TRAIN FOR SELF-DESTRUCTION, EAT FOR SELF-PRESERVATION

 This is one of those that came to me in the middle of a workout and the more I think about it the more I like it, primarily because I enjoy pithy throw-away comments and sound bites.  Similar to Pavel’s “Meat for strength, vegetables for health”, “train for self-destruction, eat for self-preservation” is a fantastic way to summarize my approach to training and nutrition and also goes on to demonstrate how many people do this completely BACKWARDS.  The vast majority of trainees are training for self-preservation and eating for self-destruction and it’s TOTALLY evident in their results.  Once we get this paradigm flipped, we can start actually making some progress!

I was in high school when the movie came out: it will never NOT be cool to me

 

What charge and I levying against the general population when it comes to training?  People train for self-preservation: they’re overly concerned with making sure that they’re not going to get hurt, injured or overtrained.  Well what’s the consequence of such a focus on training?  The very dreaded and very REAL risk of UNDERtraining.  Yes, people are so worried about overtraining that they play it WAY too safe and don’t train hard enough to actually CREATE a demand on their body to promote the necessary stimulus to grow muscle.  Isn’t that why we were training in the first place?  If you refuse to actually push your body to the point where it perceives that it is threatened by it’s environment, it won’t have any reason to respond by adding more muscle.  Trust me: the BODY will do all the self-preservation it needs: that’s not your job.  YOUR job is to BE the element of destruction TO your body so that it will seek growth.

 

This is why we train for self-destruction, rather than self-preservation.  We train with the goal of trying to destroy the body as much as possible.  We push WELL beyond our perceived limits, finding new realms of volume or intensity, or finding just how little we can rest between sets, or just how many movements we can chain together into a giant set, or how much conditioning we can tack onto a training week, etc etc.  We’re trying to BREAK the body, because when the body fears being broken, it responds by hardening the f**k up.  When a body perceives it is safe, it allows itself to get soft, but when the body perceives that it is in danger, it responds by growing bigger and stronger to better fight off that danger.  YOU need to BE the danger that your body fears.

Just going big with the cliche quotes

 

Then we tun our attention to nutrition and, once again, most trainees have this BACKWARDS.  Most trainees eat in a manner that is best described as “self-destructive”.  This goes in one of two directions, the first (and most awful) being the trainee that eats like a bird in fear of adding an ounce of fat onto their frame.  These min/maxing munchkin pub-med abstract reading small NON-sidewalk cracking motherf**kers as so absolutely terrified of the prospect of their abs ever having an element of blur on them that they’ll meticulously count every molecule of toothpaste on their toothbrush to ensure that they’re only ever at the “optimal” amount of caloric surplus…and then wonder why they’re not growing.  Hell, when you pair that approach to nutrition with the above mentioned “self-preservation” approach to training, it’s no wonder why one spins their wheels: there’s no demand to grow, and no FOOD to support growth.  The other side of the equation are those that decide that the path to greatness is to eat like an unsupervised child: nothing but fast food, frozen pizzas, candy, and crap that comes out of a box.  These trainees can’t boil water, and will spend $400 on pre-workout supplements but not $20 on a slow-cooker.  Yes, Dave Tate is evidence that you CAN get big and strong eating junk food, but Dave got to 275lbs eating CLEAN food and THEN used junk to get to 308.  You don’t need to do that to get from 165 to 180.

 

So again, we flip the script and we eat for self-preservation.  After we break ourselves in training, we heal ourselves in eating.  We eat BIG and we eat WELL.  And f**k it: I’m going to say “we eat clean” because, once again, if you DON’T know what I mean when I say “eat clean”, you’re being a petulant child.  Justin Harris has said on numerous occasions that people know far more about nutrition than they let on: it’s just convenient to pretend like we don’t understand so we can find a way to justify not eating our veggies.  Stop being stupid: pick solid protein sources (animal flesh, dairy you can stomach, eggs/egg whites), veggies, fats (nuts/nut butters, avocados, olives, oils) and fruits and carbs if that’s your thing.  If you are seriously in doubt, download Jon Andersen’s “Deep Water” ebook and look at the food list on it for a great quick reference.  Also check out the stuff that John Meadows promotes in his Mountain Dog diet approach.  And read Paul Kelso’s “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style” for the Texas Roundtable. 

Here is an easy way to tell that you f**ked up

 

Really, there are SO many dudes out there that will give you a basic nutrition list to pick from: but you gotta actually EAT the damn food and ENOUGH of it to recover from the training you’re doing where you’re trying to break your body.  If you refuse to put on any amount of bodyfat in your pursuit of physical greatness, you’re going to get terrible results.  The body needs to know that it’s got some nutrients coming or, once again, it’s not going to want to add muscle.  Just like how a body that is subjected to trauma will respond by adding muscle to defend itself, a body that is subjected to STARVING will clamp down and prioritize it’s OWN self-preservation over the self-destruction you’re trying to subject it to with your dietary habits.  And yeah yeah “starvation mode is bro-science”: let me know how that’s working out for you chief.  The dudes eating frequently and getting in protein and quality nutrition are getting jacked: it worked for decades.  The dudes trying to re-invent the wheel aren’t getting too far.  Even the folks that are proponents of a fasting based approach ensure that they engage in a BIG nutritional splurge to offset the damage done from fasting: reference “The Warrior Diet” and Jamie Lewis’ “Apex Predator Diet”.  These folks are eating for self-preservation.

 

All things balance.   With destruction comes creation, and with creation comes destruction.  The trick is to make sure you’re on the RIGHT side of that balance.  Don’t preserve your body in the gym and destroy it at the dinning table.  Train so hard that you break and eat so hard that you heal.