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.

IT’S WHAT YOU DON’T DO

Americans, and possibly other westerners, are obsessed with doing.  We take pride in it: “we’re doers, not talkers!” and other such trite bravado.  We see inaction as sinful and action as virtue, and even I have displayed this mentality with one of my favorite Klingon proverbs of “in battle, make a decision: if it’s a good one, even better”.  However, quite often, it’s the stuff we AREN’T doing that is responsible for our success, while the doing becomes our undoing.  And this fact is the cause of so much cognitive dissonance, because we take so much satisfaction when we are in the process of doing, whereas we experience so much anxiety from not doing.  But, in that regard, the basic premise of physical transformation continues to hold true: physical transformation is an uncomfortable process.  The body transforms BECAUSE of discomfort, as the body is attempting to adapt as a means to avoid this discomfort.  And this will include the discomfort associated with the stuff you AREN’T doing.

In this case: exhaling

 

The fitness industry has latched onto this broken part of our psychology and weaponized it against us in order to make a profit.  Growing up in the 90s in San Diego, I heard radio ads (holy cow what a 90s sentence) for a product called “Metabolife”, which was a miracle weight loss powder.  All you had to do was, stop eating 3 hours before bed, and then mix this powder with water and drink it before bed, and like magic, the fat would just come off.  Hey, what happens if you stop eating 3 hours before bed and DON’T drink the powder?  …oh yeah…but you can’t sell “Don’t eat for 3 hours” to people for fat loss: where is the DOING?!  Where is the ACTION that MAKES the fat loss happen?  Surely it can’t be the INACTION causing this!  And it was the same with the “shock your abs to a six pack” electro stim products sold by infomercial.  Ever notice how those products came packaged with a diet?  What happened if you followed the diet WITHOUT the ab shocker?  Oh yeah: abs.  Because they’re made in the kitchen.  But where is the DOING!?  Same with 8 minute abs, the ab wheel (which is a GREAT product for training abs, but won’t make a size pack happen) and, honestly, the entire “health food” industry.

 

Why health food?  Because it’s not what we eat that is making us healthy: it’s what we AREN’T eating.  We, again, see this trap all the time: people fill their shopping carts with kale and wheatgrass, and chow down on it alongside their Captain Crunch and 5 drinks per evening.  This idea that the “health food” will “undo” the consequences of the unhealthy food.  That drinking a diet coke will undo a Big Mac.  That Manuka honey and protein bars will undo eating out of the vending machine at work.  That slamming a Slim Fast shake alongside a Subway footlong will make us skinnier.  Because, again: now we’re DOING something.  No one wants to believe that the path to health and fitness is traveled by NOT eating the stuff that’s killing us.  No one wants to believe that the health food DOESN’T come in a box with special labeling and mixing instructions: that it’s just ACTUAL food.

We figured this out decades ago...

 

This is why REAL nutritional interventions are successful, irrespective of the specifics of them.  Whole food vegans experience similar health benefits as carnivores when it comes to the initial phases of the intervention, because both AREN’T doing the same thing: eating highly processed hyperpalatable chemically engineered “food like products”.  One is only eating plants, one is eating no plants whatsoever, but both have eliminated the stuff that was actively poisoning and killing them, and their health improves.  And, consequently, you can go on the other end of the spectrum, eating “dirty vegan” or “dirty keto”, living entirely off of Oreos (yes, they’re completely vegan) or Atkins frozen pizza (yes, ALSO a thing), completely following “the rules” of the diet, DOING all the things, and end up in far worse health than you started, because now you’re ONLY living off of hyperprocessed junk.  The only “not doing” that’s happening here is NOT eating actual, real food, which is absolutely setting you up for failure.

 

This, of course, exists in the training world as well, with examples abound.  Both Chris Duffin and Stan Efferding have spoken of how, during their peak performance in the sport of powerlifting, they were training about 3x per week.  But the ENTIRE internet has decided that we NEED to lift 6x a week to get the OPTIMAL muscle protein synthesis: why can’t these dumb strongest humans to eve live figure that out?  Both these dudes were forced into these training frequencies as a result of life circumstances…and both talked about how, with such infrequent training, they were able to RECOVER so much better from the demands on their training, such that they could develop SO much more strength, now that their fatigue was better managed.  It’s the whole reason deloads exist: we let fatigue heal so we can continue to push hard.  Dan John has shared a similar sentiment with the origins of Easy Strength: life as a busy father and teacher confined him to 15 minute workouts 3-5 times a week, and it was during that time he had his best ever performances in throwing the discuss. 

What's the point of training 3 days a week if you can only deadlift 1000lbs?

 

Hell, what we just described is WHY abbreviated training itself became so popular: trainees had been slamming themselves with volume for so long in the pursuit of growth that, when they FINALLY backed off, they were ABLE to grow.  They were SO obsessed with doing that it was their UNdoing.  They had it in their minds that they HAD to do more sets, more workouts, more training, more frequency, more more more…and, ultimately, it was the NOT doing that would get them results.  Stuart McRobert wrote about this exact experience in Brawn, and he was not alone in that era.  What weren’t the trainees doing?  RECOVERING from the training.  Because the recovering WAS the “not doing”, and not doing was so hard to accept.

 

 

Take stock of all the “not doing” you need to be doing.  Stop doing the things that are taking away from your progress.  Stop OVERdoing the things that are supposed to be BRINGING you progress. 

GREATEST HITS ALBUMS SUCK

Full credit to Brandon Crawford over at T-Nation, who pointed out that this would be an excellent blog post topic on the very day I was struggling to come up with something to write.  This delightful lunatic has already taken it upon himself to run “Chaos is the Plan: The Plan” for well over 4 months at this point, so needless to say, I’m a fan of his.  But unto today’s topic: Greatest Hits albums.  We’ve ALL fallen for them.  They seem like a great idea: why not just get ALL the best songs from one band and put it all on one album, and then you get all the best parts and none of the bad ones.  It’s the Jeet Kune Do of music (which, I’ll go off on that tirade one day, believe me): take what it useful and discard what is worthless.  Ever notice how rarely you end up actually listening to that greatest hits album in full?  If you listen to it at all, you often will just skip to the one song you actually WANT to listen to and then be done with it?  Hell, I’ve got an MP3 player (dating myself, I know) that is full of only my “favorite songs”, and I CONSTANTLY find myself skipping tracks on it looking for “something good”.  What’s going on here?  Why aren’t I having the MOST enjoyment by gathering all the best things onto one platform?  It’s because, as I wrote: greatest hits albums suck.

Especially when you get the generic version of the greatest hits...

 

When an artist (with integrity) creates an album, they often times do so with an overall vision for the album.  Sometimes, these are concept albums, like Nine Inch Nails “Downward Spiral”, intended to be listened to from beginning to end in order to hear the full story of the narrator’s downward spiral, forsaking their own humanity.  Other times, it’s an opportunity for an artist to explore a new sound, like how Madonna would reinvert herself every few years, or how ACDC would do the opposite and just release 8 albums that sound exactly the same, but that’s ALSO another blog post for another time.  The point is: the albums exist as whole, rather than simply a sum of its parts.  It was not merely a gathering place of songs wherein the artist just waiting until they made enough of them to fill up an album: there was a reason it was put together the way it was put together.  Again: this is for those artists with integrity.  Yes, some bubblegum artist just like people write songs for them that they grind through without any passion and foist upon the public just to make a buck, which is pretty analogous for the state of online coaching today, but that will have to be ANOTHER blogpost for another time. 

 

 

Because why am I writing today?  Because this conversation was brought about because of the realization that I can NOT do my own programming, primarily because I WILL try to make a “greatest hits” album whenever it comes times to that…and that album SUCKS.  Why?  Because all of my “greatest hits” were in context of the supporting songs in the album of my training, and when I try to just isolate them and mash them all together, rather than something that flows and builds off itself, I get a disjointed cacophony that only bears a passing resemblance to its source material: losing to nuance and greatness that it was derived from.  I KNOW that, when I ran Super Squats, I grew well, and I also know that, when I do ROM progression deadlifts, my deadlift grew well, so why not do Super Squats with ROM progression deadlifts, so I get really big and really strong?

Yeah, it was about this intelligent

 

…because when I ran Super Squats, I wasn’t doing ANY heavy deadlifts: just some straight legged deads after the breathing squats.  And when I grew the best during ROM progression deadlifts, I only squatted once a week, employing my Zeno squat workout.  Which, consequently, I’d do the Zeno squats AND the ROM progression deadlifts in the same workout, well before hearing Stan Efferding and Derek Poundstone employing a similar strategy, because it’s easier to recover if you just completely blow your brains out in one workout and spend a week recovering vs doing something stupid and heavy and one day of the week and doing something stupid and heavy on ANOTHER day of the week in the middle of your recovery…kinda like how it’s a bad idea to do 20 breathing squats 3 times a week while trying to do ROM progression deadlifts.  Or like when I tried to shoehorn in the 10k swing challenge in the middle of my own run of “Chaos is the Plan”, already a protocol that had so few rules in it and I sought to break it, because on the topic of music again, there’s a great lyric from Nine Inch Nails’ “Even Deeper” that goes “and in a dream I’m a different me/with a perfect you, we fit perfectly/and for once in my life I feel complete/and I still want to ruin it.”  So often, things are working so well that we can’t HELP but destroy them.

 

I tried to write my own training for my last strongman competition, and when it was over, my body was so badly beat up that I needed about 3 months to recover and heal from it before I could move and train normally again (which, true enough, I did so by trusting my programming over to Tactical Barbell and following it EXACTLY as written).  Did my programming “work”?  I won the competition and I set some state records, but this was very much the definition of a pyrrhic victory, as I truly won in SPITE of my training.  I was in so much pain during the competition that it was really my ability to grind THROUGH the pain that allowed me to tap into any of the strength I had built along the way, and were I healthier and in less pain, I could have done much better.  My best performances happened IN training, and by the time I got to the comp, it was too late (part of the issue being my competition was effectively postponed for 2 months, which was a LONG time to be in “prep mode”, but still).  I had pulled out all my “greatest hits” to design that training block, and they all worked…until they didn’t.  Like a greatest hits album, it was fun for the first rotation, but after that, the lack of cohesion became VERY apparent, and all those blockbuster numbers without the necessary b-sides and experimental tracks to even things out took their toll on me.

I can't afford all this winning!

 

These lessons exist on a micro and a macro level.  Within a workout itself, it can’t all be “greatest hits”.  Some parts GOTTA be b-sides.  The big 3 may be your bread and butter if you’re a powerlifter, but you’ll hamstring yourself (pun partially intended) in the absence of some boring assistance work to shore up weak areas, along with some GPP to make it so that you can SURVIVE your hardcore training sessions.  And, in turn, the overall structure of the plan itself cannot be all greatest hits: you’ll need some sessions that are there for recovery, for bringing up weak points, for setting up FOR those bigger workouts.  You’ll need some training CYCLES that aren’t greatest hits: this is effectively what periodization itself boils down to.  Even Ronnie Coleman said he’d take 3 months off after Olympia to get his body healed up from the beating it was taking.  And none of this is meant to denigrate those “non-greatest hits” tracks in life: like in the albums, they’re there to set UP those big hits and even out the rest of the album.  They serve an important role, and their absence is noted whenever we try to compile only the best in one spot.

 

Enjoy the hits as they come and quit trying to force them all together.  You’ll appreciate them more that way.

IGNORANCE VS STUPIDITY

At one point in my life, I found myself in the position of a professional educator.  During that time, my fellow educators and I found ourselves frequently having to differentiate between those students who were ignorant and those that were stupid, because we frequently equate the two, when, in fact: they are different.  Put simply: someone who is ignorant is someone who simply does not KNOW something.  Everyone on the planet is ignorant: their ignorance simply needs to be uncovered and, in turn, it can be rectified.  No one can know everything, and you can easily corner someone and “stump the dummy” with some sort of gee whiz pop-quiz on random state capitals or the atomic symbol for Boron or the melting temperature of copper, etc etc.  And once this knowledge has been imparted upon that person, their ignorance has been corrected: now they are slightly less ignorant than there were before.  But stupidity?  My co-workers and I had to constantly repeat the mantra of Ron White: “You can’t fix stupid.”

Yes yes, I know: he never actually said that.  Sometimes, a good story is more important than the truth.

 

While ignorance is a lack of knowledge, stupidity is a lack of ability to COMPREHEND and apply knowledge.  Stupidity is a character trait, a quality, a part of one’s being, whereas ignorance is simply the absence of information.  A car with no gas is ignorant of gas: a car with no gas tank is stupidly broken.  Why does this distinction matter?  Well, as educators, it was important for us to understand when we were dealing with an ignorant vs a stupid student because the approach to rectify the situation was different.  An ignorant student simply required more time: more time to teach, more time to study, or more time to employ different strategies to convey the information in a manner that they COULD understand.  But once it was determined the student was stupid?  We were now beyond the point of fixing: we had reached the limit of this student’s ability to absorb and retain information, and now it was on us to find a better place for them.  …I realize that reads as though we euthanized them, but we enrolled them in a program that was better suited for their abilities.

 

Ok, why does this discussion matter?  Because ignorance and stupidity can exist in both an intellectual capacity AND in a physical capacity as it relate to the matter of physical transformation, and trainees get this confused in all sorts of ways, resulting in them spinning their wheels in an attempt to resolve the wrong problem.  So many young trainees are operating off the false assumption that they are, somehow, intellectual ignorant on the matter of physical transformation.  These trainees consume TONS of media on the matter of physical transformation, typically in a matter best suited for those with short attention spans, ala Tik Tok and Instagram reels, but some even legitimately read studies (not just the abstracts), watch multihour long podcasts, attend seminars, read published books, etc etc.  Yet, despite obtaining ALL this knowledge, these folks still have nothing to show for all that effort.  What gives?  How much more do they need to KNOW before they can finally unlock the secrets?

No matter how smart you get, a strong man with a sword will still be valuable

 

These trainees are, in fact, stupid, and in a variety of ways.  Intellectually, they are stupid because they simply don’t realize that physical transformation is NOT that complicated.  I always point out that we had TWO men that could bench press over 600lbs in 1967: Pat Casey, who did it officially in a meet, and his training partner “Superstar” Billy Graham.  The bench press itself was a new lift at this point, and bench PRESSES were shoddy pieces of equipment that you wouldn’t risk yourself on in a modern setting with even an empty bar, and these two dudes benched that weight raw.  Nearly 60 years later, with all the advances we’ve had in drugs, training “knowledge”, nutrition AND a much bigger pool of athletes to select from, a 600lb raw bench press is STILL insane, and the record has only advanced by less than 200lbs.  We KNEW everything we needed to achieve ridiculous physical transformation well over 60 years ago, and, in truth, far earlier than that as well, as humans have been getting big and strong for years relying on the basic principle of straining hard, eating big and recovering well.  “Effort, consistency and time”: it always comes back to these 3.

 

However, these trainees are ALSO, quite often, intellectually stupid: despite the VOLUME of material they consume, they lack the ability to understand and apply the majority of it.  My background is POLITICAL science, and even from that I learned how to read a study, which, in turn, also gave me the ability to learn how to determine when studies were performed poorly, by observers who didn’t know what to observe with volunteers who were unfit to volunteer and controls that were poorly implemented, to say nothing of epidemiological studies that rely on self-reported information from a populace that has a terrible ability to recall information.  So many young trainees just cut straight to the conclusion or the abstract: not looking into the details of the study, or rely on some internet talking head to do all the interpreting for them, ignoring the strong possibility of bias in reporting due to the fact that many of these folks have an agenda based around promoting their own brand (to say nothing of biases in studies based on who is funding them, but I digress).  And many other trainees (myself HEAVILY included) are simply too stupid to understand any of the actual SCIENCE within the study itself.  I was a straight D student in all of my chemistry and physics classes: biology was the only form of science I ever did well at, and whenever I try to read about chemical reactions and bonds, my eyes just plain glaze over.  I recognize this limitation in myself, which is also why I default to the case of Pat Casey: this stuff AIN’T that complicated.

Meatloaf sandwiches between sets and hard work got you a 600lb bench on a bench you wouldn't pick up for free off the side of the road

 

But trainees remain ignorant and stupid in another sense as well: the physical sense!  Often times, trainees cannot apply all the knowledge they soaked up from all their study because they lack the physical EXPERIENCE necessary to be able to implement it.  And the worst part about this type of ignorance is that it is very much a “if you know, you know” sort of phenomenon.  Like trying to describe the color red to someone that has been blind since birth, physical experience is one of those things that, once you obtain it, it’s obvious, but until you do, it’s elusive.  One of the greatest examples can be found in maximal exertion and training to failure.  A physically experienced trainee knows HOW to push themselves to their absolute physical limits: well beyond the point is discomfort, pain, and agony, and bypassing many of their natural governors, digging DEEP into their own recovery wells and going all out for one BIG push that tends to leave them exhausted for days, if not weeks.  A junior trainee simply lacks this ability: it’s something that can only be developed through years of consistent practice.  In turn, an advanced trainee discussing the significance and impact of training to failure or maximal effort is speaking to an entirely different impact than what this junior trainee can generate, yet, if that same trainee tries to implement the instructions FROM that advanced trainee, they will achieve a less than ideal outcome, simply as a result of their physical ignorance.  Their body needs to “learn more” before it can excel.

 

And, of course, physical ignorance can be even more rudimentary.  Some trainees simply haven’t been taught how to perform certain movements and, once they receive instruction, they are now less ignorant and able to perform.  Dave Tate talks about adding 50lbs to a trainee’s bench simply by teaching them the correct way to bench.  Some trainees, however, are physically stupid: they have problems that simply aren’t going to be overcome through more physical knowledge, and they need to recognize this limitation.  Some trainees are going to be in possession of leverages that are simply NOT suited for weightlifting (as in, the sport of the clean and jerk/snatch, rather than the mere lifting of weights): doomed with a short upper torso and long limbs, these folks will make great deadlifters.  Some trainees are going to be severely lacking in type I muscle fibers and find explosive work ill-suited for them.  And some folks, no matter how hard they try, are going to flat out have some movements just NOT click for them.  Rather than try to put the square peg in the round hole, they need to get enrolled in a “new program” and find what works for them.  And yet again, these trainees need to recognize their physical stupidity in order to understand how their attempts to rectify all issues via resolving intellectual ignorance is amiss: no matter how much they “learn”, they won’t be able to apply it.

Sometimes our talents are just waiting to be discovered

 

All this to say that nothing is hopeless here: we simply need to understand what is the right solution for the situation.  You can’t “fix” stupid, but you can redirect it to the appropriate program.  Ignorance is easy to resolve: it simply takes time, but if your issue ISN’T ignorance, your time is being wasted.     

THE SWORD OF BERSERKING: EVERY CURSE IS A BLESSING

 

For some reason, I’ve always been a fan of the “Faustian Deal”, which, for those unaware, is a reference to the character of Faust, who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power.  The idea of simply having power without consequence was always too boring to me: I really enjoyed the notion of power “but at what cost?”  In turn, Dungeons and Dragons afforded me an avenue to really geek out of this with the notion of “cursed gear”, which were items your character could employ but, once wielded, could not be removed, and typically featured some sort of consequence to balance out whatever blessing they bestowed upon you.  There was powerful armor that reduced your charisma because it had a foul odor associated with it, shields that would deflect swords but attract arrows, a spear that damaged you AS it damaged the enemy (referred to as “the back biter”), etc etc.  But one of the most classic examples of this was the “Cursed Sword of Berserking”, which, of course, I loved, because it was a stupidly powerful two-handed sword that forced your character into a berserk state upon the start of battle, wherein he would simply attempt to murder whoever was closest to him and move on from there.  Yes: this INCLUDED those that were friendly members of your party: berserkers don’t discriminate.  And while many would discover such a sword and quickly discard it, or try to find some sucker to pawn it off too, I was a much bigger fan of keeping that sword in my inventory and employing it when the benefits of the blade outweighed the consequence of the curse.  A lesson, of course, for us to understand and employ outward, in that EVERY “curse” we endure carries with it a blessing: we must simply learn how to leverage and employ it in the correct context.

 

Some even manage to leverage it for some quick cash

 

What ultimately inspired this post was my own personal reflections on growing up as a fat kid.  At that time, being fat absolutely felt like a curse: I was the constant target of bullies, as I was, quite literally, a big target.  I was slow, unathletic (which, in a point of irony, I was denied access to the pop-warner football program because I was TOO heavy…a program I was hoping would help get me in shape), awkward, and of course didn’t care for how I looked.  However, that fat kid background has been quite the blessing during these later years in my continued quest for physical transformation.  Primarily, during my most recent shift to “protein sparing intermittent feasting”, I’ve learned that my ability to eat MASSIVE quantities of food in a single sitting is an absolute boon, as I have zero issues with sitting down at a single meal and getting in enough food with enough vital protein and fat in it to be able to successfully gain weight.  I think of all the dudes that are out there eating 6 to 7 times a day and STILL struggling to be able to put on weight because they simply don’t have the capacity to get all the food in, and I realize that these fat kid tendencies are really coming through for me…and moreso in another way too.

 

I’ve already BEEN fat, which means, unlike SO many trainees out there these days: I’m not afraid of it happening.  It honestly saddens me how many dudes I see that are struggling with this absolute FEAR of adding an ounce of fat to their bodies in their quest to gain muscle, such to the point that they are tragically undereating and wasting all of their training time and energy because they simply won’t eat enough food to actually get anything out of the process.  They prize their current appearance over their future, unable to focus on the long term objective due to a focus on near term issues.  For me, looking peeled is a novelty: not a norm.  Even though I’ve been “fit” for 25 years now, having started the process at age 14, meaning I spent MORE time being fit than unfit, in my mind I’m still a “fat kid” and, in turn, when my abs go away while I’m in the quest to gain muscle, it causes no psychological disturbance: I’m simply “returning to normal”.  And, additionally, I have all the assurance in the world that I KNOW how to lose fat, because I’ve done it so many times.  The fear of the unknown tends to be the biggest obstacle for these trainees to overcome: they’ve never gotten fat in the first place, so they don’t realize how simple it is to become “unfat”.  They’ve built up the process so much in their head, made it so mythologically impossible, when, in reality, people do it EVERY day.  The curse of my childhood is truly a blessing. 

Little did I realize I was in training my whole childhood...

 

But this wasn’t meant to be simply a celebration of growing up fat: those on the opposite end of the spectrum have a curse that is a blessing as well.  The “hardgainer” (which, despite how often the internet wants to say it’s not really a thing, I believe it’s really a thing, and I can go into that in the comments if people are interested) has the curse of having to eat SO much in order to gain weight…but ALSO has the very same blessing.  Think about how non-nuanced your nutrition can become when you decide to embrace Stalin’s philosophy that “quantity has a quality all its own”.  While other dudes have to calculate macros and calories and perfectly craft their nutrition to achieve their goals, you’re putting away the J M Blakely special of pizzas drenched in olive oil and speed eating oreos.  You have absolutely ZERO fear of “accidentally getting fat”, because not only is it practically impossible for you to gain weight, but you KNOW that, IF you were to somehow finally put on fat, all you have to do is NOT eat like a death row inmate at their last meal in order to strip the fat right back off again.  Whereas my cursed blessing was to not care about getting fat, yours is to not WORRY about it.

 

Injuries are a classic cursed blessing.  Were it not for injuries, I never would have discovered ROM progression, or DoggCrapp, or Tactical Barbell, or so many other cools tips and tricks, nor would I have been able to justify many of the super fun gym toys now in my possession which afford me a wide variety of options in training.  What about a bad training cycle?  Picking “the wrong program?”  The cursed blessing of KNOWLEDGE.  Of EXPERIENCE!  We learned something: we learned what DOESN’T work.  You scoff, but isn’t that SO much better than those dudes who just run Starting Strength for 6 straight years, constantly resetting to the same lifts before building back up and regressing all over again because they’re too afraid to try something new?  Often, we need to take a few steps back so we can take a giant leap forward.

Being a little lighter might also help

 

These are all swords of berserking.  The curse is only a curse when the situation is wrong, but in the right situation, under the right context, the blessing is worth the curse.  Look at all the curses inflicted upon you and discover the blessing contained within them.