The title of this blogpost is a quote from my amazing wife, who I’ve referred to as “My Valkyrie” ever since my experiment of training like a Viking several years back, because sometimes we method act so well that the role becomes us rather than the other way around. But she also has earned that name, as demonstrated BY that very quote. The context of the situation that created that quote is as such: it was a Saturday morning, which for most people sounds like a relaxing time, but in our household is actually one of the busiest moments of our week, because our child is enrolled in a musical theater program with a 1015 start time, requiring traversing through a “Lord of the Rings” esque portion of our community where I INEVITABLY end up with some sort of ridiculous unforeseen delay having me pull in at EXACTLY the last minute, always looking like father of the year (delays include getting shaken down by the Boy Scout popcorn brigade the instant I opened my garage door to leave, my next door neighbor picking that EXACT moment to give me the mail he’s been holding for us for a week, a 14 minute long train crossing on the railroad tracks, a gang of WILD TURKEYS traversing the freeway, the aforementioned freeway being entirely shutdown for unscheduled maintenance, someone driving the wrong way on one way street, and many many more…yes, chaos, IS, in fact, the plan). Pair this with an overly energetic boxer puppy that NEEDS doggy day care and a limited window to drop THEM off, and our Saturday morning window of opportunity for anything ELSE is extremely limited. HOWEVER, my Valkyrie has recently undertaken Dan John’s “Armor Building Formula”, and due to the insanity that is our WEEKLY schedule, with Tang Soo Do 3 nights a week, the only times we have to train is Friday through Monday…and today was a training day. We had exactly 30 minutes of time available between the moment that quote escaped her lips and when we had to be in the vehicle getting the kid on their odyssey to music theater: we got the workout done in 14 minutes. How? Because it was the time to train, and that was the time we had to train.
She's been our Dojang's sparring champion for multiple months as well, so this is pretty accurate...
But aside
from this just being a textbook example of “get to yes”, I more want to dig
deeper into “I’ve got a sport bra on and my hair is in a ponytail: let’s do
this”. As that quote met me, I had just
returned from dropping the dog off and doing a brief grocery run, since the
store was nearby where I dropped the dog off and this would save some time on
the weekend to knock out both obligations in one trip. For one: kudos to me for time management, but
more a reflection of there I was, in a pair of sweats and my westside barbell
hoodie, gazing at the set of kettlebells I bought for the program, hearing
those words, and immediately transitioning into training partner, because it
was the clean and press day of the ABF, and I alternate rounds with my Valkyrie
to help keep timing (in an “I go-you go” format). Because really: are you ALWAYS going to be
ready to go when the time comes? Are you
ALWAYS going to be warmed up and stretched out and foam rolled and
decompressed, sipping on your pre-workout and hyped up listening to your
favorite tunes? Or is it, sometimes,
just enough to say “I’ve got a sports bra on and my hair is in a ponytail:
let’s do this”? So many of you who
lament not having the time to train, is it instead and instance that, when the
time IS there for you to train, you’re simply unprepared to take the
opportunity? Can you, like my Valkyrie,
rapidly transition between making breakfast for the whole family (yes, I
married up, there’s no doubt) to throwing on the sports bra and the pony tail
to knock out 80 clean and press reps to BACK to more presentable attire before
getting the kiddo off to practice? Not
just the physical transition, but the mental one as well?
But let’s
KEEP digging deeper here shall we: a 14 minute workout? Of course.
Why? Because that’s all it takes
to make progress. How? Because, despite what you’ve read, heard,
watched or pirated, the “minimum dose” for the benefit of training is much
lower than you may imagine IF the right elements are in play. And the key most significant benefit here:
faith. And for my philosophically and
theologically inclined readers there, I know I’ve opened up a can of worms by
saying that, but I do not necessarily mean in an ethereal power here, but more
a “higher power” in something bigger than ourselves. In the case of my Valkyrie, it’s quite
literal (for I am, in fact, much larger than her). She has faith in me that I know what I’m
doing. Why? Well, perhaps it’s because she’s observed me
deadlift a car on multiple occasions, or she saw me rip the staircase out of
the cement mooring on our backyard deck before I realized it had been anchored
into the concrete, although in truth I’m fairly certain she’s become numb to my
shenanigans and has just defaulted to me being the default setting for ALL men
based on her inability to understand why her friend’s husbands can’t just carry
the bedroom dresser up the stairs by themselves. There’s also a chance she has faith in me
because she’s known me since 2004, has seen all the insanity I’ve subjected
myself to in the pursuit of physical transformation, observed me pouring over
tons of books on the subject (to include buying me some of these very books for
Birthdays and Christmases, along with my Ninja Woodfire Outdoor grill, because,
once again, yes, I married up), gets into my truck and sees that it’s set to
the latest absurd podcast on physical transformation, and constantly hears me
interjecting into conversations with “Well, it’s funny, because Dan John/Jon
Andersen/Dave Tate/Louie Simmons/Jim Wendler/Paul Kelso/John McCallum once said
that…” But in either case, when she came
to me and said “I want to try some resistance training” and I said “I have a
program I think you’ll like” and told her it was only 20 minutes 3 days a week,
she didn’t bat an eye. She came to me
because she wanted my help, and she accepted my help because she had faith in
me…and she came to me BECAUSE she had faith in me. And, in turn, she’s been making incredible
progress.
Real people AND mythological nordic religious figures
And why do
we use the Armor Building Formula?
Because I had faith in Dan John.
It’s transitive faith: faith by extension. And because of this faith, we give the
program its due diligence, put in the requisite effort, and achieve the reward
of the program. It honestly IS that
simple. And yet, how many out there in
internetland can’t have this same faith when it comes to executing a
program? How many of you out there have
butchered 5/3/1 to the point of total unrecognizability and then complain that
it “doesn’t work”? How many of you
couldn’t be bothered to read the 80 or so pages of “Super Squats” and ended up
dorking up what should have been one of the simplest gaining programs in the
world? How many of you had to start a
thread asking people to “rate my Juggernaut program variation” and then got mad
when people actually took the time to rate it?
And think of the insanity of your own lack of faith here. It’s awesome my Valkyrie has this faith in
me, but by all accounts: I’m just some guy.
Though I HAVE had people come up to me and ask “Are you the internet’s
‘MythicalStrength’?” before in front of her, the reality is that there are FAR
more accomplished people out there than me putting out material…which is why
it’s incredibly absurd for people to lack faith in THEM. Dude: Jim Wendler squatted 1000lbs and has
been coaching athletes for 2 decades, Dan John has competed in the collegiate
level and beyond in MULTIPLE sports while coaching everyone from high school
athletes to NBA players to special forces operators: we, as a generation, are
SPOILED with direct access to the minds of INCREDIBLY skilled coaches who can
turn out swaths of accomplished athletes, able to directly ask them questions
and get answers FOR FREE…and we still DOUBT them? We still wonder if these dudes actually KNOW
what they’re talking about when it comes to training, and feel a need to source
a second opinion from some dude on reddit called “clownshoes69” on if Dan John
programmed the right amount of curls into Mass Made Simple?
Folks, if
you can’t have faith in the figurative gods of physical transformation, what
CAN you have faith it? What WILL you
invest your being into in order to actually achieve something? Because you can have the “best” programming,
according to the science-du-jour, alongside the “best” nutrition, with the
“best” recovery protocol, but if you refuse to actually invest YOURSELF into
the process, you’re simply not going to get the desired outcome. You’re going to come up short, because you
get what you put in. Meanwhile, you can
do a 14 minute workout on a busy Saturday morning, as part of your 3 weekly
sub-20 minute workouts, and get INCREDIBLE results from it. Why?
Because “I’ve got a sports bra on and my hair is in a ponytail: let’s do
this”.
No comments:
Post a Comment