YOU CAN’T FORCE WILLPOWER

As a man who finds himself a fan of brute force, as evidenced by my admiration of Marvel Comic’s “The Juggernaut”, alongside my penchant to always play the Half-Orc Barbarian in Dungeons and Dragons, alongside all the ridiculous and absurd sh*t ya’ll have seen me engage in over these decades, there’s a bit of comedy in me acknowledging that willpower itself CANNOT be produced THROUGH sheer force of will.  So many trainees honestly try to force themselves to HAVE willpower, and they attempt to do so through the capacity they tend to have in abundance: intellectualism.  But, of course, if nerds could be jocks then we’d have no nerds or jocks: just the fabled philosopher kings that Plato wrote about from the mouth of Socrates.  No dear reader, willpower is not something you can think your way through, nor can you fake it until you make it, it simply IS, and if you are unwilling to do what is necessary in order to achieve your goals in physical transformation, rather than try to force yourself through, you must analyze WHY you have this absence of willpower.  You can’t force willpower: all you can do is vector it appropriately.

Sadly, not even then

What sparked these thoughts was the idea of how there are SO many successful training programs out there, and many of them have WILDLY different approaches.  Deep Water and GVT’s 10x10 protocol is wildly different from HIT or DoggCrapp, wherein a trainee does ONE big set for each muscle group and calls it a day…but they both have demonstrated success.  Super Squats has produced results for decades, and in Easy Strength you do NO squats whatsoever.  Sheiko and Westside Barbell have both produced champion powerlifters.  Jamie Lewis has expressed outright hatred at the approach of Stuart McRobert, and both individuals have produced training programs that have achieved success in their trainees.  Lists go on and on, and there are authors I’ve never even HEARD of that are out there producing results, and there’s also a chance that, of all the programs and authors I’ve listed above, you’ve also never heard of any of them and have STILL achieved results.  There are SO many avenues for success in the realm of physical transformation…so how do some STILL manage to fail?

Because WILLPOWER is the essential driving element to success.  And I want to be clear that I am saying that in stark contrast to the notion that it’s a matter of discipline.  No: I do NOT agree that it’s simply a question of having the discipline to make the pursuit of physical transformation a “lifestyle”: many people live lifestyles that are wholly unbeneficial and unproductive.  Alongside that, all discipline does is establish a routine.  People equate training to brushing their teeth: something they do simply because it is a part of their daily life.  Their “discipline” has instilled in them the habit of always training.  Well when is the last time you got REALLY fired up about brushing your teeth?  When did you determine that you were going to have the BEST oral hygiene of anyone you knew?  When did you decide to be a paragon of clean, white, perfectly aligned choppers?  Do you want to employ the enthusiasm you dedicate to teeth brushing toward your whole body transformation?

Yes: Schoolhouse Rock beat me to the punch on this

WILLPOWER is essential to the process of physical transformation, for it is the driving force that produces the intensity necessary to actually enact some manner OF physical transformation in the presence of the discipline that got us INTO the training space in the first place.  Sure sure, it took discipline for you to get to the gym every single day: it takes WILLPOWER for you to actually EXERT yourself under the heavy bar on another set of squats when you feel like your soul is escaping through every applicable orifice of your body.  WILLPOWER compels you through those horrific conditioning sessions where you’re pretty sure your lungs are bleeding and you taste copper in your mouth.  WILLPOWER is what allows us to “stick with the diet”, whatever the hell that happens to mean at that exact moment in time.  …but what is it that produces this willpower?

We cannot FORCE ourselves to have willpower: that is self-referential.  That’s like trying to pick yourself up by your ankles to get to a higher point of elevation: you are going to fall flat on your face.  It’s like plugging a surge protector into itself to have “unlimited power”: it doesn’t work.  No, willpower is produced through faith.  And no, I am not referring to believe in the almighty (although, sure, that will actually do just fine for many), but faith in THE SYSTEM: WHATEVER system that may happen to be.  Because I see SO many trainees who operate in a total absence of faith and then wonder WHY they aren’t succeeding despite doing “everything right”.  You aren’t doing everything right, you forgot the one thing that actually matters: work hard.  And you work hard BECAUSE you have the willpower to do so.

Laugh all you want, but you're literally going nowhere on your treadmill

All of the programs I mentioned earlier work.  It’s simply the truth: we’ve OBSERVED these programs working.  We KNOW they work. BUT, we also know they can fail.  And a trainee who believes that the program they are on will fail…will fail.  Irrespective of how well designed the protocol is, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: you believed you would fail, and you did.  Man, what an awesome superpower you have: the ability to predict AND control the future.  WHY are you using this power for self-destruction instead of self-improvement?  One must have unbreakable, unquestionable, unwavering faith in whatever approach it is that they are undertaking, for it is THIS faith that creates the willpower necessary to succeed.  The INSTANT a seed of doubt creeps in, it is time to abandon course and find a new path.  

If you select a way forward simply because it’s “the best”, but you personally do not have the necessary degree of faith in the approach to actually believe that, you will NOT have the necessary degree of willpower to actually create the stimulus for physical transformation.  You will limply pay lip service to the protocol, doing all the required reps and sets with all the required weight and eating all the right foods and completely removing the HUMAN element from the equation.  You will be robotic and mechanical, and reap the rewards of such an existence.  Your vehicle does NOT get better with more repetition: it tends to actually DECLINE with use.  The same is true of most machines: they decline, break down, and become obsolete.  When you undertake a process mechanically, you achieve a mechanical outcome, but when you take on a challenge as a HUMAN, you benefit as humans do.

Don't get me wrong: The Terminator was pretty cool, but Conan got to go on and become a King!

This isn’t a question of motivation: motivation is fleeting, and subject to manipulation easily impacted by current mood, environment, atmosphere and circumstances.  Motivation can carry one through a workout: willpower carries on TO victory.  And again: this is NOT something that you can logic your way through.  Willpower is NOT a reasonable process: willpower is what we employ when reason FAILS us.  When a mom lifts a car off of her child to save their lives, they abandoned ALL reason in that pursuit.  Reason told that mom that there is no way she can lift that vehicle: willpower empowered her to do exactly that.  You thinking your way through a program, dutifully analyzing how the frequency of the movements balanced against the volume and intensity has produced the most optimal outcome simply will NOT give you the necessary force of will to violently execute the training ONCE the time arrives: THIS is from willpower.

In turn, we can make use OF illogical means in order to obtain this willpower.  People are in such a rush to point out when a logical fallacy occurs, as though it’s some sort of secret trump card in the game of life we’re all playing that instantly secures victory.  It could not be further from the truth: when we’re attempting to elicit an emotional outcome, logic is simply holding us back, and appeal to emotion, in and of itself, is a logical fallacy, which ends up proving how inconsequential these tools are.  SEEK OUT confirmation bias: intentionally ignore the failures and focus ONLY on the successes.  When I first discovered Jon Andersen, it was the best thing that had ever happened to my training: FINALLY a guy out there eating low carb and training STUPIDLY intense and getting ALL the results from it: a pro-strongman AND a pro-wrestler AND a pro-bodybuilder, with the strength and physique and crazy conditioning to back all of that up.  Hell yeah: looks like my approach is going to be just fine.  The same is true when you read Super Squats: Randall Strossen cites EVERYTHING in that book, and the academics LOOKING to fail will point out that the citations employed by Randall don’t meet THEIR scientific rigor.  But for those of us looking to turn into monsters?  Those citations are amazing.  NOTHING Mike Mentzer says makes ANY sort of sense…but if you operate off the premise that “doing what everyone else is doing will get you the results that everyone else is getting”, suddenly doing ALL the wrong things is the ONLY right thing to do.

Especially true when you find out he is Odin

You can’t force willpower.  You can’t outthink it.  You can’t produce or create it.  All you can do is channel it.  Find your appropriate channel and use it to your fullest extent possible.  If you find that your current approach is stifling your ability to do so, abandon it and go find something that works.