NO ONE GETS FAT ON VACATION

I already know from the title that there will be much gnashing of teeth and racing to provide counter examples of tales of gluttony and hedonism during some magical 2 week all inclusive stay at some resort and reports of 20+lbs gained, but as a man that is intimately familiar with the interior of many a cruise ship AND Vegas casino/resort/buffet (to say nothing of Reno as well, because really, the less said of Reno, the better), please allow me a moment to explain myself.  Quite often, I observe anxiety of those about to depart on some sort of vacation in regards to the loss of “all of their gains”, concerns about getting fat, halting progress, etc etc.  I observe similar concerns when it comes to an even more micro level issue, such as ONE bad night of sleep, and it’s impact on the recovery from training.  OR, ONE bad training session itself, and the impact it has on the progress of the trainee as a whole.  And again, as one that has been to many a vacation locale, participated in the debauchery first hand AND witnessed my fellow participants, I can safely, soundly and surely inform you of the truth: no one GETS fat on vacation.

But we can sure try!

 

…you were already fat before you got there.  Yes, THAT Is the truth.  Even IF you had spent the last 4 weeks undergoing the most INTENSIVE physical preparation and dietary restriction in order to get yourself beachbody ready, you were already fat before arrival.  Even if you APPEARED lean, you were simply what is currently being referred to as “skinny on the outside, fat on the inside”.  And how do I know this?  Because one does NOT get fat in the span of a week or two.  The body simply cannot build tissue at such a rate.  It does not possess the biological capabilities to do so, baring some sort of horrible genetic mutation (looking at YOU Fred Dukes).  If we COULD get fat in just a week or two, we’d solve the world hunger crisis by rolling in to impoverished nations with a firetruck loaded with melted ice cream and just water board (ice cream board?) citizens until they resembled the average American at Disneyland.  No dear reader: the seeds of fatness had already been sewn WELL before the vacation: the vacation simply provided even more sun, water and food to help nurture those seeds. 

 

What this is arriving at is the reality that we are a product of our HABITS, and NOT of our deviations.  And “deviation” does not necessarily have to infer negativity, despite the term “deviant” typically used in a pejorative manner.  Deviation tends to be viewed in a negative light because it’s an implication of deviation from the NORM, and, in turn, the norm is implied to be the acceptable standard we all agreed upon, wherein deviations are violations of our social contract.  However, in a debased and corrupt society, deviation is to seek health and justice, and in a debased and corrupt individual, deviation is to seek correction and “rightness”.  In turn, when we deviate from our standard of gluttony and hedonism INTO a practice of regimented nutrition and hard physical training, this IS a deviation…and, in turn, will NOT be reflected in our being.  These are just one offs: they are not our “core essence”.  We are, instead, a reflection of our habits.

'He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.'

But this is NOT inherently a negative.  Much like the whole “good, bad, we’ll see” notion of Zen, understanding that deviations are not immediately manifested can be liberating IF we engage in those habits that will develop us into what we desire to be.  Once again hailing back to “being that which does”, we are going to be an outward manifestation of our habits in all circumstances.  In turn, one does NOT get fat on vacation IF one is not regularly one who does fat things.  One who regularly engages in monk-like adherence to nutritional and training protocol is going to be a manifestation of that habit, such that, when they DO engage in a 1-2 week deviation of hedonism and debauchery, this deviation will not be persistent enough to impact their actual being.  They will come out the other side of this deviation STILL as an individual that engages in monk-like adhered to nutritional and training protocols.  1-2 weeks is not enough to disrupt the lifetime of work leading up to that moment.

 

And the same is true, one again, on that micro level.  One bad night of sleep is NOT going to undo the machine that is your body that has been successfully recovering from training for weeks, months and years on end.  It is going to take a sustained HABIT of poor sleep before we begin to witness this impact.  One poor workout is NOT going to undo the efforts of a fully fleshed out training protocol: it is going to take many poor workouts, at which point we must analyze WHY these workouts are going so poorly.  One bad training CYCLE is not going to undo years of good ones: it’s WHY we have the license to experiment, try out new things, and learn.  Hell, we heard all the reports about how Soviet athletes would take 3-6 MONTHS off of training once the competition was done, primarily because many of these athletes simply had no access to training EQUIPMENT immediately post competition, and they’d come back better and stronger than before, because 3-6 months of NOT training could NOT undo a lifetime of training.  We saw the same thing during the pandemic, with Mark Felix being restricted to only 225lbs of weights to train with, only for him to come back and STILL set world records and win WSM masters.  Meanwhile, we had people that quit training altogether because they didn’t have access to a belt squat…

225lbs does a body good

 

Knowing you can’t get fat on vacation is liberating, because it grants us the license to HAVE these vacations.  The story about people gaining weight over the holidays is only half the story.  YES, people tend to put on the majority of their weight during the holidays, with an average of 1-2lbs per year which, over 20 years, gets you 40lbs overweight.  However, they KEEP this weight because of their consistent habits of inconsistency when it comes to managing their physique and nutrition.  The individual that “cheats” every DAY with office place snacks and treats “because I deserve it” is the individual that has made cheating the norm, rather than the deviance.  When the holidays roll around, they are simply manifesting the accumulation of their habits in a concentrated time period, whereas those that have been “on the program” all year can have this deviance, experience it to it’s full effect (stay away from the sugar free chocolate, for reasons beyond hedonic joy) get back on the program in January, and be no worse for wear.  They may, in fact, be in a BETTER position than they started, for they are refreshed, recharged, and reinvigorated to go out and get it after the downtime.  Like those aforementioned Soviet champions, or like returning from a deload, the deviance provides a moment of RECOVERY, whereas most other individuals are suffering from sustained OVERrecovery. 

 

No one gets fat on vacation, just like how no one gets jacked in 2 weeks.  Change, positive or negative, takes time and dedicated consistency of effort.  Self-improvement AND self-destruction both take dedication, whereas deviation is ephemeral.

JEET KUNE DON’T

In this post, I am going to become everything I despise, because I am about to levy a critique on a martial art/concept which I have not studied, have not fought against, have not received instruction in, NOR have I ever read the book “The Tao of Jeet Kune Do” to be able to actually have an informed opinion.  Instead, I am going to offer a critique to a soundbite of Jeet Kune Do, BUT, it DOES happen to be the most popular soundbite available (which, in turn, may be an instance of me critiquing popularity, like some edgelord counterculture Hot Topic goth kid, but I digress): “absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”  Right away, a bunch of kids wearing button down anime shirts running the physical gamut of methed out skinny to “4 Cheetos away from ‘holy sh*t’ (and, for some reason, no in between) all got excited at the mention of such a quote, because it became the mantra of every wannabe “martial strategist” who has a TON of great IDEAS about how to win a fight…just no actual practice experience.  It’s because this is one of those quotes that, on the surface, seems incredibly enlightened, progressive, and revolutionary but, upon the slightest bit of scrutiny, completely falls apart.  What appears to be a recipe to achieve the most optimal outcome by using ONLY what is useful instead results in a disastrous mishmash of half-baked concepts that never amount to anything successful.  The fact of the matter is, everyone else was ALREADY doing all of this before we got here: we just couldn’t appreciate it BECAUSE we lacked the experience to understand what it was that we were observing, believing that we ALONE were the sole determiners of the useful and the useless.

This WAS a pretty quick way to make that determination...

Breaking this down from a martial arts perspective, here’s where the concept tends to fall flat.  If one were to apply this concept in a vacuum, it would mean taking an individual with no martial arts training whatsoever and Frankensteining an entire martial art from the ground up by selecting only the best techniques from every style, rejecting all the “useless” techniques.  Take the roundhouse kick from Muay Thai, the left hook from boxing, the double leg from wrestling and the triangle choke from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and you’ve got the ultimate package!  …yeah, except: what STANCE do you execute these moves from?  What GUARD do you employ?  Ever watch one of those matches were a pure boxer fights a kickboxer in K-1?  The boxing stance tends to get it’s legs chopped down with low kicks, BUT, that is the BEST stance to throw that left hook from.  If you try to throw it from a more upright Muay Thai stance, it loses a lot of it’s power, but trying to throw that Thai roundhouse from a traditional boxing stance is a disaster, and both of those stances are garbage for shooting that double leg, but the ideal stance for THAT technique really lowers your guard and allows you to eat knees to the face.  And god forbid if you wanted to mix any capoeira into this, or some drunken boxing, or what about some weapons? 

 

What are we discovering here?  There needs to be a FOUNDATION to work upon first, and this, ultimately, boils down to my previous discussions regarding understanding through the lens of CONTEXT.  Those things that seem “useless” upon initial inspection suddenly make a WHOLE lot of sense when understood from the context of the foundation.  Traditional Muay Thai’s punchwork may appear like inferior boxing, until you realize that it was designed with a more upright and open stance in mind, and used as a means to create openings for kicks and elbows while also being able to WARD OFF attacks from 6 other limbs that boxers don’t need to concern themselves with.  And even when we THINK we’ve figured it all out with modern Mixed Martial Arts, we have to understand THIS through the lens of context, as you can watch the “evolution” of successful MMA styles coinciding with changes in the rules.  Bas Rutten’s success with open palmed strikes in Pancrase was not replicated once gloves became a more standard practice in MMA, and the soccer stomps allowed in Pride greatly changed the ground game compared to what was permitted in the UFC.  And, along with all of that, so many of the greats IN MMA came in WITH a foundation to build upon: the notion of a ground up MMA fighter is a modern novelty, and in that instance, it was their instructor who arrived with a foundation in the first place that ultimately developed their style. 

Soccer kicks make the decision to pull guard and scoot an undesirable one...

Which, of course, leads us into the realm of physical transformation, wherein we have to again view everything through this lens to understand that those things we consider “useless” that are worth rejecting are, most likely, more a product of necessity within the context of the foundation of the programming.  Alex Bromely, in a recent Dave Tate podcast, spoke to understanding “the spirit” of a program, which captures this notion so well.  It’s too easy to just look at a program on paper and say “I don’t like this, I’ll take this out, I’ll add this part from this other program I like”, etc etc, but one must FIRST understand WHY the program was structured the way it was to be able to even consider making these changes.  Was this program built around high frequency in order to get lots of practice on the movements?  If so, you do NOT want to burn yourself out with max weights or max reps in a set, even IF you find that you respond well to that stimulus.  Though sub-max may seem like something “useless” for you to throw out, in the context of the programming as a whole, it makes total sense and is incredibly useful. 

 

It's why a foundation is so essential.  So many young trainees want to just build a training program from scratch, and it ends up exactly as you expect.  For one, it’s not even a program, but simply a routine, and all it boils down to is a selection of exercises, sets and reps, because they think that a foundation means “train a muscle group 2x a week” and that the only way to accomplish this is with a 6x week Push/Pull/Legs split.  And, much like my earlier critique of JKD, what we end up with is a mishmash of half-baked ideas that don’t actually amount to anything successful, because there is no actual foundation being built upon.  There is no structure to the progression, no plan for managing fatigue, no control mechanism for eliciting enough stimulus for growth without achieving TOO MUCH, etc etc.  If one were to take an established foundation in something like 5/3/1, Conjugate, Juggernaut, Western Periodization, DUP, etc etc, they could at least have something to build UPON and refine. 

Sometimes that foundation IS sure brutality and insanity

 

In that same podcast, Alexander DOES go on to say that one SHOULD personalize these approaches based on their own personal experience, which is the last little bit of that JDK quote that is absolutely and totally applicable.  But, in turn, the necessary caveat there is that it has to be based on EXPERIENCE, which can only be gained through time and repetition.  If we try to reject what is useless from the get go, we never get a chance to actually try out all of these ideas in the context they were intended to be employed.  Similar to my “ketchup” rant, if we never actually experience these ideas as intended, we never get to understand HOW they work such that we can later employ them to our own advantage.  When studying a martial art, study it EXACTLY as it was designed FIRST and THEN take the time to play around with it.  When learning a training system, give the program a run as designed for at least ONE full cycle and see how it goes.  I’ve been lifting weights for 25 years, and I’m running Tactical Barbell Operator EXACTLY as it is laid out by K. Black right now.  I’ve been training martial arts since I was 9, and I’m in my Tang Soo Do classes right now doing EXACTLY what my instructor says to do, even IF I think the Muay Thai roundhouse is a better kick than the Tang Soo Do one.  I’m here to learn SO THAT, when the time comes, I can make the necessary adaptations.  But until I understand the WHY, I won’t be able to execute the how.

YOU CANNOT COMPENSATE FOR A DEFICIT OF TIME WITH A SURPLUS OF EFFORT

If I can be credited for giving any “gift” to the world of physical transformation, it would be the identification of my 3 keys to success: effort (what I would like to call “intensity”, but that, unfortunately, is equated to mean percentage of 1rm, so I say effort), consistency, and time.  And, of course, I’m not the first to have identified this, as Dan John quotes “little and often over the long haul”, which he himself attributes to a coaching mentor, and, of course, all thought originates from the Greeks anyway.  Plus the Simpsons already did it.  But all that aside, in the discussion of effort, consistency and time, it’s worth appreciating that I phrase “AND time”, rather than “OR time”, indicating that all 3 of these variables are important.  The absence of one negates the value of the other two.  If you consistently put in minimal effort over a long time, you will achieve minimal results, and if you inconsistently kill yourself in the weight room over a long time (like those folks that get charged up at New Years and right before spring break, and then fall off for the rest of the year), you’ll forever spin your wheels and stay in some sort of skinnyfat limbo.  And, of course, when we remove time from the equation, we find that killing ourselves in the gym consistently grants little in the way of results…because we haven’t WAITED long enough yet.  But this is the LEAST satisfying prospect of the 3, because we can always train harder, we can always be more consistent, but try as we might: we cannot compensate for a deficit of time with a surplus of effort.

Remember deer antler velvet?

 

I was first exposed to this reality when I was recovering from ACL reconstruction.  My regular readers (the few, the proud at this point) recall what happened: in my attempt to carry a 775lb yoke 30’, I made it 29.5, went for a quick pick up to secure the distance, and ended up rupturing my ACL, tearing my meniscus and fracturing my patella all in one shot.  I ended up getting a hamstring graft after waiting 6 weeks for my patella to heal up enough to have some screws put in, at which point I began what would boil down to 5 months and 22 days of recovery before being cleared to return to regular training.  I had heard of the 6 month recovery time for ACL reconstruction, but I was different: I was going to be EXTRA diligent with my recovery.  I was going to do EVERYTHING in my power to heal faster.  I was going do train my uninjured side as hard as possible, push the limits, and lick this thing in no time.  I shared all of this with my surgeon and my physical therapy team…who went on to inform me that ligaments DON’T get much blood flow in the body, compared to muscles.  They take a long time to recover because that’s how LONG they take to recover.  It’s not a matter of doing your physical therapy harder than everyone else, it’s not a matter of taking the right drugs or using the right protocols, it’s not a matter of nutrition: you simply can’t rush the healing process.  But you CAN absolutely set yourself back in your progress by pushing too hard too soon and compromising the recovery of the healing ligament.  And I certainly came close to doing just that in pursuit to prove them all wrong, and for my effort, I managed to shave a whole EIGHT DAYS off my recovery time…go me.

We see this same thing whenever people find themselves with an abundance of free time.  “Guys, for the next 3 months, I have no obligations whatsoever.  I can LIVE training.  How can I maximize this opportunity?  2 a day training every day?”  The answer is, sadly, so very very pedestrian.  There is very little one can accomplish in such a short window, and, most likely, the best thing this person can do is use this opportunity to maximize RECOVERY rather than training.  Because the body can simply only grow SO much in a given time, and once we’ve flipped the growth switch, we cannot “flip it harder” to make it grow more.  But, comically enough, quite often, the very things that ARE suggested to do during this time are flatly ignored, because they’re not “sexy” enough for the trainee.  Use these 3 months to rest as much as possible, eat as well as possible, and learn as much as possible, so that, when you find yourself ABSENT the time to do all these things, you’re so much further ahead.

Lee Priest setting the example

 

Make no mistake: effort IS the driver OF the progress, but time is to governor of it’s distribution.  Yes, it is true that many trainees ARE undertraining as far as the necessary degree of effort goes in order to drive a stimulus and, in turn, these trainees will see “faster” progress once they learn how to properly up the effort, but this isn’t a demonstration of how more effort equates to faster progress universally: it demonstrates WHAT the necessary base level of effort is in order to maximize the benefits OF consistency and time.  It’s why I say all trainees should run Super Squats at least once in their lives: just to learn what effort FEELS like.  But what I DON’T say is that these trainees should run Super Squats 7 days a week in order to get twice the results, because it just plain doesn’t work that way.

 

In point of fact, quite often, our attempts to speed up time with effort have the opposite of intended effect: they REDUCE our results and slow us down.  Dan John related a story about his brother, who did no training for a marathon and ran it cold.  Typically, the prep phase for a marathon is 3 months.  By skipping these 3 months of training, his brother “saved” himself 3 months!...except, after the marathon, it took a full 3 months for him to regrow all of his toenails and heal his feet enough to be able to walk normally again.  Which meant, not only did he lose the same 3 months he would have lost before, but he lost even MORE training time, because a normal marathon runner is able to actually TRAIN in those 3 months leading up to the marathon, whereas his brother was sidelined the entire time. 

All that time you saved skipping out on boxing lessons is going to get spent re-learning how to tie your shoes

 

We see this same thing when it comes with diet: those that are on the quest to drop fat and improve their physiques want to do it as fast as possible, and in doing so, engage in some sort of crash diet that rapidly jettisons their lean tissue and puts them in a terrible hormonal state, setting them BACK significantly further than they would have been had they simply taken a more sane path, even if it “took longer”.  And we even see this among those who THINK they’re “taking the long road”, by attempting the ever famous “long slow lean bulk” in an attempt to avoid ever having to have a fat loss phase.  Because they’re trying to save themselves the time of the cutting phase by investing heavily in the effort of the bulking phase via precision nutrition, they end up spinning their wheels for months, putting on minimal, if any, new lean tissue, and squandering a LOT of hard training hours in the gym.  Had they simply been willing to invest the necessary TIME into the second phase of the nutritional protocol, they would have actually come out ahead.

 

None of this is doom and gloom: it’s quite the opposite.  Physical transformation is one of the few guaranteed returns on investment out there in life.  If you go to any gym, you will find a ton of jacked dudes who are training in all sorts of ridiculous manners, simply because they’ve put in enough TIME under the bar that the results happened.  And not only does interest generate on your investment: it compounds!  The longer you do this, the better you get at it, which improves your ability to engage in physical transformation, which allows you to get better at GETTING better.  That speaks to the value of “consistency” in the “effort, consistency and time” equation.  All it requires is patience, which is, of course, in short supply in a world of literal instant gratification.  But, in turn, think about how ridiculous of an X-men power that is to have: the ability to WAIT.  That’s a super power you can pick TODAY without any need for genetic mutation or exposure to radiation, and it will put you SO far ahead of everyone else who is simply unwilling to wait for the results to come their way.  Put your head down, dig in, wait, and you will see the results of your effort.