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.