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.