INTENSITY IS A GIVEN

 

 

I just watched Jon Andersen most recent appearance on Mark Bell’s podcast, and I’d say a good 80% of the dialogue, if not more, was focused on diet.  This makes sense, given the fact that Jon is a bit of an anomaly in the world of getting bigger and stronger as he (for those that are unfamiliar with his work) is staunchly low/anti-carb.  He has compared carbs to drugs, refers to people that eat carbs as “carb users”, and expresses an idea of utilizing them only in extreme circumstances in limited dosages, to include while trying to hold onto bodyweight while recovering from surgery and for fuel during INTENSE competitions.  All this said, here I am, now also talking about nutrition, when my plan was to express my disappointment in how little Jon talked about his training.  Jon is ALSO unique in the world of getting big and strong just by how brutally hard he trains.  He regularly had a feature in Mark’s “Power” magazine that discussed Jon’s training sessions and, with it, the origins of the “Deep Water” philosophy…but when pressed to talk on the subject, Jon always likes to discuss how training only does about 25% of the work for results, whereas nutrition makes up the other 75%.   Jon isn’t unique in expressing this ideas, as many other successful trainees have had quotes ranging anywhere from 75-100% of results being a product of nutrition.  What’s interesting about these quotes on nutrition is what is left UNSAID about training: specifically, that intensity is a given.

Admit it: you tried to go Super Saiyan at least once...

 

Before I go further, I have to do this every time I talk about “intensity”: I am NOT referring to the super nerdy exercise science definition meaning “percentage of 1rm.”  Why THAT got to be how we define intensity, I’ll never understand.  But anyway, I’m using it in the way any normal human would understand it: how hard we break ourselves in training.  And I’ve written before on just how difficult it is to explain intensity to someone that has never actually pushed themselves before: they lack the necessary frame of reference to even understand the dialogue.  Like trying to explain the color red to someone that was born blind, language simply lacks an ability to adequate convey the sensation.  But those that know know and, in turn, for those people, intensity is a given…but what is the implication there?

 

Jon talks about how the training doesn’t matter, and even I have said “it’s hard to lift weights wrong”, because when taken from the 1000 mile perspective it’s very true.  There are SO many avenues to success in training, but all these avenues ASSUME that the trainee is going to apply 100% skull splitting intensity into whatever it is that they do.  Once again: it’s a given.  It’s honestly taken for granted: every author of every program is assuming that the trainee is going to work as hard as they can in order to actually AFFECT growth.  Yes: even submax training ala 5/3/1.  Listen/read how many times Jim Wendler talks about barspeed and rep quality: even when you aren’t pushing your body to its breaking point, you’re still applying “maximal intensity”: it’s simply being invested in rep quality rather than stressing the muscles.

 

THERE is your intensity

Once this necessary degree of intensity is established, training really DOES become easy: just repeat what you’re doing and do it for a LONG time without long breaks.  We’re back to my “3 variables”: effort, consistency and time.  Those last 2 are easy as long as you get the first one figured out and can keep replicating it.  From there, pick any way of training that you like and keep it up.  Different individuals respond better to different training from a PERSONALITY standpoint: some need percentages, some hate them, some are single set dudes, some are high volume dudes, etc.  Don’t try to force a square peg into a round hole on this one: you’ll work against your nature and, in turn, be unable to bring the necessary intensity to your training to be able to actually drive any sort of physical transformation.  Instead, pick a method of training that you gravitate toward such that you can put maximal intensity into its execution, EXECUTE it, keep doing so for a long time and you will observe some significant growth. 

 

Once this intensity IS a given, THEN we start manipulating nutrition and observing the changes.  But that intensity has to be there FIRST.  How many times have we seen the trainee with the “perfect” diet: all organic, free range, healthy food in the right macronutrient rations, perfectly timed…wondering why all they did was get fat on a bulk and scrawny on a cut?  It’s because the intensity WASN’T a given for that individual: they put all of their energy into their food and none of it into their training.  Yes: a sound diet can have you looking better than the AVERAGE person, simply because you’re caring about what you put into your body and this can easily reflect outward, but in order to achieve some manner of actual physical transformation, one must place a demand on their body TO transform, and this comes from intense training that pushes past comfort zones and taps into dark parts of the mind in order to get things done. 

Like "lone berserker killing 60 English soldiers" dark parts

 

And this, in turn, is why we hear the stories of frustrated young trainees wondering why all the big dumb meatheads at their gym are seeing such awesome results while the trainee is floundering: you’re observing dudes that found a style of training that resonates with their personality such that they’re willing to pour in the necessary degree of intensity to affect change, and from there they eat well enough to cause growth to occur.  And why do these big dumb meatheads only eat chicken, rice and broccoli and drink water from gallon jugs?  Because we’re starting to figure out that getting jacked REALLY doesn’t require you to be all that smart and, in fact, intelligence might be holding you back: what’s mattering here is intensity and compliance, and sometimes being a little dumb makes those two things a lot easier to obtain. 

 

Get out of your own way on this one.  It’s honestly tough for me to read about training METHOD book because there just doesn’t seem to be anything worth talking about when it comes to training.  I’ve found what resonates with me, and at this point all I care to read about or look up is just various means of achieving that effect.  I like reading about new training MOVEMENTS, just so I can throw them into a brutal conditioning circuit (which, on that note, I’ve been doing Devil’s presses a TON recently, and they’re legit).  I like seeing psycho WODs people have come up with that I can slot into a daily conditioning challenge.  I like reading about challenge workouts that are just one offs rather than part of an actual program.  And beyond that, I just like reading people talking ABOUT lifting but not actually talking about lifting, ie: most of what Paul Kelso and Dan John’s work is about.  The intensity is a given: what we do with it really doesn’t matter.