YOU AREN’T THAT OLD

 

Once again, my slumming on forums around the internet has allowed me to build up a headful of steam and rant about something.  Today’s discussion centers around the age-old desire to grow up too fast.  We see this with young children all the time.  Qualifiers on age (I’m 6 AND A HALF), attempts to jump to new milestones before they are ready (crossing the street too young, staying out too late, getting to that coveted “R” rated movie), dressing/acting older, etc.  The comedy being that, once you reach “of age”, you cling desperately to your youth, with many people aging without grace and denying their birthdays.  But this phenomenon extends into the realm of training as well, with young trainees RACING to be “just like the old dudes”…and in doing so co-opting habits, patters, quirks and traits that are not just ridiculous but actively destroying their opportunity to actually reach “of age”.  Allow me to explain…

How you look to me

 

Where I primarily observe this quality is in the realm of “injury”.  And I put it into quotes because, really, these are phantom injuries.  There is no source for them, they cannot be seen by MRI, there’s no diagnosis and, in turn, no treatment.  But despite all of this, I constantly observe trainees as young as teenagers bemoaning their “bad knees”, “elbow pain”, “junk shoulder”, etc etc.  These trainees, in turn, have written off a whole HOST of movements that are “no longer possible” due to their “injuries”.  No more back squats (god I hate writing “back squat”): our “bad back” will only allow us to do front squats.  Gotta give up all straight bar pressing because of our bad shoulders.  With my elbow pain, I gotta stick with just machines.

 

Jesus people: what did you do in your first 16 years of existing to wear out your connective tissue so quickly?!  Are you a Soviet era acrobat, recruited from age 1 into a rigorous training program paired with an unsustainable touring schedule to entertain the nobility?  Are you an impoverish Thai child that got roped into the world of Muay Thai prizefighting, boasting a record with a combined 367 fights as a means to put food on the table?  Are you one of 15 children performing manual farm labor in pre-industrial era America?  Did you have an illegal job working as a child coal miner?  HOW DID YOU GET SO BROKEN?!

Carpal tunnel doesn't count

 

These young trainees are in such a rush to grow up that they’re co-opting the brokenness of their idols…but forgoing to co-opt the breaking PROCESS.  You might see a 1000lb squatter talking about how they can’t use a straight bar at all in training because their shoulders are junk and they only save it for the meet: what you AREN’T seeing is the 10,000 squat sessions they did WITH a straight bar beforehand before they reached that status.  Or how the herniated disc that forces a lifter to rely on the Romanian deadlift for their hip hinged herniated on the 400th deadlift workout with 800lbs.  Folks: for Icarus’ wings to melt, he had to fly close to the sun FIRST!

 

You’re not going to achieve greatness through the mimicry of failure: you achieve greatness through the pursuit of the HUBRIS that eventually led to the failure.  The reason you’re watching these great athletes overcome their own injuries in the first place is because THEY ARE GREAT ATHLETES, and they achieved greatness due to a willingness to push their bodies WELL beyond the limits, to the point that they encountered disfigurements and injuries that are unfathomable to an average person.   They EARNED the right to be broken, and the “reward” is the option to compensate with alternatives, work arounds, and substitutions so that they can continue to push themselves stupidly hard, because they only know one way to live.  If you watch Ronnie Coleman these days, he will crutch himself to a machine and STILL give 100% of his soul into a set.  David Goggins ran to the point of passing blood through his urine on MULTIPLE occasions.  THAT’S how these people got so broken…and, before that, so fantastic.

More effort in this one set than some trainees put into a whole life

 

And, consequently, you’re not going to get so BROKEN by living a very average life.  Is that a threat or a promise?  So very few people are at risk of their reach ever exceeding their grasp.  Do you know how often I have to explain to someone what it means to eat to recover from training?  These are people who have literally NEVER “under-recovered”: they have ALWAYS trained so little and recovered so much that they were in a state of full recovery, to the point that they cannot wrap their brains around what it feels like when they are NOT recovered.  If you’ve never felt that feeling, you’re at NO risk of being so broken that you can’t actually do a proper barbell squat or bench with a straight bar. 

 

Growing up and growing old really is the perfect lens to understand this phenomenon from.  You need to get some age on you before you get to be so old.  And you can be old in calendar age and young in training age, and vice versa.  Mark Felix got into strongman at 37, which meant he was a child in the sport at an age where Kevin Nee was well into retirement.  And both were incredible athletes, simply hitting their primes at different points in their physical lives.  There’s even something to be said about the value of maturity as it relates to training, and a more “grown up” trainee may be able to make more intelligent decisions that prolongs their longevity…but there’s ALSO something to be said about the recklessness of youth allowing us to push STUPIDLY beyond our limits due to a complete lack of self-preservation instincts or sense of danger.  But, in either sense: it requires a willingness to GET broken before one ACTS broken.  Before you start babying your junk knee and garbage shoulders, go out and earn them.