoying by everyone else, and eventually that style of play becomes unsustainable.  Much like how everyone at the table gangs up on the burn deck player to remove them from the game before they can build momentum, LIFE gangs up on the red lifter to stop them from gaining momentum.  Injuries can mount up, obligations will limit you, you develop tolerances to your caffeine and pre-workouts, you train too long “on the nerve” and completely fry yourself out, etc etc.  Much like red, the spark is quite, the flash intense, the duration short and unsustainable.

 
The calling card of a Red player

Enter black.  The lifter one day realizes that the only way they’re going to get further than everyone else is through a willingness to sacrifice what others won’t.  The passion has burnt out and things have become calculating and mechanical.  There’s no longer the concern of self-preservation at all costs, it’s no longer about giving as much as you can every single time: it’s about a willingness to sacrifice to make unheard of growth.  Sacrifices of time, safety, the security of a safety net of scientific backing, eating all the yummy food you like all the time, doing your favorite movements, etc etc: it’s the time of sacrifice.  And while life gangs up on the white player and the red player, it leaves the black player alone, because whenever it comes around and tries to impose something, the black player just goes nuts and sacrifices more and more to overcome it.  Injuries are met with Rube Goldberg-esque solutions, limited time results in cutting down sleep to make room for training, limited equipment means nothing but Super Squats for months, etc etc. 

 

For the black color player, the sacrifice isn’t martyrdom: it’s just their playstyle.