HOTEL ROOM CONDITIONING INSANITY

 

 

Once again, dear readers, I found myself stuck in a hotel room for a week.  I’ve previously documented my experiences with living out of a hotel room as far as nutrition goes (which, in that regard, I’ve continued to refine the process, relying on a 4” electric skillet to cook up full meals, meaning no microwave required and I can pack everything I need, AND have grassfed beef and organic free range eggs every morning for breakfast, which gives me ZERO sympathy for those of you that “don’t have time for breakfast”…but already I digress), but THIS time I found myself in an even MORE precarious position: the fitness center at this establishment opened at 0600, and I needed to be on the road BEFORE that time each day.  In addition, I was in between weeks 5 and 6 of the Deep Water Beginner program, so this was NOT a time to let myself grow soft with a week off (be on the lookout for that program review as well, wherein I detail having to run the program back to back with no rest days in order to fit this sorta stuff into my schedule).  I needed to keep my edge without access to any external resistance: what was I to do?  Go absolutely insane of course, and I’m here to share that insanity with you.  Over 7 days I came up with 7 different workouts to do each morning before heading out, all of them done fasted, first thing upon waking up (typically within 5 minutes of my alarm going off), and all of them done for 50 minutes total, some of them better than others, but all of them should have SOME sort of training effect for you. 

 

It should be noted that burpees feature VERY regularly in these workouts.  Try not to be an a-hole.  If you can’t jump and land softly, maybe cut out the jump.

Maybe leave these shoes at home for this one

 

Without further ado…

 

 

WORKOUT 1: 500 BURPEE EMOM workout

Here's the first chapter

ChongLordUno over at t-nation put the idea in my head to do 500 burpees, and I typically like to start a “week off” with a really stupid intense workout so I can spend the rest of my week healing, so this seemed like a great idea.  Stupidly simple: do 10 burpees, every minute, on the minute, for 50 minutes.  You may recognize this same strategy from my “1000 push ups” workout.  I’ll say the burpees have a MUCH more significant training effect compared to the push ups, and I definitely prefer this for a total buttkicker of a workout.  10 burpees averaged about 30 seconds of work on my end, so this was a standard 30 on/30 off workout.  Great interval.  The fatigue sneaks up on you.  You’ll think it’s a poor choice for crushing yourself early in, but once I hit the 40 minute mark I knew this was a “good bad idea”.

 

Overall, I rate this on an 8/10.  I wasn’t obliterated at the end, but solidly fatigued and spent the day feeling quite accomplished.

 

WORKOUT 2: Cumulative Upkeep

Crap: "Infernal Darkness" is a MUCH cooler name

Why yes, I AM naming this one after something from Magic the Gathering, and you’ll appreciate it just as much when you’re done.  Start out with 1 push-up, 2 burpees, and 3 squats (I did prisoner squats, with my hands behind my head, but you may prefer air squats or hindu squats: just squat).  Once that is done, add a rep to all sets (so 2 push-ups, 3 burpees, 4 squats).  Keep going for 50 minutes.

 

The “dirty tricky” to this workout is that you get up from the push-up just to get back down again for the burpee, so it’s like adding an extra burpee to everything.  Otherwise, this was genuinely something I came up with more to have a bit of a break for the previous burpee workout.  Because it’s not set to a specific interval, you can pace yourself a bit, and, in turn, there are opportunities to dog it.  This feels a bit more like LISS than high intensity work, and it just an old fashioned circuit workout with a numbering gimmick to make it a LITTLE more interesting than just doing sets on top of sets.  I find I need gimmicks, hooks, tricks and the like when it comes to bodyweight WODs.  I can’t stand the ones that are just “do sets of 10 until time runs out”.  If you’re like me, you may prefer this approach.

 

I rate this one a 5/10.  When it was over, I knew I worked out, but felt like I coulda used the time doing something else instead.  My quads were getting tender toward the end, and I got up to 21 push ups, which meant something to the effect of 230+ push ups, 250+ burpees and 270+ squats performed in 50 minutes, so that’s something at least.

 

WORKOUT 3: Tabata Everything

Oh get ready...

I know I’m going to upset a lot of purists out there that need it to be known that Tabata refers to a VERY specific protocol involving hitting a certain percentage heart rate and typically can only be done on an indoor cycle, so allow me to say I don’t care and you can bite me.  For the adults in the room, we get that “Tabata” is just how we say 20 seconds on/10 seconds off for 8 rounds.  I made this a 50 minute workout by doing 11 Tabata workouts with 30ish seconds rest in between.  5 different movements and cycled through them twice, and then on the 11^th I did a “greatest hits” workout where 4 of those 5 were repeated twice over the span of 8 rounds.

 

If that’s confusing, this is exactly what I did.

 

Tabata workout 1: Prisoner squats
Tabata workout 2: Burpees
Tabata workout 3: Thrusters with an end table in my room (gotta get creative)
Tabata workout 4: Mountain climbers
Tabata workout 5: Jumping jacks
Repeat whole circuit

Tabata workout 11:
Round 1: Squats
Round 2: Burpees
Round 3: Thrusters
Round 4: Mountain climbers
Repeat

 

A properly done Tabata workout will redline you quick, so there’s a bit of play here in choosing movements that don’t overlap significantly.  I biffed it putting the thrusters after burpees, because my shoulders felt like they were going to fall off, but otherwise there was enough recovery programmed in to be able to keep coasting through this.

 

I rate this one a 6/10.  It’s hard to get a real solid training effect doing tabata bodyweight stuff compared to adding an external load, and those thrusters proved it, as just adding that table made them the hardest part of the circuit, but I appreciated being on the clock more than just going it on my own as I did with the upkeep workout.  This kept me a bit more honest.  Still, you need to make sure you’re REALLY pushing on those 20 seconds on to get your most out of this.

 

WORKOUT 4: (r)Evolution of Man

There was a lip above the door of my bathroom in my hotel room that I could do pull-ups off of.  I used this to do my daily 50 chins, but for THIS particular workout, I started from the bathroom, bear crawled to the far corner of my room, bear crawled back, did a pull ups, and repeated.  This ended up being 62 rounds of work in 50 minutes.  Were I not in a hotel room, I’d consider more aggressive animal crawls, jumps, bounds, etc, but in order to not be a jerk I kept it at bear crawls.

 

Around the 46th round, my shoulders were toast, and my whole upper body was pretty lit up.  It’s an interesting training effect though, because I’d get to the pull up spot and FEEL awful, but as soon as the pull up was done I didn’t really feel like I had done any actual work.  Then I’d repeat, and same thing: I’d be exhausted getting to the bar, and then “too refreshed” when it was over.

 

This is a high 6/low 7, and it ultimately depends on what you want from your workouts.  This was great for just pure suffering, and it absolutely lit up my whole upperbody, but my cardiovascular system didn’t really seem to care too much about it.  A bizarre combination of LISS for the heart and lungs and high intensity for the muscles.  Also, it involves walking on your hands on hotel room carpet, which is skeezy and tore up my hands pretty decent after 62 rounds.  But hey, it was certainly different.

 

WORKOUT 5: 400 thrusters isn’t enough

However...

This one runs for 51 minutes, but whatever.  It’s an EMOM workout.  First 17 minutes, do a burpee and then 8 thrusters.  Next 17, 2 burpees and 8 thrusters.  Next 17, 3 burpees and 8 thrusters.

 

I like the skeleton of this.  I much prefer workouts where they get HARDER as time goes on rather than easier.  Far better to train the ability to come through during the tough times vs teaching the body to ease up in times of stress.  At the same time, when you start out too tough, you blow out too early, and with these intending to be 50 minute long workouts, it’s good to have those early buffers.  I realize not everyone will have something they do can thrusters with in their hotel room, but you can still steal this idea of having one unchanging movement and one gradually increasing movement.  For the first 17 minutes, I was averaging 30 seconds of work, for the next 17 it was about 38 seconds, and the final 17 was about 45 seconds.  Those short rest times at the end make themselves known.

 

This one is a high 7/10.  If I had to do it over, I’d start with 2 burpees and finish with 4.

 

 

WORKOUT 6: Boxing Match

Yeah, it feels like this

3 minute rounds of burpees with 1 minute rest, done for 12 rounds total.  At the end, do a “sudden death” round of 1 minute of unbroken burpees.

 

I did this because I wanted to recreate my wrestling/martial arts days and remember what it was like to go all out, get a short rest, and do it all over again.  It’s a fantastic training effect and hits close to home for the over the hill ex-combat sports athlete.  You’ll feel those middle rounds just like you would a fight, and when the 12^th round hits you go for a knockout, only to come back and REALLY drill it home in sudden death.

 

Comes in at an 8/10 again.  Big fan of those one and will be a regular feature in my bodyweight training. 

 

WORKOUT 7: Eat Your Vegetables

They're good for you

Do 50 burpees, rest 90 seconds, repeat for 10 total rounds.  Do as many unbroken burpees as you can each round.  I’ve named it “Eat Your Vegetables” in honor of parents that make their kids stay at the table until the vegetables get eaten, because this is SIMILAR to boxing match in that you are doing rounds of burpees with a set rest, but different enough in that you do NOT get that rest until you hit your 50 burpees.  With boxing match, it’s too easy to just dog it until the round is over, but here, the only chance you get your rest is by hitting your rep total.  And if you want this done in 50 minutes, you gotta move fast.  The first round took me right around 3:00, which is how I settled in on 90 second rests: half as long as it took to get it done.  Final round took 4:11, so this ran a LITTLE longer than 50 minutes, but with it being my last day I was willing to let that happen.

 

9/10 on this one.  Definitely the “gold” of the group.  I got to redline every round, but recovered enough that I could do it all over again.  Unbroken burpees are just a different animal vs leisurely paced ones, and going for a high number just works magic with the heart and lungs.  Another way to get to 500, and between this and the EMOM, this worked me over way more.

 

 

 

So there you have it folks: 7 unique hotel room workouts you can run if you find yourself trapped.  Some are going to floor you and some are going to let you recover from those workouts.  Use them, rotate them, steal, chop them up, or throw them away: either way, I came back stronger than I left.

 

BIOLOGICAL ALCHEMY

  

I’ve written about this several times before, but hard science and I don’t get along.  I took biology and chemistry as summer school classes in high school because it meant getting them done quicker AND the teacher was more willing to be lenient in grading, and even then I BARELY got by.  I had to take physics as a full year course and was riding a high D average through most of that, and legitimately only passed through creative interpretation of the questions and assignments (setting me up for a future with a political science degree), which allowed me to get to college, wherein I had to take a mandatory geology course affectionally referred to as “rocks for jocks” wherein I, once again, had a high D average and only managed to pass the course by seeking out my professor during office hours and demonstrating to him how much EFFORT I was putting into my failure, which put a soft spot for me in his heart and he was VERY gracious in granting me a C- to pass.  I say all this to explain that I just plain don’t understand REAL hard science…which is why I much prefer alchemy.  Alchemy is science magic, and is what I use to understand the biological processes that occur during the process of physical transformation.  What follows, in turn, is my understanding of the processes of physical adaptation which, thanks to solipsism, I don’t have to care if it matches what “real” science says.  And props to rroo over at t-nation for suggesting I write this all down.

Folks, how else you gonna get Ogre Mages?

 

The body’s primary objective is survival, and often survival takes on the form of “get the most by doing the least”.  This is to say, the body LIKES the status quo and will try very hard to NOT try very hard.  It won’t want to change UNLESS the consequence of NOT changing is greater than the effort needed to change.  What this means for us, the owner of said body, is that we have to impose demands upon the body that are so significant that change is the ONLY thing the body can do in order to continue surviving.  In the absence of this change, the body will die, thus, in choosing survival, the body chooses change.

 

What does all that mean?  Let’s take gaining muscle as an example.  Muscle is awesome: it makes us stronger, and being stronger is awesome…BUT, it’s also a LOT of work to add muscle, and the body would just as soon NOT do that.  When we train hard, the body is sent a signal that says “Ya know: if you had a LITTLE more muscle, this wouldn’t be so hard”.  But, in turn, if the body is sent that signal just ONE time, it goes “Yeah, that’s cool and all, but I’m good.”  HOWEVER, if we keep slamming the body with that signal, eventually the body goes “ALRIGHT ALREADY, I’ll add some muscle: just get off my case!”  We’ve effectively badgered the body into adding muscle as a means of survival, because it recognized that this new activity we’ve engaged in has no end in sight, so it needs to get with the program and start adding muscle so that it can keep on surviving.  The status quo will no longer work: change needs to occur.

Yeah pretty much

 

But, again, the body LIKES the status quo and WANTS to keep it: so sometimes, it fights back.  One of its nastiest tools is soreness, aka DOMS.  Anyone who has run Deep Water or my Xeno squats protocol or any other really high rep squat protocol knows the “toy soldier” walk that happens for a few days later: muscles are locked up and stiff from sheer pain, sitting on the toilet is more like a free fall, stairs are daunting, etc etc.  Just like we’re trying to force the body to change, the body is trying to force US to stop.  And herein we reach a critical decision point: how do we react?  If we rest, we give the body a clear message: “Hey, if you make me REALLY sore, you get time off”.  And the body goes “Sweet: let’s get REALLY sore, and then we won’t have to do any of this stupid adapting.”  HOWEVER, IF, during these periods of extreme soreness, you FORCE yourself to continue training, the body learns that it gets no rest. 

 

In point of fact, during my current re-run of Deep Water, I’ve been forcing a TON of conditioning work post squats, focusing primarily on thrusters, since they contain a front squat element to them that force me to bend my legs a bunch.  It is AGONIZING, but after a few reps I can move through a full ROM again and the soreness dissipates for an hour or so, AND I’ve observed that I actually am recovered from the squat workout about 2 days earlier than I was when I was babying my legs and resting them the previous time.  I’m doing MORE conditioning when I’m sore vs when I feel fresh, which means my body is getting the signal “HEY: if we get sore, we get MORE work.  F**K this: let’s stop being sore!”

Sometimes all the body needs is a little motivation

 

This, in turn, details something I wrote in “embracing your inner Pesci-ness” along with “Holding the body hostage”: you can threaten the body to adapt by taking its caution signals and punishing the body for administering them.  Whenever I have an injury, I make sure to explicitly train the hell out of the injured part with whatever it is I CAN do.  When I tore my hamstring on a set of trap bar pulls, I wrapped the hamstring in a knee wrap and did 20 doubles with 410lbs in the buffalo bar squat my next workout, demonstrating to my body that this new injury it developed was NOT going to fly and it had better heal up FAST.  I did box squats 6 days after I ruptured my ACL, tore my meniscus and fractured my patella.  Whenever I dislocate my shoulder in my sleep or from washing my hair in the shower (yup, it’s real), that shoulder is in for a HELL of a workout.  Steve Pulcinella called this “paleo rehab”: the notion that paleo man couldn’t afford time off or else they’d starve and die, so you just keep forcing the injured part to perform until it adapts and heals.  The body wants time off, it wants to maintain status quo, it doesn’t want to adapt, so it tries to sabotage you with soreness and injury, but YOU, the owner of the body, can simply turn these into opportunities to FORCE adaptation to occur by training the body to understand that SENDING these signals results in MORE stimulus: not less.  Once it learns the consequences of these actions, it will stop taking these actions, and you will, in turn, be able to experience adaptation on YOUR terms.

 

Is there anything in science to back this up?  Who cares.  Science is for nerds: this is alchemy. 

 

DEVILSH STRENGTH/DEMONIC CONDITIONING

 

Hail once again nerds: it’s time for another DnD post.  I originally had a far less nerdy but equally cringe-inducing title for this post of “strategic strength/chaos conditioning”, but realized that Dungeons and Dragons provided me a far more fantastic framework to operate within, so I got to kill 2 birds here.  Once again, for my uncultured reader, allow me a quick explanation.  When determining the nature of your character, there are two axes (that is, no joke, the plural of “axis”, which is just awesome) taken into consideration: are they good, evil or neutral, and are they lawful, chaotic or neutral (insofar as law abidance is concerned)?  This allows for the exploration of many interesting questions and concepts of morality: one can absolutely be good while being completely unlawful (a Robin Hood type), one can be totally law abiding while being morally neutral (honestly, most average humans are this way: obeying the law more out of fear of consequences vs a desire to better society), but, for today’s purposes, we explore the reality of being absolutely evil yet existing in either a lawfully evil state or a chaotically evil state.  From here, I introduce “The Blood War”: a war between devils and demons. 

 

I wanna be on whatever side THAT guy is on

Devils represent those that are lawfully evil, hence the notion of a “deal with the Devil”.  This trope has been played up historically for millennia, from masters like Faust to B-Movie slock like Wishmaster, but the premise remains the same: you make a pact with the/a devil and it’s completely and totally binding, the devil will not break it, yet, often, the wording is such that it ends up spiting to individual that made said pact.  Point remains: devils are lawful, well organized, structured and measured in their approach.  In the planes of hell where devils reside, there is a clear ranking structure and, in turn, in the Blood War, the devils are formed into a well organized military style unit with officers and foot soldiers where everyone knows their role.  Since they’re all evil bastards, discipline tends to be enforced via cruelty, and obedience tends to be the result of fear of repercussion, but the point remains: the devils are the epitome of both evil AND lawfulness/structure.

 

Contrast this with the demons of the Abyss.  The demons represent evil AND chaos.  Don’t make a deal with a demon: they have no qualms about breaking pacts, and will most certainly promise you whatever it is you desire simply to gain an advantage and betray you at the time most opportune to them.  In turn, the demons are less an army and more a horde: a loosely organized (if at all) banding of terrifying, powerful creatures, charging headlong into battle with horrifying screeches and all manner of loosely compiled weaponry and tactics.  The Abyss, in turn, is very much Hobbes’ state of nature: a constant state of war, where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, and might ultimately makes right, in contrast to Hell, which would be where a social contract is in order and just so happens to be tyrannical.  It is worth appreciating that, due to this structure, when comparing individual demons to individual devils, the former tend to be more powerful, yet the latter are able to compensate by means of actually working together in a cohesive unit.  Going further down the DnD rabbithole: demons are barbarians and devils are fighters.

     
Although it really seems more like this

All this nerdery just for me to explain how it is that I visualize my own training: for strength, I err toward the devils, but for conditioning, I side with the demons.  When it comes to being stronger, I’ve found little success in just showing up to the gym, doing what I want and seeing what sticks.  Sure: after 21 years of lifting weights, I’m able to rely on intuition to help guide a training session and understand what needs improving and what can slide, but I STILL need at least some framework or structure to lay down the foundation of the work.  I’ll know before I start that it’s a press day or a deadlift day, I’ll know what lifts I’m aiming to hit based on either previously calculated percentages or the numbers I hit in a previous session, my supplemental and assistance work tends to be decided upon: I have a plan.  I’m being lawful.  And just like that deal with the devil, the most effective programs I’ve followed are the ones where “the plan” is effectively planned out suffering: percentages and reps that are beyond my CURRENT grasp that I need to eat big and train hard in order to be able to reach them when the time comes.  I sign on that dotted line on week 1, and at week 6 I get my wish…but at what cost?

 

Contrast this with conditioning though, and it’s where the demon comes out.  I frequently figure out what I’m going to do for conditioning upon arriving in my garage/gym.  Sometimes it’s based off what’s currently on the floor if I was too lazy to put stuff away, or I’ll figure it out based off how much freetime I have to get in a session, or I’ll base it off of what muscle group feels sore and needs some bloodflow in it.  These days, I’m a big fan of the wodwell website, and will actually scroll through WODs in the middle of my lifting in order to figure out what I’m going to do for conditioning when the lifting is over.  Whereas my lifting is planned out in 3, 6, 12, or even 26 week chunks, my conditioning just happens, with no rhyme, reason, structure or thought. 

 

What happens when you try to strength train like a demon

And allow me to say: I am quite the demon when it comes to conditioning.  Because I just do stuff, I’m REALLY quite decent at “just doing stuff”.  For sure: those that specialize are far more accomplished than I at the things they specialize in, but it’s rare that I need to take on a physical challenge and find myself struggling due to the conditioning aspect of it.  I’m constantly doing new and different stuff in my conditioning, which means I’m never adapting, which is a GOOD thing as far as conditioning is concerned, because once you get GOOD at something, you become efficient, which means you actually expend LESS energy when performing the act…which means it has less of a training effect on your conditioning.  One wants to be demonic: poorly organized, slapped together, thrashing, gnawing, struggling and surviving purely off of brute force. 

 

In turn, I grow frustrated when I encounter the devils of conditioning.  I’ll frequently share a conditioning workout I came up with, only to encounter some devilsh questions.  “Hey guys, I just did this: do a burpee, then a KB snatch per side, then 2 burpees and 2 snatches, etc, while wearing a weighted vest.  Once you hit 5 reps, start over.  Do as many as you can”, “How heavy of a kettle bell should I use?  How heavy is the vest?  Do I take any rests between movements?  How long should I do the workout?  Are these six count burpees?”  *Cue demonic rage*  F**k dude: just go do some conditioning!  You’ll know it’s working when your lungs explode.  I legit just looked at what equipment I had and thought until I came up with an idea that sounded awful that I hated and, at that point, I KNEW I found something that was going to work.  Much like how I look for lifting programs that make me go “oh f—k” when I see them, I try to come up with conditioning ideas that make me think the same thing.  It’s simply a difference of that feeling happening over weeks vs within the span of a workout, but herein we see the common trend: one may be lawful, one may be chaotic, but they’re both evil.     

GO BE BAD AT SOMETHING

  

 

That I even need to say this is, in itself, interesting, but I suppose it’s a testament of the times: you need to go be bad at something.  Consider it a homework assignment if you will, which, in an instance of what may be irony, I’m sure, at one point, you were bad at your homework.  Assuming you did it at all.  And already I’m getting to my point here: you already have a long established history of being bad at things: why is it, now, in adulthood, you forgot all about it and refuse to do it?  I’ve gotten ahead of myself, so I’ll explain.  I observe in many current trainees a complete refusal to ever be bad at anything as it relates to training and physical transformation.  Sometimes it’s just the sheer starting of physical transformation: a complete and total unwillingness to even GO to the gym for fear of “looking stupid” by doing something new.  Sometimes that initial hurdle has been surmounted only to fear competition, in turn a fear of “embarrassing” oneself in the competitive arena.  But the reality is this: unless you are some sort of one in a million prodigy, you HAVE to be bad at something before you can be good at it.  And if you are said prodigy, you aren’t reading this blog, because you already know how to become big and strong.

 

Look: you’ve been bad at stuff before.  SOMEHOW you were able to overcome it.  Remember going to school?  Remember how you didn’t know EVERYTHING at first?  How you had to learn?  How you had to struggle?  THAT was being bad at something.  You somehow managed, you coped, you adapted and overcame, and in the process you IMPROVED from where you started.  Even if you BARELY graduated, you’re still smarter than when you started (and for my readers who are too young to have graduated, you made it this far at least).  And I’m writing this with an assumption of ZERO participation in any athletics: just imagine those of you who, god forbid, actually played some sort of sport?  Didn’t you start off bad and then eventually become not bad?  Or hell, let’s not even talk about sports: ever have a hobby?  Just anything you did to pass time?  I remember being awful the first time I fired up Call of Duty, and after enough play I somehow managed to get a kill in.  Being bad is a necessary part of the process of being good.

 

The issue is, at some point, ego set in, and our self-image become much too precious and in need of preservation.  We graduated school, secured ourselves in our hobbies and settled in to being “good” at the things we wanted to be good at such that we no longer wanted to experience that “newness” again.  And in the quest for self-preservation of ego, many turned to research as the panacea.  “If I just spend enough time researching EVERYTHING, I’ll never have to be bad at it.  I’ll know EVERYTHING about the subject and be an expert before I even try!”  Yeah, you dudes are the ones ruining the signal-to-noise ratio on every worthwhile community, because you’re all booksmarts with zero practical experience and, in being that way, you don’t even understand the context or application of all that nifty stuff you “know”.  You speak about “reps in reserve” without having ever even come CLOSE to anything resembling real, ACTUAL failure on a tough set of anything.  You speak of the difference between myofibular and sarcoplasmic hypetrophy with 10” arms.   You are the virgin that has read every issue of Penthouse.

 

These days, this ad would have the skinny kid read the manual 147 times and come back to the beach even smaller

And here’s the thing: every day you spent researching was a day you could have just gone out and been bad at this.  And the ultimate cosmic humor is this: learning how to do the wrong thing from experience is INFINITELY more valuable than learning how to do the right thing by research.  That’s going to chap a lot of folks, but it’s the truth.  IDEALLY one does both, but if push comes to shove, pick experience 100% of the time.  “Meet experience is invaluable” is a quote for a reason, and it’s why athletes are pushed to compete ASAP.  It’s why, as a high school wrestler, I learned a double leg takedown and how to sprawl and was thrown into my first meet: we were getting reps in.  I was out there BEING bad at wrestling, so that I could learn from that experience and, EVENTUALLY, work to being good at it.  When you’re out in the field, in the trenches, actually TRYING to apply the things you’re learning, you QUICKLY find out what does and does not work, and can apply these lessons in a manner that builds upon itself EXPONENTIALLY rather than linearly.

 

Those willing to take these risks reap the rewards.  And it’s not just in training: it’s in nutrition as well.  So many kids want to know the exact amount of calories to eat, which macros in which ratio, what time to take what supplement, etc etc, and will never, ever, under any circumstances deviate, alter or change the approach.  Why?  Well, what if they get fat?!  Could you imagine?  Nevermind what if they get jacked: we need to make sure there’s never an extra millimeter of fluff on our waistline.  And in this quest to ensure one never fails, one ultimately fails harder than those who have ever “overbulked”, because another way to describe minimizing fat gain is minimizing muscular gain.  When all you concern yourself with is making sure you’re always as lean as possible, you severely compromise opportunities to support muscular growth.  To say nothing of the fact that a refusal to experiment with nutrition prevents one from ever learning what “works” for them.  I’m low-carb because I’ve TRIED high carb diets, because I was willing to be bad at eating in order to learn something. 

If only...

 

Go try out some bizarre approaches to training that will SURELY never work so you can go be bad at that and see how it goes for you.  Leave your ego at the door and make a fool of yourself.   Here’s the truth: you are insignificant, as far as the world is concerned.  You can’t embarrass yourself, because no one is paying attention to you enough to notice you being bad at something.  People are CONSTANTLY failing all around you: it just so happens that their failure is an unwillingness to try DUE to a fear of failure.  So really: you should already be embarrassed.  However, if you take enough risks and are bad at enough things, you’ll eventually put yourself in the enviable position of being GOOD at a few things, and in those cases you DO stand out and the world DOES take notice of you…and at that point you’ll have nothing to be embarrassed about.