YOU CAN’T OVERCOME A LACK OF EXPERIENCE WITH AN ABUNDANCE OF INFORMATION

I appreciate how the topic I’ve written for this post is just so straightforward, so I’m going to just keep on rolling with it.  This idea struck me this morning as I was finishing up my workout: a combination of Dan John’s Easy Strength AND his Mass Made Simple program (be on the lookout for a future write up there…alongside one called “Here Comes a New Challenger”, because my brain is absolutely schizophrenic along with obsessive and comes up with multiple ideas at once about the same subject all the time).  I had finished up the full workout and had 18 minutes remaining before I needed to get ready for work, so I decided to throw on the weighted vest and get in as far of a walk as I could in that time.  It was only at the end of that time that I remembered that I had intended to do a little bit more “bodybuilding” work after the workout: I was so…conditioned for conditioning (sorry, had to be done) post workout that I forgot my own plan (Chaos, of course).  So, upon my return to the garage, I quickly shucked off the vest and did 1 set of “Conan Curls” (band curls with the band around the wrists instead of held in the hand) and 1 set of full ROM lateral raises with 20lb dumbbells.  And that was “enough”…and in that I realized that I had learned QUITE a bit in 23 years of lifting weights regarding how to get as much as I could out of a single set…and, in turn, realized just how LONG it took me to accomplish that.  Because it doesn’t how much you academically “know” about training: without the necessary experience to actually IMPLEMENT it, it’s all just theory.

No, seriously: what's a widget? 

 

What’s funny is that this is something we know about any other physical activity on earth, but for some reason people treat physical transformation as a separate physical entity.  If I tell you that you can’t READ yourself into playing the piano, or shooting a freethrow, or swimming, you’ll go “duh!”  I suppose combat sports runs into this too, because I’ve known cats that thought they could teach themselves to fight from reading, but, at the same time, martial arts are so mired in mythos (“My Uncle TOTALLY learned from a Shaolin monk a pressure point that will KILL you with just 4lbs of pressure!”), but you get my point.  When it comes to acquisition of physical skills, we understand that they are just that: SKILLs.  NOT knowledge.  Yet the very Role-Play-Game-Playing nerds that can appreciate just that idea (in the “White Wolf” series there is literally a breakdown of “talents, skills and knowledge” for your character sheet!) are the same ones that rally AGAINST it when it comes time to actually put pen to paper…man these puns.  “I already KNOW how to maximize the lateral raise: I gotta keep my chin tight, not shrug my shoulders, control the weight, pinky down, chest high, brace, ground my heels, but I STILL only feel it in my traps”.  Dude: it’s because even though your brain might be smart on all this stuff, your body is stupid.  It needs more education, and that comes PURELY from experience.

 

No matter how much you read ABOUT the lateral raise, until you have a few hundred thousand reps under your belt, you’re going to need to PHYSICALLY learn how to do the movement.  That’s why cues are so popular in the first place: they’re little mental reminders on how to move PHYSICALLY.  BUT, if you haven’t ever “gotten in” when it comes to the movement, the cue is an answer seeking a question.  You don’t even know what “right” feels like to know if you’re GETTING there yet, and it just takes a LOT of practice to get there.  Again: this is obvious with any OTHER physical skill, primarily because we tend to get instant feedback.  Did the ball make it in the hoop?  Congrats: THAT’S how a free throw feels.  Did you NOT drown?  Congrats: you swam!  Knock down all 10 pins?  That’s a strike!  But how do we know when the lateral raise was done right?  When we finally have some goddamn lateral deltoids to show for!  And that takes TIME…BUT, at the same time, an experienced trainee can ALSO “know” when they’ve gotten it “right” because they’ve eventually gotten it right for so long that they “KNOW” the feel that they need to achieve in order to accomplish their goals…which just results in even MORE confusion for the junior trainee observing the experienced.

There is a reason this meme exists

 

How many times have you seen the critique that “so and so can do XYZ BECAUSE they’re a pro!”  Hell there Branch Warren/Johnnie Jackson/Ronnie Coleman/Arnold/etc.  It’s this idea that, somehow, these pros are “training wrong” because how they train doesn’t LOOK like textbook technique.  But winding it back to the combat sports reference: how many times have you seen an accomplished professional boxer with their HANDS DOWN?  Isn’t “hands up” that thing your boxing coach is CONSTANTLY shouting at you?  How come the pros have their hands down?  Don’t they know better?  They most certainly do: they know WHEN to keep their hands up, primarily because, after DECADES of experience, their sense of their opponent’s timing and range is so well tuned that they KNOW when they are actually in danger and NEED to have their hands up to defend and, in turn, they know when they can relax and SAVE their energy, rather than fatiguing their shoulders from constantly being “on guard”.

 

It’s no different from the experienced lifted that is seeking to achieve physical transformation: they don’t NEED to do all that “other stuff” to accomplish their goals: they are beyond the point of cues and can simply replicate the feel that they need to feel in order to achieve the goal they are seeking to achieve.  From there, they tend to develop their own unique style and approach to the situation that best suits them on an individual level, because they have MASTERED their bodies THROUGH experience: NOT through academia.  THIS is the value of physical experience: it can NOT be replicated through speech or text.  And yes, I fully appreciate the irony of me writing about this very subject in order to impart upon you the knowledge that knowledge in and of itself is not enough, but in turn maybe we can appreciate where knowledge IS valuable: in the sharing of ideas, concepts, notions and experiences in order for the reader to TRY IT and GAIN the necessary experience that comes from it.  It’s why I’m such a fan of story-tellers over researchers: SHARE with me a story, tell me a tale, let me learn FROM your experience so I can try to have experiences of my own.  As a parent, THIS is the valuable lesson you impart upon your own children.  They can learn facts from school, or books, or the internet (god forbid), but YOU get to share with them your experiences. 

In fairness, there's a lot of trainees that could stand to learn this lesson

 

And, much like junior trainees: most kids will ignore you because they can only REALL learn from the school of hard knocks…but at least, once they DO learn, they come back and say “oh wow….you were RIGHT!”