ON "TOO"

  

“Too” is a word we need to strike from the vocabulary of many young trainees, as quite frankly it is holding back many from achieving any degree of success.  Quite often, a trainee is too preoccupied WITH too (yes, I already see what I did there) to be able to even accomplish anything in the first place.  “How to I gain muscle without gaining TOO much fat?”, “I don’t want to get TOO big”, “I can’t afford to eat like that, it’s TOO expensive”, “Training takes TOO much time”, etc etc.  Quite frankly, this word is cowardly on multiple levels, as it avoids employing an actual arguable metric AND attempts to separate responsibility and accountability from the agent employing it.  Explain?  Gladly.

His team had the best strong guy...

I’m going to tackle the “too much fat” thing, because I see it a lot and it drives me nuts every single time.  I am ruthless the instant I see it, because I will immediately ask the question of “How much fat gain IS acceptable during your muscle gain phase such that I understand where the threshold is for ‘too much’?”  Or, to simplify it, as Bobby Hill once said about fried chicken: “How do you know if it’s extra yet?”  Once you start to pry, you reach the obvious and inevitably conclusion: ANY fat gain is “too much” to this trainee.  They want to go to heaven but they don’t want to die to get there.  Some will even try to church it up and say that they don’t want to gain “unnecessary fat”, but once again, when you press them to explain the exact amount that is necessary, there is no answer.  And, of course, what these people fail to understand is that the muscle building process is SO much harder than the fat losing process that excessive concern about gaining “too much fat” is limiting their ability to actually put on the muscle in the first place…and that’s because…

 

People legitimately concern themselves with getting “too big”.  Quite frankly: that’s insane.  There are people out there that spend DECADES trying to get “too big” and fail at it…and you somehow think it’s going to happen on accident?  Both of these camps don’t seem to understand that physical transformation, in ANY capacity, takes time.  No one gains TOO much mass, fat or muscle, in such a rapid amount of time that it’s non-perceivable until it’s “too late”.  The signs and symptoms are painfully obvious and, upon observing them, one can choose to cease the offending activity.  One is not doomed to ride some sort bullet train to hugeness and, quite frankly, will need to engage in a degree of effort that is hilariously absent from those in the greatest fear of accidentally applying themselves in any given venture.  Trust me, young trainee: you are at no risk of achieving “too”.

Should have stayed at 9 reps instead of 10...

 

“Too” in the budgetary sense is always hilariously and depressingly eye opening, both in terms of budgeting funding and budgeting time.  Everyone I encounter is at a shortage of both.  Because here’s the secret: no one has extra time or money.  We all have only the exact amount of either that we need to support our priorities.  In turn, what must occur is a shifting of said priorities in order to necessitate the appropriate shifting of finances and time.

 

Examples?  Of course.  Quite often, those who suffer from a severe shortage of time, as it relates to fitness, find themselves absent of that shortage when it comes to binge watching a Netflix series, or playing video games, hanging out with friends, getting lost in YouTube rabbit holes, etc.  And this becomes especially comical when one comes to understand that one can make LIFE CHANGING impacts on their health and fitness with a mere investment of 20 minutes a day, 3 days a week.  That’s an hour, total, in a week, dedicated to moving one’s body through space, experiencing discomfort, and seeking self-improvement.  Is that really “too much time”?  Or do we simply value other things “too much” compared to improving ourselves?

I mean I get it...

 

The same is true on the cost of eating well.  Once it comes time to gain weight, people balk at how food is “too expensive”.  I’m not too sure how people figured they were going to eat more food without paying more money, but I’m also at the point where I no longer feel I have the ability to engage in expectation management because, quite frankly, you people are insane.  But that aside: one is typically able to observe the ultra thin shoestring budgets of these folks and find that there is MORE than adequate funding available for streaming services, daily Starbucks runs, recreational drugs and alcohol and all other delicious forms of debauchery…but not enough for food.  Yet again, shall we, perhaps, examine our priorities?

 

Dare I even discuss how books are “too expensive”?  I’m going to confess to a dirty little secret: whenever a trainee expresses a desire to me to radically transform themselves physically, I typically send them down the path of Super Squats, with occasional nods to Deep Water or 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake or Building the Monolith.  The dirty secret here being that I KNOW these programs ALL require a book to be run, and that this book costs a whole TEN DOLLARS on amazon kindle. The reason I suggest this is simple: if this trainee does NOT have $10 to spend on a book that will radically transform their physiques and, quite possibly, their lives, I KNOW they don’t have enough money to BUY THE FOOD needed to fuel this process.  It’s one of the easiest screening processes I’ve ever engaged in, and it allows me to rapidly determine who I actually have the capacity to aid vs who is full of good intentions and zero follow through.  Because again, I ask the question: “If $10 is too expensive for a book that will change your life, how much will you spend?”

We all knew the answer

 

Folks, let it not be said that I am not a helpful author.  Aside from just ranting at you, allow me to offer you a solution to the majority of these problems.  Spend $20 (no, that isn’t too expensive), get a slow cooker, and learn how to make 3 recipes with it.  You don’t even need to buy a cookbook, so you can save money there, slow cookers thrive on cheap cuts of meat and vegetables, so you save cash there, they require zero attention once they are set to cook, so that saves you time, they make food in BIG batches, so you can meal prep easily, saving you time AND money AND getting you the food you need to ensure you get big without worrying about getting “too big”, AND you will most likely NOT get “too fat” when you’re eating a bunch of delicious homemade food vs going out to eat for every meal because you failed to plan.

 

After you’re done doing that, try to train too hard, eat too big, and sleep too much.

 

It’s almost too easy.