EAT LIKE A HOBBIT, TRAIN LIKE AN ORC, THINK LIKE AN OGRE

I came up with this while posting on a training log in t-nation and it was so good I had to write it out.  I’m going to cop to the fact that I’ve never read a single JRR Tolkien book and have only watched the Lord of the Rings Movies and that my “knowledge” of that universe is really more from Dungeons and Dragons, so for the true nerds out there: I apologize for appropriating your culture and all the mistakes I’m about to make, but bite me, because this is my blog.

You're welcome for your stat boost

All that aside, for all you folks out there looking for “fitspiration”, you can do no better than these 3 fantasy creatures: the Hobbit (Halfling to you civilized folks), Orc and Ogre.  First, what’s great about picking a fantasy creature is that the lie happens UP FRONT.  You don’t need to worry about genetics, drugs, photoshop, filters, SARMS, surgery, synthol or any other insanity: it’s CLEAR that this is all make believe.  And any of you who have read my blog previously KNOW that I am a much bigger fan of being inspired by wildly impossible myths and legends than anything even remotely resembling reality.  If you try really hard to be like Kaz and you fail, well that sucks, but if you were trying REALLY hard to be like The Juggernaut and you fail…well you never had a shot kid!

Ok, that’s 2 intros: I should actually write something now.  Let’s talk about eating like a Hobbit.

WHY EAT LIKE A HOBBIT?

These guys get it

Hobbits have it figured out.  Eat FREQUENTLY!  Boy will I beat this drum forever.  I am ALWAYS eating.  I think of it like “grazing”, but anyone that read through my reviews of Deep Water/Building the Monolith observed my every 30 minute approach to eating SOMETHING, to say nothing of the giant meals I have at the beginning and end of the day (reference my “Bookending” post).

Frequent eating became big in the 90s due to the idea that it “stoked the metabolic fires”.  Some suggest the idea that, if the body is fed constantly, it knows that food is in abundance and, in turn, won’t store bodyfat.  Science, of course, has come out and denied all of this…and then there will be a study next week that affirms it, and whatever.  Use some solipsism and just make this work for you!

Frequent eating is awesome no matter the goal.  Want to gain weight?  Know what stops a lot of people?  Feeling FULL!  You eventually run out of room in the guts and can’t eat more.  Well, that happens when you have a goal of eating 4000 calories and only 3 meals to get it done: those are 3 HUGE meals.  You are NOT going to feel happy about that.  Chop it into 6?  Smaller meals: easier on the guts.  6 meals and 3 snacks?  Now we’re really getting somewhere.  I’m a total d*ck at work because whenever I’m eating someone will make some stupid comment like “You’re eating ground beef for breakfast?!” and I reply “I got up at 0305 and this is my 5th meal of the day: I don’t bother naming them any more”.

But I suppose that works

Losing weight?  Frequent eating is a FANTASTIC way to bridge the gap of time.  People fail weight loss because they are HUNGRY, and, eventually, they let hunger override logic and just binge at the end of the day.  That’s the absolute worst, because you suffered ALL day AND undid all that work at the end, so you feel bad for failing AND you felt bad all day suffering.  With frequent eating, you never have to be hungry for long.  Instead of it being 6 hours until your next meal, it can be 3.  The more frequent, the shorter the time.  No: you won’t eat until you are FULL, but you CAN eat enough to no longer be starving.  And, if nothing else, you can deceive yourself into thinking you had “enough”.

Break away from the 3 meal a day constraint.  It’s a manufactured concept.  There’s nothing special about breakfast, lunch and dinner: have second breakfast, tea, elevensies, and all the other names they came up with for meals.  Or do like I do and quit naming them and just eat.  But either way, eat like a Hobbit.  We don’t eat like Orcs, who engage in ritual feasts, filling up at giant meals before soldiering off for battle.  We don’t eat like Ogres, going for long periods of fasting/starving before landing an ambush and absolutely gorging themselves because they don’t know when the next meal is coming.  We will find a way to get in a meal no matter what the situation.

WHY TRAIN LIKE AN ORC?

Maybe that will persuade you

Orcs are the mortal and sworn enemy of the elves along with the dwarves.  And elves and dwarves don’t necessarily get along either, so when two diverse people can come together in harmony over how deplorable they find you, you know you’re a bad people.  Both the elves and dwarves have formed well trained and regimented military units, highly trained in tactics and equipped with well forged (and often magical/mythical) weapons and armor in order to combat the Orcish threat.

A threat, mind you, comprised of a bunch of razor toothed lunatics outfitted in animal hides armor with rusted steel and no actual strategy.

What he lacks in nuance he makes up for in GIANT F**KING HAMMER

Because, for what that threat lacks in battlefield skill, weapons and training, it compensates for with sheer brutal intensity and insanity.  The Orcs personify “bloodthirsty”.  They are not here to fight: they are here to kill.  THAT is what you need to bring to training.  THAT is the “secret”.  Because not all of us will be so lucky to get magical chain armor that is weightless, or an enchanted axe, or the blessings of the gods, but ALL of us have a choice to be brutal, savage and crazy, and those of us that pick that choice can be a threat to those that are blessed.

We don’t train like Hobbits: they are soft and too used to the good life. They fight begrudgingly, often preferring to hide.  We don’t train like Ogres: as fearsome as they are, they are inherently lazy, relying on ambushes, sneak attacks, and their natural gifts of size and strength over a weaker foe.  We train like the Orc: willing to take on foes 3 times their size because their berserker bloodlust frenzy compels them to die on their feet.  They are “will to power” personified.  They are intensity.

WHY THINK LIKE AN OGRE?

Peep that intel score of 5

An odd choice no?  The ogre is not historically appreciated for their intellect.  Quite the opposite, of course.  Ogres are known for their stupidity: for their single-minded drive toward filling their bellies and satiating their lusts and, otherwise, sulking off and being left alone.  They are no mighty wizard, controlling magic through intellect, they are no Gandalf or sage.  Why would we think like them?

BECAUSE they are so stupid!  Folks: we’re trying to get big and strong here.  We’re the meatshield of the party.  We are the barbarian.  NO ONE is expecting us to be the genius here.  Save that for the wizards and bards: they’re super fun to talk to at the tavern…AFTER you survive the battle.  And that last part requires the ogre-like intellect found within the tank of the party.  And trust me: those wizards and bards are GREATFUL that their “none-too-smart” friend was there to STOP thinking and START smashing.

He was handy in the right situations

Because ACTION is far more valuable than inaction here.  Folks, I know people that didn’t go to the gym because they were “researching programs still”.  Are you f**king kidding me?!  Look: I’ve read a ton of books on lifting weights too.  It can be fun to do.  But BEFORE I did that, I was doing SOMETHING.  I wasn’t getting bogged down in the details: I was chasing after my goals with a single-minded drive.

No plan, no strategy, just start smashing stuff and, when the stuff is dead, start eating stuff.

And when you smash the stuff, smash it with the intensity of the Orc.

And when you eat the stuff, eat it like a Hobbit.

WHAT I WOULD TELL MY TEENAGE SELF: PART II

 

Continuing on from last week’s post, here are some final bits of wisdom I’d pass on to my teenage self.

---

* BUY AND READ “SUPER SQUATS”

This was my "Catcher in the Rye"

I’ve written many MANY times about Super Squats the program, and it is absolutely an amazing program that everyone, regardless of goals, should run at least one time.  However, the book is ALSO incredibly valuable, equally so to the program, such that, those who try to run the program without having read the book pretty much always short themselves out of any real growth. 

 

Here’s why I’d tell my teenage self to read the book: the author, Randall Strossen, makes excellent use of his degree in psychology by writing one of THE most motivational/inspirational books on training I’ve ever read.  I got the book in Christmas of 2006, purely as a fun read based off the recommendation of a friend.  I read it Christmas day, and by the evening I already had my first day workout planned for my 6 weeks of the program.  I had ZERO intention of running Super Squats, but Strossen got in my head and had me hooked.  And, of course, running that program was my first taste of real “hard work” as far as training went, and was transformative for me, physically, mentally, and otherwise.  Those assets have lasted me my whole training career, and extended well beyond the realm of physical transformation.

But beyond that: it’s the perfect book for a teenage lifter.  It’s short enough that it can be read in an afternoon, it offers a few different programs (giving the teen a roadmap for training for a while), it covers basic nutrition in a manner that is perfect for teens (minimal cooking required, simple, brutal and effective AND enough food for a young metabolism to be able to crush), and goes over basic exercises in a vivid enough manner to have all the tools required to train.  It’s a fantastic “all in one” training manual that EVEN takes time to discuss the history of training to give an appreciation for the iron game.

 

Are there other training books I love?  Absolutely.  Paul Kelso’s “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style” is still my FAVORITE book on training, and Marty Gallagher’s “Purposeful Primitive” is one of the most comprehensive tomes on all manner of physical training out there.  But I also know my teenage self would have zero appreciation for these books.  Super Squats has the necessary bravado to entice the teenage lifter, the brevity to hold their short attention span, the right lessons AND a program that SHOULD be run at the early stages of one’s lifting career in order to correctly orient their perspective of hard work and obsession.

* DON’T STOP CONDITIONING

No matter what gets in the way!

This is a case where my 14 year old self was SO much smarter than my 24 year old self.  I trained like a MANIAC when I was a teenager.  I ran 8 miles a day, every day, on top of regular weight training, martial arts training, rope skipping, swimming, or anything else I could do.  I ran with ankle weights on (also played Dance Dance Revolution with ankle weights, because I was THAT guy), had a chinning bar across my door frame that I’d hit as I walked through (parents were none too pleased when they discovered I drilled into the door from the secure it), a heavy bag for boxing work (I worked at a sporting goods store when I was 19 and spent most of my paycheck on the gear we sold), was hitting 200+ push ups a night before bed on top of ab work, etc.  I’ve told the story of how I was running 16 miles a day one summer in a quest for abs, trying to burn off the belly fat with a run in the morning and a run at night.  I KNEW that I had to train hard to get results, and that’s what I did.

 

I got older and got “educated” and learned that you could “overtrain” and that it was better to use approved programs of 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps and never strain and that strength was a skill and to use the bare minimum effective dose and blah blah blah.  I got fat, I got in bad shape, I got injured, and ultimately I lost my way.  I legit thought about quitting lifting at the age of 24, and the only thing that saved me was a powerlifting meet that was held 10 minutes away from where I lived that got me hooked back on training, and eventually got me to re-discover the things I knew when I was a teen.

 

Hard work works.  All those things we use to convince ourselves otherwise are just rationalization.  If I could tell my teenage self something on this topic, it would be to never stop doing what I was doing.  I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing: building a VERY broad base of athleticism, strength, speed, agility, and physical preparedness.  It was taking total advantage of my youth and enthusiasm, and the worst thing I ever did was stop and question it.

* EAT TO RECOVER…AND STAY AWAY FROM CHEESE

And "cheese" for that matter

I’ve written about this SO much and I’m going to try to avoid beating this horse to death, but a lesson that took me WAY too long to learn is that food supports training: not the other way around.  “Bulking and cutting” is backwards, because there food is driving the training.  Instead, we have hard periods of training, and during those hard periods we have to eat more to recover, and those two things make us grow.  Once the hard training stops (which WILL happen, because hard training is not infinitely sustainable), we don’t need as much food, and that’s when fat loss happens.  My very first time “bulking”, all I did was eat more food than I was eating before.  I gained weight, then lost the exact same amount of weight during the cut…and nothing changed.  Up until that point, I had put on plenty of muscle by just training hard and eating to recover from it.  Once again: I was SO much smarter when I was dumb.

 

The last bit is personal, but might actually apply otherwise.  I discovered I was “abusing” cheese.  It had become a dietary hack that I was way too reliant on.  I’d throw it indiscriminately onto everything I ate, in my mind thinking it a “free” food.  Since I like low carbs (which I’d tell myself to stick with), cheese was no carbs, just fat and protein.  Well, it’s a LOT of fat, and often not from the greatest sources unless I go out of my way to secure it, so there are some health concerns there AND it’s just adding unnecessary calories that COULD have been replaced by something with more tangible benefits for my goals.  It’s so calorically dense that it’s easy to get out of hand, yet so pervasive that I could add it onto things and not even really realize it.  If I were one of those dudes that struggled to gain, it’d be one thing, but as a growing kid, if I just NEVER used cheese and, instead, focused on meats, eggs/egg whites, avocados (we had a goddamn orchid of those when I was growing up and I never ate them…so stupid), nuts, nut butters, greek yogurt and cottage cheese as my only cheese, I would have done myself some serious favors. 

 

As an aside, when I got to college, our dinning hall was awesome.  I ate there all 4 years.  Tuesdays we had deli sandwiches and Wednesday were burgers.  I always got them without bread, lots of cheese.  Yet again, if I had avoided it then, I’d be far ahead.  …but man do I miss that college dinning hall.

 

* TRAIN TO GET BIGGER

Yeah, that'll do just fine...

This comes down to my lifelong love of strength and how that very love bit me in the butt as far as my pursuit of it went.  I bought in HARD into the idea that “strength is a skill”, which meant strength only existed at low rep ranges, which meant the only way to get stronger was to train low reps ALL the time.  I did 5 rep sets of curls and French presses, 5 rep sets of lat pulldowns, everything was sets of 5.  When I ran Super Squats, it was legitimately one of the first times in a LONG while I trained outside of the 5 rep range, and I essentially asked permission to do so from someone that had run the program before (basically asking them if it was stupid to train everything OTHER than the squat in the 5 rep range and being told that it was). 

 

It wasn’t until much MUCH later, after stalling out on a 500lb squat my second time in a meet, that I FINALLY began to appreciate the benefit of using higher reps, getting in volume, and building MUSCLE.  In my teenage mind (and older, shamefully), building muscle was “bodybuilding”, and my goal was to be strong, so why would I do that?  I wasted SO much training time AVODING the very thing that would have gotten me to my goals.  Yeah: I did a great job maximizing all the muscle I had built through my insane training as a kid, but once I started “training right” for strength by ONLY using low reps, all I did was rapidly reach my potential…and never increase it.  I just kept hitting the same lifts over and over again, backing down, starting over, hitting the same ceiling, repeat. 

 

If I had a chance to talk to my teenage self, I’d explain to him that big is strong.  We know this in nature.  We’re afraid of big animals BECAUSE we know they are strong.  The heaviest weight classes in combat sports and strength sports have the strongest athletes.  WSM competitors are BIG dudes.  The BEST thing you can do, especially as a teenager, is train for SIZE.  Use that time in your life to really prioritize getting big.  We covered the eating part, but this is the time to really go crazy with quality volume and just blow up.  It will lay down a fantastic foundation for any physical endeavor that comes our way.

 

And how would I do it?  Super Squats, 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake, 5/3/1 Building the Monolith and Deep Water.  Simple, effective, brutal, and sustainable.  When it was time to backdown and rest, THAT would be the time to keep reps low and go for big numbers.  Satisfy the teenage ego, then get back to grinding.  I am JUST now figuring all that out at age 36.  I can only imagine where I would be had I known it as a teen.

WHAT I WOULD TELL MY TEENAGE SELF: PART 1

I have, in my mind, a vision to expand this post significantly, but like my e-book, I need to get SOMETHING out now so that it can one day expand.  I always wanted to be big and strong, it’s one of my earliest memories, but I didn’t start seriously dedicating myself to that task until I was 14.  This was primarily because the only way I knew of (at the time) to get big and strong was by lifting weights, and I grew up in an era where we were told that lifting weights before you were 14 was “bad for you”.  So already that’s bunk, but after 22 years of training and observing others, I’ve learned a few lessons that I WISH I had known back then.  The big thing is, it’s easy to overwhelm a beginner with too much information and give them analaysis paralaysis, and, in fact, the fitness industry is pretty much BASED around making this all seem so complicated so that you are forced to seek out assistance.  So knowing that, if I were to be able to pass on some lessons to my teenage self, I’d want them to be simple, actionable, and effective.  From there, we can get into the weeds, but as far as setting out a foundation…

 

 

* LEARN HOW TO BRACE AND HINGE.   

We'll focus on hitching later

So many people talk about “good exercise form” and how critical that is for a beginner, and I feel like that misses the mark by quite a bit.  I wasted SO much time and energy trying to make my form on a bunch of different exercises LOOK right.  In turn, I spent a lot of time “resetting” my lifts because they’d get heavy, form would break down, and I’d lower the weight until I could make the form look right. 

 

What I NEEDED to be doing was learn PRINCIPLES rather than try to memorize the form of a million different lifts, and the two biggest principles I needed were bracing and hinging.  Bracing, the ability to tense my whole body, especially the core musculature, in order to make it resilient against a load, does significantly more to “protect” the body than any mastery of form can do.  A strongly braced body can withstand form deviation: a weakly braced body will crumple even with correct form.  Along with that, learning how to hinge at the hips vs bend at the back would have been THE most significant “injury preventing” technique I could learn that would have been applicable across a WIDE variety of movements.  So many back pain issues stem from trainees that are so concerned about making their deadlift LOOK right that they never stop to consider if they’re actually DOING it correctly.  You can perform a deadlift that LOOKS textbook perfect and is all lower back because there’s no hinge occurring at the hip.  This same hinge is essential on the squat, quick lifts, swings, etc etc.  Bench press and lateral raises can come with time, for now: brace and hinge.

 

The kettlebell swing would have been an AWESOME movement to learn both of these qualities.  Along with that, I’d have used a weight belt from day 1 in order to really be able to appreciate breathing into my belly and locking down.

 

* PULL WITH YOUR ELBOWS  

No: not like that

This one is unique to me, but that’s who I am writing to.  I did ALL the lat movements…and developed some big arms for my size.  And no lats.  As en vogue as it is right now to say that the mind-muscle connection doesn’t matter, I found that, if I just moved weight on the lat movements, my arms took over.  Much like hinging and bracing, this is about learning a basic principle of human movement and applying it universally rather than trying to memorize factsheets about 100 different movements.  Big lats are awesome, and the way to get them is to learn how to pull with the elbows instead of the hands.

 

Straps go a LONG way in helping with this.  Lock into the bar and remove the hands from the equation.

* MAKE MEALS: 

This would have gone a LONG way with teenage me...

As a teen, all I knew how to operate as a microwave.  That really crippled me when it came to sound nutritional decisions.  If I wasn’t eating leftovers (which thank GOD I had parents that would cook for me: that’s a blessing), it was either coming out of a box, frozen, or fast food.  In fact, my very first training log entry in 2004 had me eating a Nachos Bell Grande from Taco Bell for lunch and then dinner out at a CoCos.  Sure, I could get away with eating like that at that age…but imagine what I could have done if I was eating quality, nutritious food?  To say nothing of how much money I’d save.

 

I get it that the oven and stove can be scary, but it’s REALLY hard to screw up a slow cooker and a Foreman grill, and that’s exactly what I’d do.  I’d teach my teenage self how to make a slow cooker pot roast (cheap meat, lots of veggies, can’t go wrong there), slow cooker salsa chicken (breasts, thighs, drumsticks, whatever: the slow cooker runs less risk of undercooking) and some Foreman burgers and steaks.  I’d throw in some slow cooker hard boiled eggs too and be set.  Just those 4-5 things would set up ANY teenage lifter for a ton of success.  Later we can get more diverse, use that slow cooker to make chilis and stews, grill other meats, get a variety of veggies, etc, but just getting a baseline of basic protein rich foods would go SO far.

 

Also, let me just say that air fryers are practically cheating as far as meal prep goes.  I didn’t have one as a teen, but anyone that DOES have one has SUCH an advantage.

* STAY AWAY FROM PROTEIN POWDER: 

When are we going to tackle the REAL issues here?

This is my “never start smoking” that I’d pass on to my teenage self.  I stayed away from drugs, alcohol and smoking, but protein powder/supplements is a habit that I wish I had never started.  I was a 2 scoop a day user for a LONG time.  I’ve finally cut myself down to 1 scoop only on lifting days, but boy do I wish I could just go cold turkey.  In truth, I’m addicted to the ritual of drinking a shake post workout, plus, protein powder is SO delicious today compared to the pasty junk I had as a teenager.  And oh man, the protein bars back then were horrifying, and a lot of them gave me allergic reactions.  So WHY was I eating them? 

 

I bought WAY into the marketing that you NEEDED your quick absorbing protein immediately post workout or all your gains would go to waste.  Make sure to have your equal parts maltodextrin and dextrose too for maximal absorption.  Jesus, none of that matters, and I’d definitely tell my teenage self that I’d get FAR more jacked if I was taking that money I was blowing on supplements and spend it on FOOD instead.  And never starting the habit would mean never getting hooked.

 

 

This can really go on and on.  I’m going to do my best to keep it at a 2-parter, but feel free to leave comments about anything you’d like to see addressed otherwise. 

MODERATION THROUGH EXTREMES

A recent conversation I had online got me thinking about this, and it seemed worth getting down “for real” somewhere.  Frequently, moderation is praised as a virtue while extremism is considered a vice.  “Everything in moderation” is given as “advice” that’s honestly trite at this point, right up there with “lift with the knees” and “stay safe”: platitudes that have long since lost their meaning.  But perhaps it has become necessary for us to utilize a long enough timeline to have an appreciation for what “moderation” actually refers to.  Moderation is not, necessarily, a case of remaining moderate 100% of the time, but, instead, can (and dare I say, SHOULD) refer to the notion of achieving balance by spending 50% of our time on one extreme and 50% of our time on another.  It is with this “moderate” approach that we actually realize and achieve our goals, whereas the lesser form of moderation is what results in being average and a fate of mediocrity.

"It's my 1 cheat meal a week!"

Examples abound my friends!  The current trend that I find absolutely maddening is the desperate attempt of trainees to never accumulate an ounce of bodyfat by attempting a “recomp”, “maingain”, “gaintain”, “lean bulk” or any other buzzword you care to employ that effectively refers to gaining muscle without fat.  “I’m ok with putting on muscle at a slower rate if it means I don’t have to go on a cut later”.  For one: coward!  What other word would I have for someone who willingly takes the less effective approach in order to spare themselves from a very SLIGHT discomfort later?  But along with that: silliness.  Do you even realize the insane degree of nutritional accuracy necessary for you to ensure that you’re gaining only pure muscle from your training?  There are people whose livelihood is solely dependent on their appearance who STILL have not figured out that one trick, but here you are with a $4 foodscale and a free calorie counting app and you’re going to make it work eh?  We would simply call this “wheel spinning” in polite company, with even more choice words among friends.

Look to how any actual big and strong person achieved their goals and it’s the same story: phases dedicated to weight gain and phases dedicated to weight loss.  And when it’s time to gain: it is time to GAIN.  “No half measures”, as per the amazing “Breaking Bad” quote.  No, don’t be stupid: this isn’t license to eat a box of poptarts a day.  You’re an adult: no one needs to tell you to eat like one.  This is a discussion on LIVING weight gain during the weight gain phase and weight loss during the weight loss phase.  We do not attempt to do both, we do not concern ourselves with the next phase while in the current one: we exist in THAT moment and, in turn, maximize our time while we are in it.  We train very hard, we eat very well, we grow, and when we are done, we lose.  And after enough times, we achieve something significant.  And from there, we find our “moderation”.  Between fat and scrawny, we found jacked.  Meanwhile, those that were trying to STAY moderate through the process remained where they started: for what catalyst was placed upon the body to ever change?  Physical transformation is just that: a transformation.  The process of transformation is an EXTREME process: it will not occur gradually with half measures.  

Running the program with 10 rep squats will not get you only 15lbs of muscle in 6 weeks...

And as to be expected, training dovetails into nutrition.  Anyone with the basic understanding of training already knows where this is headed.  Training exists in phases, and phases of training are examples of these extremes.  We do not simply do the same program of 3x10 for 2 decades and end up jacked: there are phases of accumulation, and phases of intensification/realization.  Which is WHY we must not employ half measures in our nutrition: we need the necessary recovery in place to SUPPORT these extremes of training.  And it’s WHY those who concern themselves with fat gain while attempting to build muscle ultimately sabotage themselves in the process: they WASTE an entire phase of training by refusing to live the extremes necessary to support the eventual return to moderation.  When one engages in the brutally hard training necessary to elicit muscular growth from the body, they must in turn give the body the nutrients necessary to get said growth.  And, in a bit of self-perpetuation, the absence of this nutrition will also PREVENT a trainee from being able to perform the very training necessary to cause muscular growth to occur.  

But, of course, this requires venturing into the terrifying world of programming rather than simply having a routine.  Which requires a necessary degree of learning such that one is ABLE to program.  Because as charming as the story of Milo of Croton is: it’s just a story.  Were we all able to simply add weight each time we trained, everyone would bench 800lbs.  It’s so much more appealing to just keep doing the same thing every time we go to the gym because there is a sense of security in the known, to the point that trainees will stall for months, if not YEARS, re-running the same 12 week “program” over and over again vs actually trying something new, different and extreme.  Moderation in extremes.  Do Super Squats, and then spend 6 weeks doing crossfit WODs.  Dogg Crapp one phase, Deep Water the next.  Easy Strength followed up with Smolov.  Through these extremes we achieve REAL moderation: through “moderate” training, we achieve meager results.

I'm not just making this stuff up folks

Find your balance with extremes.  Spend half your time doing what you weren’t doing with the other half of your time, to the point that, when your time is up, you cannot WAIT to do something RADICALLY different.  In doing so, you will achieve an average of “moderate”: it just so happens that what you deem moderate will end up being what so many others deem “extreme”.