WISDOM OF JOE DIRT: DON’T FOCUS ON THE WRONG PART OF THE STORY BROTHER

Some of my readers may be too young to appreciate the cinema masterpiece that is 2001’s “Joe Dirt”, but it truly ranks among the greats.  It is, of course, an absolute garbage comedy of a movie, but also demonstrated David Spade’s acting range to an amazing degree, as prior to that moment in time he had only played straight laced, upperclass snooty business-types, the “straight man” to Chris Farley’s…Chris Farley.  In Joe Dirt, Spade fully sells the white trash backwoods hick so well that you spend the entire movie FORGETTING that it’s David Spade.  David Spade has ALWAYS been Joe Dirt: everything up until that point was the lie.  But, I digress, because today we’re going to talk about one of the many (MANY) nuggets of wisdom dispensed by Mr Dirt.  It’s not “you can’t have ‘no’ in your heart” (which is an AWESOME bit of wisdom”, it’s not “life’s a garden: dig it”: it’s “don’t focus on the wrong part of the story brother.”

It's still hard for me to accept that this is David Spade...

This quip is given as Joe is relating a story to “Kicking Wing”, a Native American fireworks salesman, whose sales tactics are woefully underperforming.  Throughout Joe’s attempt to teach through allegory, Kicking Wing keeps questioning details of the allegory, forcing Joe to say “don’t focus on the wrong part of the story brother”.  SO many trainees need to take that wisdom to heart, because SO many times, when attempting to explain a valuable concept as it relates to training and nutrition, these trainees latch onto the wrong part of the story and miss the forest for the trees.

Example?  Super Squats, of course.  You knew that was coming.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve linked this book to some young, impressionable trainee, brimming with potential, only for them to look at the cover and say “You can’t build 30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks: it’s biologically impossible”.  Dude, do they NOT teach you “don’t judge a book by its cover” anymore in school?  Or at home?  Or on television?  Or anywhere?!  That’s one of life’s oldest lessons, and it’s meant to be an expression to be applied toward a deeper meaning, but here you are screwing it up on its most basic level.  Who cares what the tagline of the book says: the book and program have remained on the lips of lifters for decades BECAUSE IT WORKS.  Don’t focus on the wrong part of the story brother: it’s not about “building 30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks”: it’s about how big and strong we get in the PURSUIT of such growth.  Which, by the way, I found, when you chase after 30lbs in 6 weeks, you can put on 12…and that’s pretty awesome.

And that was without turning into this...we still miss you Chris!

I’ll go to Deep Water from here, because I’m a one-trick pony (or two tricks, since it’s Super Squats or Deep Water).  Right away, people see the 10x10 and either 2 things happen: they call it German Volume Training, or they talk about how 10x10 is “junk volume” and you don’t need to do that to grow.  Let me pick apart the first one: calling all 10x10s “GVT” is like calling any program with the bench, squat and deadlift in it a “powerlifting program”.  Which, I imagine, some of you are ALSO guilty of, because you focus on “the wrong part of the story”.  10x10 is merely a PIECE of GVT, and, in turn, it’s merely a piece of Deep Water: beyond that, they are quite different, and worth appreciating for their differences.  But junk volume?  Absolutely spoken by someone that has spent more time with the books than with the iron.

Folks: there is more than biology at play when it comes to hard training.  Hard training transforms you IN TOTAL.  It doesn’t just change your body: it changes your MIND.  It changes how you approach adversity.  It changes how you cope, deal, strategize and overcome hardships.  Constant exposure to anguish improves your ability to navigate it, whereas avoiding all manner of suffering beyond what is “necessary” to grow is what makes us stagnant.  Programs like Deep Water and Super Squats absolutely push WELL beyond what is necessary to trigger growth…but, in doing so, they give you the TOOLS needed to KEEP pushing once we reach those inevitable plateaus in our training.  What a fantastic deal: not only do these programs make you grow PHYSICALLY, but, unlike the perfectly dialed in minimum necessary dose approach, these programs ALSO make you grow in terms of resilience.  Growth now AND growth later.

Can I beat my usual war drum on nutrition here too?  “Can I just eat junk food to fill in my calories if I already hit my protein goal for the day?”  I am genuinely baffled whenever I read this question from an alleged adult.  Don’t focus on the wrong part of the story brother: it’s not a game where you have to hit the bare minimums for some macronutrient values: you’re talking about the NUTRIENTS you are putting into your BODY.  Is that really how you want to live your life?  Do you REALLY think it’s a sound strategy to just hit a protein value and then eat a bunch of junk food?  Because you KNOW these dudes aren’t getting that protein value from lean meats and clean dairy sources: they most likely put 6 scoops of protein powder in some water, pounded it in 6 seconds and said “protein is done for the day: bring on the Taco Bell!”  Macronutrient numbers are just a SMALL part of eating as far as it relates to the process of physical transformation: but, of course, since their easy number to track and measure, that’s all trainees want to focus on.  Nuance is annoying, and discussions about omega 3 to 6 ratios, vitamin B6 deficiencies, the interplay between potassium and sodium, etc etc, require actual READING and not just plugging numbers into an app…but the payoff for the effort is worth it.  It ALWAYS is.  And that’s what this boils down to: the effort of one HARD set of squats, or 10 sets of squats, or actually learning some basics of nutrition: if we actually invest ourselves INTO something, we get something out of it.  That’s what makes it an investment.  Minimal investment: minimal return.

Don’t focus on the wrong part of the story brother.  Try and appreciate what it is you’re being told.