MAKE A HABIT TO BREAK A HABIT

As of my writing this, I am proud to report that I am 5 weeks sober.  I had a near pack a day habit, and I quit cold turkey.  The hardest part was after meals, as that’s when I tended to crave it the most.  No, this isn’t smoking: it’s gum.  And as innocent of an addiction as that may seem, it was one of many that I’ve managed to quit recently, and, specifically, it was an addiction I had traded.  Before that, it was an addiction to eating in general, with my reported instances of eating something every 30 minutes, taking the Deep Water “never be hungry/always be eating” philosophy to WAY too stupid of a direction, wherein I found myself addicted to simply CHEWING something at all hours of the day, my mouth ALWAYS needing to be in motion.  Along with that, I’ve managed to go from over a gram of caffeine a day (once again, taking Jamie Lewis’ recommendations in “Feast, Famine and Ferocity” and running them WAY too far into the ground) to 1-2 green teas a day, over a gallon of diet soda a day to none of that stuff, and, of course, my various documented fast food addictions.  I don’t say this as some sort of testament to my willpower, because the truth is, if I REALLY had decent willpower, I never woulda ended up addicted to this stuff in the first place.  No, I say this more to speak to a patter of behavior that I DO find worthwhile: the habit of habit BREAKING.

Although sum of us can make addictions look cooler than others

 

 

Habits are comfortable, and they are comforting.  They, effectively, alleviate us of the burden of thinking.  They free up bandwidth: we just fall back into our habits and auto-pilot ourselves through life.  But, in turn, ask yourself: do you endeavor to BE like one who is on auto-pilot?  In the realm of “being that which does”, do we WANT to be that which does things without thinking, without being “in the moment”, without living authentically: an automaton simply coasting through life?  Are these the behaviors and actions that result in greatness?  Or do we, instead, observe that those who have accomplished great things are those that have broken out of their habits, gone above and beyond the norm, and sought to do the things that were uncomfortable BECAUSE it was through this discomfort that they were able to experience growth and progression?

 

And yes: quitting gum does NOT elevate one to godhood…but the HABIT of breaking habits DOES put one on that path.  Because consider the other habits we can break.  What of the habit of ALWAYS including the bench press in our programming?  Why?  Because we HAVE to?  Because we’ve been benching since we were 14 and it’s our favorite lift?  Because it ALWAYS gets results?  But what if we were to break that habit, decide to run a training cycle with no benching in it whatsoever, in order to see what impact this has on our training?  And what if we observe that removing the bench allows our anterior deltoids to recover better from training, as they’re getting beat up less, which allows us to perform better in the barbell squat (since our shoulders don’t scream at us when we hold the bar in position anymore) and the strict press?  What if, through breaking the habit of benching, we LEARN more about our own body, how it responds, how to program other lifts in the absence of this stimulus?  What if, through breaking the habit, we actually end up STRONGER on the very lift we abandoned once we return back to it?

Doesn't this dude know that behind the neck pressing is dangerous and won't help your bench at all?

 

What if we break the habit of avoiding conditioning because it’s supposed to compromise our gains?  And what if, by doing that, we break our habit of ALWAYS needing to set PRs in training in order to know “the training is working?”  We allow ourselves time for the lifts to drop a little bit while the conditioning comes up, and, soon enough, we see the maximal strength come back and SURPASS our old numbers while our conditioning ALSO improves?  What if we break the habit of doing “what always works” once it STOPS working?  Instead of trapping ourselves into 3x10 for every movement and just banging our head against the wall when progression stops, we try a different split, different rep ranges, different movements, different protocols, etc etc?  What if we allow ourselves the discomfort of doing something new and different that ISN’T our habit?

 

And, of course, our nutritional habits.  I receive frequent messages from folks that want to know HOW to train without carbs, because they simply can’t fathom this idea.  They are in the habit of ALWAYS having carbs pre, post and DURING training, because “that’s where I get my energy”.  I found out it was possible by breaking the habit, because anyone that has read through my “going full circle” piece on nutrition knows that I was definitely a carb monster in my earlier years, to include going through a full box of Pop tarts and a pack of minidonuts at my strongman competitions, after loading up the night before on pizza and pancakes.  My most recent competition had me eating steak and eggs in the morning and fasting through the comp, and I had no issues with energy, which I would not have discovered had I not broken the habit.  And even my most current approach of Vince Gironda’s Maximum Definition Diet is me breaking my habit of relying on protein powder as my primary source of nutrition, thanks to my time on the Velocity Diet, which, in turn, was me breaking the habit of eating every 30 minutes from Deep Water, which was, in turn, me breaking the habit of my fast food based diet.  And through all this habit breaking, I took away something from every experience and LEARNED something.

I love the irony of getting this tattooed

 

Find your own habits in training, nutrition and life, and make a habit to start regularly breaking them.  The more you make a habit of breaking habits, more the habit OF breaking habits BECOMES a habit and, in turn, the discomfort associated with habit breaking diminishes, to the point that, eventually, you become uncomfortable HAVING habits.  You get the itch that you’ve been stagnant for too long and need to start making changes, because you recognize the toxicity inherent in being stagnant.  You enjoy the freedom associated with being unchained to any one methodology, able to freely maneuver and adapt to whatever environment and situation you are presented with, armed with a toolbox full of experiences and lessons learned, readily able to apply them as needed.

 

And when that happens: you need to break the habit of breaking habits.  Because life is funny that way.