HOW LONG HAVEN’T YOU BEEN TRAINING?

 What I’m writing about these days is most likely a reflection of the New Year’s season having rolled around and the variety of topics that tend to generate during that timeframe and, once again, I find many people seem to be approaching these topics from the completely wrong angle.  We’re in the third month of the new year as of my writing this, and now comes the season of disappointment, where trainees flock to the internet to try to find out “what am I doing wrong?”  “Guys, I’ve been training hard for TWO MONTHS, my nutrition is totally on point, I’m on the right program du jour written by the most current Mr Wonderful: why do I still look like 5 gallons of melted ice cream in a paper bag?”  These people, and the super helpful denizens on the internet ready to turn them on to the latest and greatest scientific studies out there fail to recognize the issue.  Let’s not focus on how long you’ve been training: let’s find out how long you HAVEN’T been training!

Sometimes it's more obvious than others

 

It is critical to discover how long one has been neglecting regular physical exercise, because “neglect” is the correct verb to employ here.  When one does not regularly exercise, they do not simply exist in a statue of neutrality: they exist in a state of active neglect. The body was intended to engage in some manner of activity and locomotion: it was NOT intended to be an agent of rest.  And yes: the survival mechanisms of the body PREFER that the body not be exerted, but that’s also because that same body was operating under the premise that EVENTUALLY AND REGULARLY some manner of physical activity would NEED to be engaged in, so it would seek to conserve energy when outside of those demands.  This is why naps and fatty foods are awesome and lettuce and running marathons suck.  HOWEVER, the modern lifestyle has made it such that these regular physical demands of seeking food, safety and shelter are non-existent, whereas meanwhile we are still conserving SO much energy…for what?

 

All your time spent NOT regularly training was no longer providing you the benefit of “resting for the kill” and, instead, was very much a detriment to your physical ability.  You effective dug yourself into a hole with every day you spent NOT engaging in regular exercise.  In turn, when you finally START engaging in regular exercise, you are not “starting from zero”: you are starting from NEGATIVE.  When you see someone on the street with a cardboard sign and you give them $20, they are now $20 in the black: when you find someone that’s $400k IN DEBT and give them $20, they STILL have no money.  Those of you that have been NOT exercising are in the latter category: your body is in physical DEBT, and each workout you do is simply paying off debt.  And you need to pay off that debt BEFORE you can start actually “making money”.

This is the level some of you need to aspire to GET to

 

And for many, this is a horrifying prospect, because some folks are in a LOT of debt.  Some folks have legitimately NEVER exercised for their entire life.  For people that grew up in my generation, it’s an unfathomable prospect, but it’s true.  Let’s remember that I was a fat kid growing up (I always specify I was “90s fat kid fat”, which was chubby/husky, vs current day fat kid fat, which is clinically obese with rolls), and from age 4-17 I participated in t-ball, soccer, swimming, ice hockey,, Tae Kwon Do, football, wrestling, and weight training, along with having regular physical education classes through middle and high school AND regularly engaging in physical play with my friends.  The REAL athletes were putting away MUCH crazier schedules than I was.  Meanwhile, I know of people that have reached the age of adulthood and have never run a mile in their life.  How much physical training do you think you’re going to need to do in order to undo 18 years of NOT training?

 

And this NEEDS to be discussed, because everyone normalizes their own upbringing to the point that they’re blind to just how weird it really is.  Similar to how, when you were a kid and visited someone elses’ house the first time it smelled “wrong” because it was different than your house and you wondered how these people can not notice how weird their home is, people that spent their whole adolescence (and young adulthood) NOT exercising just assume that’s the norm for everyone such that, when they start training and don’t see the incredible results that “everyone else is getting”, the gears start turning in all the wrong ways.  And the ONLY conclusion that is EVER drawn is one of genetics.  I’m lumping low testosterone in with that one as well, because they’re both effectively the same answer: it’s something outside of my control that I am cursed with that is totally unfair.  Look: if you wanna blame your parents for your physical shortcomings, blame them for not forcing you to go play a sport and not teaching you how to cook like a human: not for your DNA.  That’s still pretty weaksauce anyway, but at LEAST it’s closer to getting to the root cause of the issue.  The people you see blowing up in short order are the folks that started off at ZERO: you started off in debt.  Until you pay off that debt, you’re going to be behind the curve.

For reference, my parents taught me how to "make" these so I could have breakfast on weekends while they slept in...somehow I survived

 

This ALSO means that many “beginner prescriptions” aren’t going to work, because, again, this is such a WEIRD paradigm for most of us that are involved in the world of physical training that, when WE think of a beginner trainee, we think of a trainee that, though a beginner to lifting weights, aren’t a total beginner to simply exercising.  If you missed out on playing outside as a kid, you need to start playing outside as an adult.  And me saying this pisses off a LOT of REAL beginners, because the sheer aspect of playing a sport for 6 months before you actually start exercising offends people at some sort of basic primordial level and I get informed that I just don’t “get it” and that OF COURSE someone can just start lifting weights with no physical background whatsoever.  Inevitably, these dudes run a beginner program for 3 years, achieve a 70lb press, put on a bunch more bodyfat, can’t do a chin up, and start asking about running steroids.  If you spent your whole life NOT exercising, you need to get in shape BEFORE you can start exercising. 

 

All that time spent not exercising has resulted in you being sub-human: you need to get back to human before you go for super-human.

 

BONUS RANT

You know, the above was a great way to end the post, but let me just keep the fire going here.  Wanna know what’s cool about being someone that HASN’T stopped moving since they were a kid?  My body is ALWAYS ready to physically perform, because that is the “normal” for it.  It’s always BEEN moving, so it’s always ready TO move.  This is why I don’t need to do any mobility or stretching work, despite the entire internet ASSURING me that it’s THE most important part of training.  It’s why I can go from waking up to squatting in 5 minutes without some sort of elaborate voodoo ritual involving bands, balls, chains, floss, foam rollers, LAX balls, etc etc.  It’s why the only warm up I do in a strongman comp is 3 reps of the first implement without any weight on it before I say “this is stupid” and sit down.  Once again, people will boil this down to being simply “luck” or genetics or an instance where injury is JUST around the corner or that I’ll regret it one day, because these people can’t fathom a world where they never STOPPED moving.  There’s SO much benefit to regular and CONSISTENT exercise that you do yourself a grave and significant disservice whenever you stop engaging in it.