THINGS I BELIEVE IN 2025 AT AGE 40

As 2025 comes to an end and with my experiencing of a milestone birthday, allowing me to officially compete as a Masters athlete in strongman (and an even OLDER athlete in grappling), I felt it prudent to take this moment to document where my thoughts are currently.  This blog has reached over 13 years in age, and through that time my own thought process has continued to grow and evolve, to include coming around absolute full circle on some things with a better understanding and appreciation as to WHY that happens.  And, of course, in the next year, all of this could change yet again, so allow this to be simply a snapshot in time.

 

Without further ado…

 

Training leads the diet: not the other way around

And sometimes, it leads us down some dark paths

 

·       I sometimes feel like I’m the only dude in the world that has figured this out, based on what I see online, and I really wish others would get on board, because it just provides SO much more clarity in how to move forward.  I see so many people that look at themselves in the mirror and try to let THAT determine their path forward in physical transformation, and, in turn, they often end up at an impasse.  The classic “should I bulk or cut?” question online, which is patently ridiculous, because no one can tell YOU what your priorities are.  That’s the point: they’re YOUR priorities.  But people ASK this question because they are at a physical impasse: too scrawny to cut, too much fat to bulk, or so they feel.  So how do we move forward?  We move forward by looking AWAY from the mirror and down at our training log.  Where are we lacking in terms of physical capability?  Are we in need of accumulation?  Great: now we run an accumulation block of training.  And while we run that, we eat to recover FROM the accumulation block.  Accumulation blocks are heavy in training volume: much food will need to be consumed to recover.  Hey, look at that: we put on some muscle.  Excellent.  What happens after we’ve done enough accumulation?  We enter intensification.  Now the volume has dropped, we aren’t approaching failure in training, and the recovery demand has reduced.  Less food is needed, and we lean out.

 

·       This approach ALSO prevents the stupidity that comes with forced fat loss approaches to training.  People decide that fat loss is the priority, and think that the way to train for THAT is to, per Dan John, “burn the candle at both ends and blow torch the middle”.  They slam themselves in the weightroom, then double and triple up on hard intense cardio, burn up all the sugar in their body, jack up their cortisol, piss away all their lean tissue, and end up looking like a smaller version of themselves imitating a melting candle.  The longer I’m in this game, the more I realize that fat loss is a product of RELAXING.  Lulling the body into a state of security and abundance such that it no longer NEEDS to hold onto all that precious fat it’s been hording for survival sake.  When we ease off on the stress, we coax the body to give up that fat, and end up looking like a physical being in a state of thriving, rather than surviving. 

 Make the method the goal

 

 

He was talking about Deep Water

 

·       This was a lesson that took me a LONG time to learn, but I’m glad I learned it.  It’s very easy to set goals based on numbers: I want to gain 30lbs in 6 weeks (thanks Super Squats), I want to deadlift 650lbs by the end of this ROM progression cycle, etc.  I have found that attempting to pursue goals in this manner can be quite self-destructive, as we can give up a LOT of good things in the pursuit of this ONE thing, and by the time we reach it, we NOW need to spend MORE time undoing the damage we did to get back to a decent baseline to operate off of.  How many times have we observed someone so married to the idea of ALWAYS losing 1lb a week that they end up taking DRASTIC measures to accomplish the goal as soon as they body plays its fun game of peek-a-boo with the scale weight?  Or dudes running in the opposite way, fixated on ONLY gaining the EXACT right amount of scale weight that they undereat to prevent gaining “too much” OR binge on junk food just to get to the exact right number?  These folks are so fixated on the number that they forget WHY they were chasing that number in the first place.

 

·       Instead, I have found that the best way to achieve success is to make the method the goal.  After I pick a program to run, my goal is to run the program: period.  “I am going to accomplish every workout of this program, as written.  I am going to eat exactly as needed to support this program.”  With that as my northern star, I no longer concern myself with what the scale is doing or what the weights on the bar look like: my goal is the method.  And, in turn, I KNOW that, upon achieving my goal of complying with the method, LOTS of good stuff will happen along the way.  I also know that, should I deviate from the method, I will experience reduced success.  It’s practically cheat codes for physical transformation: I know EXACTLY what I need to do in order to succeed, and I can evaluate success by simple compliance.  Get a calendar and 2 different colored markers: one for training and one for diet.  Put a check mark on it each day that you successfully complied with the training and the diet for the day.  Tally up your score at the end of the month and you’ll know how much success you achieved.  Think about the existential angst you save yourself from by NOT having to worry about if what you’re doing is “working” like those that are fixating on number chasing: the only number YOU need to concern yourself with is the amount of checkmarks you tally up.  The results achieve themselves!

 

All things in cycles and phases

Good enough for the greatest show on earth

 

·       I started this blog at age 28 and wrote that I was a fan of abbreviated training.  I then went into a long phase of very high volume training.  I am now back to abbreviated training.  None of this was flip-flopping or turning my back on myself: it’s periodization and cyclical/phasic training.  Because prior to me becoming a fan of abbreviated training at age 28, I was doing a LOT of training, mainly because I was a teenager full of piss and vinegar that was obsessed with training montages and the likes of Dragon Ball Z, so I accumulated a LOT of volume to be able to leverage into my abbreviated training.  And nutritionally, I’ve gone from periods of significant restriction to “anything goes”.  Life is seasonal, nothing is consistent, everything is constantly undergoing a pattern of death and re-birth: it’s only silly humans that seek to make things static and fixed.  The biggest favor we can do ourselves is try to ride the wave when the time is right and not fight the current when it’s clearly operating against us.

 

Nutrition and training need to align with personality

It's why I like to eat with my hands

 

·       This is why there ARE a million different training protocols and diets out there: they ALL work, just not for all people.  We can MAKE them all work too, but when we do that, we’re on borrowed time.  I compare it to stretching a rubber band.  The longer we train/eat “against the grain” of our essence, we stretch out the rubber band of our willpower, essentially “white knuckling” the physical transformation process.  Eventually, that rubber band snaps, and just like how a snapping rubber band returns to it’s baseline with pain to the user, once WE snap, there is a compensatory binge in order to try to restore our own internal harmony.  Nutritionally, this is the story of the bodybuilder that completes the contest and then goes on a 2 year junkfood bender, or the marathon runner that completes the race and doesn’t lace up the shoes for another decade.  It took SO much of our resources to reach the end that we have nothing left in us to continue on.  Per Dan John’s “Now what”, we needed to figure out what we’re going to do for week 7 of our 6 week program.

 

·       Instead, I find it crucial to find those training protocols and nutritional plans that align with our own personality types.  As far as the latter goes, I’ve enjoyed the idea presented that there are 3 forms of restriction: energy restriction (sustained caloric deficit), nutrient restriction (elimination/reduction of fats, carbs or protein) and time restriction (some manner of fasting).  I’ve been VERY outspoken about how much I don’t care for the first, as it requires counting and tracking of food, and how much better I am at the latter 2, so I find nutritional protocols that work within that framework.  When I eat that way, I don’t stretch the rubber band at all: I experience internal harmony.  There is no dissonance, and my energy can be vectored elsewhere, rather than toward dietary compliance.  The same is true of training: there are MANY protocols out there where I would have to FORCE myself to comply.  Pretty  much any bodybuilding protocol that emphasis rep execution technique (controlled and exact tempo, emphasis on finer points within the rep, etc) immediately tunes me out.  Same with protocols that require more skill lifts (jerks, snatches, etc) vs muscling up the weight.  But I am a big fan of full body training, hard sets, and simplicity, and when I get to train that way, I experience that same harmony, and am able to achieve my goals without fear of a compensatory binge. 

 

·       Of course, all that said, refer to my previous comment about cycles and phases.  Sometimes, we NEED that little bit of harmonic disruption to break us out of our comfort zones and shore up some weak points.  But those moments need to be rare, controlled, and planned with bookends with the stuff our personality ALIGNS with in order to protect us from ourselves.

 

Movements need to be rotated

For instance: never do this one

 

·       This is something I’m APPRECIATING now that I’m older, but something I SHOULD have been doing when I was younger.  And, in fact, I WAS doing it, until I got “smarter” and stopped doing it.  My first exposure to this concept came via Westside Barbell and the rotating max effort movements, along with the supplemental/accessory lifts.  I did it simply because that was what I was told to do, but I learned that the idea was to prevent burnout/stagnation by training the same lift too frequently.  Which, in turn, sounds a lot like bro-science muscle confusion.  Well surprise, once again, the bros were right, even if they didn’t fully understand why.

 

·       What I observe is the primary benefit Louie spoke of: this avoids burn out.  In my 40s, what I particularly notice is, if I train the same movement for too long, I eventually start grinding down my connective tissue and pick up nagging injuries and pain.  This is especially apparent to me when it comes to the squat.  If I stick with the buffalo bar for too long, I eventually want to cut off my elbows/forearms due to the pain I accumulate.  SSB for too long will overtax my upperback and start negatively impacting my deadlift.  SSB front squat for too long will limit maximal loading.  But if I rotate them intelligently (like, when I switch programming phases), I’m able to milk the benefits of those lifts and apply them to the other movements in a self-perpetuating positive feedback loop.  And changes don’t even have to be that significant: my ROM progression deadlift has me performing a new lift weekly, just with a slight modification to the ROM.  It’s small, but it’s enough that I don’t burn myself out on it. 

 

·       There are camps out there that espouse the idea that you need to just pick 1-2 lifts and master them and never deviate from them: just alter the programming.  My suspicion is that we’re observing survivor bias there: the folks that are outspoken about such approaches are simply those that managed to SURVIVE such approaches, whereas those that didn’t fell to the wayside and no one listens to them because they didn’t accomplish anything.  Meanwhile, rotating of training stimulus has such a long established history in training that it’s so obvious it’s not worth discussing.  Kids used to play seasonal sports, athletes have off seasons and in seasons, and during these times, different tools are being used and different skillsets are being built.  It doesn’t have to be “conjugate” to have the movements rotated: it can simply be intelligent.

 

Walking is the greatest gift we can give ourselves

Not everything needs to be a competition

·       This is very much a recent realization of mine and very “40s”, but I’m spreading the word on this.  I was very much opposed to low intensity ANYTHING in my 30s, and absolutely annihilated myself on a daily basis in my training with the highest intensity ANYTHING I could throw at myself.  All things in cycles: there’s a time and a place for that, but now that the time for that has ended (for now), I’m finding so much benefit in getting in regular walking.  It’s one of my highest priorities in training, whereas, previously, if I had any downtime, I’d get in a crossfit WOD or something equally ridiculous, now, I get in a walk.

·       Walking is restorative: it doesn’t take AWAY from recovery, but, instead, aids it.  It improves blood circulation and helps sore muscles recover, and, when performed after meals, has a whole host of other benefits as well (covered much more eloquently by Stan Efferding, so go see what he’s said about it).  It is low intensity, relying primarily on fat as a fuel substrate rather than sugar, which means it also doesn’t result in post exercise sugar cravings/binging, and, instead can often help with digestion and assimilation of the food we’ve taken in.  Throw on a weight vest and it’s like a cheat code, while still keeping the heart rate in range.

·       Walking is also an awesome social activity, a great way to get some vitamin D, a fantastic avenue to take in podcasts, a wonderful way to get out into nature and meditate, etc.  And the aerobic base it builds carries over into all physical activity.  Plus, it’s one of those things that, as we age, we NEED to do more of, so that we keep mobile.  Much like how getting up off the floor is a critical skill, so, too, is walking.

·       Getting a step tracker has been incredibly helpful in this regard as well.  Daily steps are an excellent way to approximate NEAT.

“Metabolism” just means NEAT

·       Figuring this out has really been so eye opening for me.  We’ve been looking at the wrong thing all along.  There have been arguments about slow and fast metabolisms, to the point that we’ve had medical studies to CONFIRM metabolic rates of individuals and discover that said rate only seems to differ by about 200 calories over the span of 50 years.  But in doing so, we missed the point, because even if the actual METABOLISM doesn’t change, Total Daily Energy Expenditure DOES change and vary, and it’s because of Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT).

 

·       It took having a kid for me to figure it out, but my kid recently came back from their annual checkout with a prescription I NEVER got as a fat kid: they need to gain weight.  They’re UNDERweight.  My kid is NOT deprived of food.  We don’t put food off limits in our house, we do the opposite: everything is available, nothing is special, that way, nothing gets horded or fetishized.  My kid eats their fair share of junk and fast food, and it’s easy to look at them and be envious of their metabolism…but what I notice is that my kid NEVER sits still.  And not in the parental frustration style of that expression: they’re literally ALWAYS in motion, like a humming bird.  Dancing, fidgeting, practicing handstands for no reason, breaking out into martial arts moves, etc etc, sitting still is practically offensive to my kid…and, in turn, they’re BLITZING through calories throughout the day.  Meanwhile, I remember being a kid and taking pride in the fact that I once played 14 hours of Final Fantasy 7 in one day (spoilers, but it meant I got to see Aeries die twice in one day).  Yeah: we may have the same genetics, but we are different people.

 

·       This just makes things make so much more sense, ESPECIALLY when we understand that SOME individuals end up scaling NEAT with caloric intake, such that, when they eat MORE food, they performed MORE NEAT.  It explains those people that can “eat whatever they want”.  The internet goes into conspiracy mode trying to figure this out, saying that these people are secretly fasting for long durations between eating copious amounts of junkfood, or are secretly running ultramarathons, or all other manner of madness.  It makes SO much more sense to understand that these folks are just scaling up their NEAT as the calories ramp up, ending up with a zero sum game.  It also explains those skinny kids that SWEAR they’re eating a 500 calorie surplus and not gaining.  No, what happens is, they add 500 calories to their original baseline, and their body jacks up NEAT 400 calories to compensate, and they end up with now a 100 calorie surplus instead.  We don’t need to break thermodynamics or accuse others of witchcraft or flat out lying.  It’s very possible people are eating the amounts they say and failing to gain and lose weight, and it could simply be that, as the calories go up, so does the NEAT, and as the calories go down, the NEAT follows as well.

“I’VE GOT ON A SPORTS BRA AND MY HAIR IS IN A PONYTAIL: LET’S DO THIS”

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”.

NOT MOTIVATION, NOT DISCIPLINE, NOT WANT, BUT IDENTITY

The longer I exist in this space, the more I refine my thoughts, which to the outsider can be interpreted as changing positions/opinions or just flat out flip-flopping, but the reality is that we often begin with a primitive operating premise that becomes more complex and sophisticated as more information and a better understanding presents itself.  Much like how many trainees are so upset that Jim Wendler dared to IMPROVE 5/3/1 over the years (which is to say, it worked just fine at the start, but now it works even better) or how people got mad at Louie Simmons for basically doing ANYTHING, it seems many in the physical transformation sphere (and, in truth, humanity) prefer that, once an idea is had, it never changes.  These are the people that listened to all of ACDC’s albums, despite them all sounding the same, and got mad at Madonna for reinventing herself every 3 years or so.  But, ultimately, what I want to discuss is where I’ve currently landed in regards to what it is that compels us to act in regards to physical transformation, because, quite often, this question gets asked.  “How do I start training hard and eating right?  Every time I try to start, I fail”.  This then turns into a question of how do I get motivated enough to do this, to which the individual is chastised because they have to be DISCIPLINED enough to do so, meaning they lacked the necessary degree of willpower, and even I have made a mistake because I claimed it was a matter of WANTING the results…whereas, now, I realize (for now) that it’s a matter of identity.  Much like my notion of “being that which does”: we do the things we do because we are the thing we are. 

In turn, some of us are REAL scary

So again, back to the beginning (as that’s a good place to start), we like to believe that the road to physical transformation begins with an initial spark of motivation.  We see that montage from a Rocky film or New Year’s rolls around and we decide that THIS is the moment that we are going to totally transform ourselves.  We’re going to start working out EVERY day, and we’re going to cut out the junkfood and soda and eating nothing but kale and chicken breasts and we’re going to get ripped inside of 3 months.  And by day 4, we’ve slept through the alarm, stopped at the drivethrough on the way home, and our shaker bottle smells rancid because it’s been in the back of the car for 3 days and hasn’t seen any use beyond the first shake.  What happened?  The internet tells us that motivation failed, and we needed DISCIPLINE all along.

 

What is discipline?  It’s what compels us to act even when we don’t want to.  We don’t brush our teeth every day because we’re motivated to brush our teeth: we do it because it’s part of our routine, and we are disciplined about following our routine.  The same is true of the training and the eating: we do it out of duty.  But here’s the thing: discipline is implying that we are working AGAINST our nature.  Discipline is a noun and a verb: we discipline people so that they will DEVELOP discipline, and, quite often, discipline applied as a verb is unpleasant, in order to compel someone to perform unpleasant things.  The military employs discipline in basic training in order to compel new recruits to have the proper discipline to function as a solider, which is to break them of their individuality and have them conform to the needs of the unit.  But how does one develop the noun of discipline in the absence of the verb?

How very Nietzsche of you

To this, my answer was willpower, which I defined as the energy that was developed and proportional to the incongruity between who we wanted to be compared to who we are.  The question is frequently asked “how do I develop more willpower”, and my answer was “you have to be so upset with what you are compared to what you hope to be that it empowers you to take the actions necessary to rectify the situation”.  Much like newbie gains: the further away you are from your maximum potential, the more rapidly you accelerate toward it, and as you get closer, it moves slower.  That individual that is only half a pound away from their goal weight isn’t going to have as much willpower to accomplish it compared to the individual that is 200lbs away, assuming that the dissonance between the two is strong enough.   But, the more I pondered, the more I learned, the more I realized that willpower is, in truth, a finite resource.  It eventually runs out, and any method dependent upon it as the sole means of accomplishment will eventually fail, and fail hard.  When we’ve been relying PURELY on willpower to not eat the donut everyday for 4 years, when that dam breaks, we are eating ALL the donuts, to include all the ones we didn’t eat for 4 years.  So, if not willpower, what then?

 

My initial thought was “want”.  Almost in a means of going back to motivation, we simply needed to WANT the results of the effort MORE than we disliked the effort.  THIS was the only real way for us to perpetuate success on the realm of physical transformation.  Humans will, fundamentally, ALWAYS do what they want.  The only way to get them to do otherwise is through motivation, discipline (verb and noun) and willpower, and, as we’ve observed: ALL of these are finite and prone to failure.  Motivation frequently fails, willpower runs out, and disciplined soldiers will eventually crumble if the situation is dire enough.  But want NEVER runs out: it simply changes.  In the instance of the 3 aforementioned failures, one observes that the WANT changing is primarily what impacted things.  At that moment of failure, we simply no longer wanted physical transformation more than we wanted something else instead.  When we comply with the diet, it’s because we want the results of the diet more than the 4 years of the donuts.  When willpower failed us, we wanted the donuts more than the results.  So then it simply becomes a matter of WANTING the results more than anything else, and once we accomplish that, we’re in the clear!

 

In truth, I still like that theory…but it definitely falls into an issue of being reductionist.  And, of course, now the question becomes “how do I MAKE myself want this?” and we’re back to square one, trying to get motivated again.  No, instead, where I’ve settled is this: in order to achieve our goals (true, in physical transformation, but even in other spheres), we must change our identity to suit the goal we pursue.  And no, not change identity as in get a new name and issued identification card: we must change who we ARE in order to change what we DO.  A reverse of Nicomanchean ethics, which presented the idea that virtue was what we practice, this concept premises off the idea that who we ARE dictates what we do. 

 

Joey is, in fact, an entire swarm of locust

How do I mean this?  I get up at 0400 4 days a week to exercise.  People ask how I do this, and I don’t have an answer to give.  Why is that?  Because it’s not motivation that makes me do it, it’s not discipline, it’s not willpower, and it’s not want: I am simply the guy who gets up at 0400 to exercise.  It’s who I am.  It’s what I do.  To NOT do it would be to go against my nature, and THAT would be difficult and cause me some manner of cognitive dissonance.  Similarly, I don’t eat processed food.  To the point that I don’t even recognize it AS food.  I’ll walk through a grocery store or a gas station, surrounded by all the shiny boxed products claiming to be some form of food, and it doesn’t register in my brain as “this is something I can eat”.  Like an alligator looking at a piece of bamboo or a panda looking at a fresh killed elk, I can recognize that it’s food for SOMETHING: just not me.  Why?  Because I’m the guy who doesn’t eat that.  It’s simply who I am. 

 

And this is CRUCIAL for the success of physical transformation: we CANNOT transform into something we aren’t.  Attempting to do so is simply fighting our nature, and our nature ALWAYS wins.  We can attempt to hide from our identity, but it always shines through at the end.  It’s why we see former Biggest Loser contestants put all the weight back on (and moreso): they were always a fat person, even when they lost the weight.  Lottery winners will go bankrupt in a year, because they were still poor, even with money.  Whenever we try to white knuckle and willpower a change to happen, we’re simply stretching that rubber band of our identity, and when it snaps, the results in a vacuum that is filled with some sort of binge behavior to course correct us back to who we are.

It IS rather impressive how his calves remained the same size.  Bodybuilders take note.

 

Which means, when embarking on a journey of physical transformation, the question is not “can do I do these things”, but “can I become the person who does these things?”  It’s not “can I wake up at 0400 to exercise”.  Anyone can do that.  Either through motivation, discipline, or willpower, we can get ANY person to wake up early and exercise.  But to keep doing it?  How does THAT happen?  It happens by BECOMING the person who does that.  We stay on point with nutrition not because it’s the right thing to do, not because our discipline compels us, not because we have a competition coming up, but because we ARE the person who eats this way.  Which means, when we see these challenges, we ask “can I become the person who does these things”.  And, fundamentally, we KNOW the answer to that question.  One of the greatest tools we, as humans, possess IS the ability to become that which we need to become when the situation presents.  We CAN reinvent ourselves to better suit our environment.  We BROKE natural selection through the power of our intellect and allowed ourselves to become what we needed to be in an environment that is completely alien to what nature ever intended for us.  We are the single most adaptable species on the planet: what CAN’T we become?

 

Herein, you stare down Sartre’s horrible “radical freedom”.  You have no limits here: it’s all a matter of, can you become what you need to become in order to accomplish what you desire?

COLLEGE KID PERIODIZATION

Much like how Dan John likes to comment on how, at the age of 14, he came up with the only 2 movements he’d ever need and STILL thinks it’s a good idea, upon review, I’ve discovered that 19 year old undergrad me really had this whole “physical transformation” thing figured out, and I spent a LOT of years unlearning all those lessons before I could really appreciate them.  In my instance, though, the lessons I learned where thrust upon me by circumstance, rather than something I discovered through a process of education, and, in turn, I wasn’t able to truly understand or appreciate them at the time.  These things were occurring organically, and with no other baseline to compare against, I could not truly fully appreciate just how significant and valuable these experiences were until I spent some time NOT experiencing them.  And already I can hear the collective “huh” from the audience, so let me go ahead and tell you a story from 21 years ago about a budding young future blogwriter, armed with only a handmixer and some vanilla protein powder that tasted like wallpaper paste…

It wasn't QUITE this bad...but it was close

 

I’ve been lifting weights since I was 14, had very little in the way of education for those first few years, relying on stuff my dad told me, high school folklore, a few magazine articles, and internet forums (I first signed up at age 16 on the GameFAQs Martial Arts forum, and 24 years later I am STILL terrorizing the internet).  But through internet forums, I had learned that powerlifting was how you lifted to get strong while bodybuilding was how you lifted to get big (yes: this was what “education” looked like in the early 2000s).  AND I THEN learned that Westside Barbell was THE powerlifting program to follow (once again: early 2000s information availability), and T-nation was the forum where the bad boys gathered, so from there I had gotten exposed to Joe DeFranco’s Westside Barbell for Skinny Bastards (version 1) program.  BUT, along with that, during my time terrorizing the internet, someone (I wish I could remember who, because they basically changed my life) set me up with a copy of Pavel Tsastouline’s “Beyond Bodybuilding”, and I immediately drank ALL the Pavel kool-aid and got hooked on his “3-5” program.  I wrote about this in my recent e-book, but the numbers tell the story: 3-5 movements, for 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps, trained 3 days a week, in an A/B/A, B/A/B format, no grinding reps, deload every 4th week, double progression, switch movements upon stalling.  I say all this to lay down the foundation of HOW I got myself into the situation I was in.

 

Because keep in mind, I was now effectively armed with two REAL programs, as opposed to the throwing spaghetti against the wall approach I was using before.  AND I was in college.  Why does that matter?  Because I went to school in Portland OR while my parents lived in San Diego CA, which meant my calendar year was split between two different locations and circumstances.  Specifically: my college had a FULL weight room AND a dinning hall with unlimited food, while my parent’s house had my old standard weight set or a gym I could get daypasses at and food was limited based on what groceries my parents had/how much I was willing to spend on fast food (reference that I learned NO cooking skills until I was married).  In turn, I was in a situation of FORCED periodization…and I made some INCREDIBLE gains because of that.

Don't get me wrong though: being in San Diego, an occasional order of carne asada fries DID factor into the diet...

 

Because, as I lamented in my book, if I had stuck with this protocol since the age of 19, I’m fairly certain I’d be much further along now than I currently am (but I also wouldn’t have had all the wild experiences I’ve had, of which the knowledge obtained from that cannot be traded).  Westside Barbell is full of variety: you’re switching the max effort lift every 1-3 weeks, and the supplemental and accessory lifts every 2-6 weeks.  It also lends well to big eating (“for skinny bastards”) with the bodybuilding work done after the Max Effort/Dynamic effort work.  Being in a college weight room that was fully stocked (it wasn’t Gucci, but it was enough) allowed me the ability to EMPLOY this variety, and having access to the dinning hall allowed me to eat enough to support the training (as evidenced by my gaining of 12lbs in 6 weeks when I ran Super Squats with this same dinning facility).  Meanwhile, Pavel’s 3-5 is entirely the opposite: very limited movement set, low volume.  So when all you have access to is a barbell and plates AND you’re eating on a budget, a program that doesn’t need much variety AND doesn’t have a lot of volume to recover from is perfect. 

 

Then, from here, the academic schedule determined my training schedule.  I’ve have the first semester to focus on Westside, with deloads as a result of our 1 week fall break and 1 week Thanksgiving break, then I’d get 4 weeks to do Pavel’s 3-5 during the Winter Break, second semester for Westside, then the 4 months of summer to do Pavel’s (yeah, we had a LONG break) before starting the whole process over again.  And think about how that translates from a training perspective: long periods of accumulation and variety, then short intense blocks of intensification, dialing in technique on a handful of lifts compared to the constant shifting that comes with Westside, and then taking that newfound strength and applying it right back into Westside.  And on top of that, 4 months in the summer to lean out put me in a PRIME position to get back to college and start gaining again.

Especially with that dinning hall waiting for me...

 

But it gets even better: back then, I was still heavy into martial arts. During the school year, I didn’t have the bandwidth to do any serious training, and would just get in a few classes here and there.  But in the summer, I had more free time, and would typically sign up for a boxing gym or grappling club or something along that line, and alongside the abbreviated programming of Pavel’s 3-5, I’d also be engaging in some extensive MMA training, effectively improving my GPP as well.  And once again: I could manage that because the weight training I was doing was low enough in volume that I could recover and still push the martial arts training hard, similar to Dan John’s “Easy Strength” program (which, coincidentally, he got from Pavel and took to refine).

 

And, of course, I squandered all of this, not realizing what the REAL magic was behind it all, and trying to force it artificially.  I had phases where I tried to gain while running Pavel, I had phases where I tried to run Westside without changing the lifts frequently enough because I wanted to improve proficiency on them, I had phases where I stopped all GPP training, etc etc.  Life had already provided me the periodization I needed, but time and experience was necessary in order for me to be able to understand and appreciate them.  But here I am now, reflecting, and thinking that, knowing what I know now: I definitely could have done worse than this plan that just sorta happened.  People will tell me “ya know, you’re not 19 anymore…”, but maybe I should still try to be sometimes…

LET’S GET THE NEEDLE MOVING FIRST

Already the title of this post has got me flagged for performance enhancing drugs (although these days perhaps people associate “the needle” with GLP-1 agonist, but do we consider that a performance enhancing drug?…are peptides drugs?  Hey, perhaps that’s a blogpost in and of itself) but I’m referring to moving the needle in the more traditional sense here.  I spend a lot of my free time slumming on forums/social media trying my best to share my perspective in a manner that is hopefully helpful to the recipient, primarily because I was given such grace when I first got online at the age of 16, to include being pointed in the direction of “Super Squats” and gifted a copy of “Beyond Bodybuilding”: both of which I can attribute to directly changing my life.  And through my time online, I’ve observed an interesting tendency among many trainees who are stuck in their current situation…and that is, they continue to perpetuate being stuck.  Ultimately, they’re too focused on the aspects of physical transformation that need addressing once momentum has actually been established, but these folks are still hamstrung by Newton’s first law: they are objects at rest remaining at rest.  Folks: before we start trying to course correct, let’s get the needle MOVING.

And correct for the drift to the left

 

Where I observe this issue most frequently is in the realm of weight gaining.  As someone that grew up as a fat kid, it’s difficult for me to fathom the notion of trainees that have difficulty putting on bodyweight, but I spend enough time online attempting to assist these folks that I have become familiar with their struggles and accepted into their tribe.  And with my fat boy history, I try to share my fat boy tips to help these individuals achieve a similar level of excellence in corpulence…and BOY do I encounter some interesting resistance. 

 

As you may have read in my recently released e-book or through my various blogposts and story sharing, I’ve got experience with a LOT of unique and effective means of gaining weight.  The gallon of milk a day approach from Super Squats, Building the Monolith’s dozen eggs and 1.5lbs of ground beef per day, a Dave Tate inspired diet of fast food and packaged goodies, Dan John’s ode to the mighty peanut butter and jelly sandwich, etc etc.  All battle tested and proven effective.  Yet, whenever I share these methods, I observe the same criticisms…

What could THIS guy know about gaining weight?

 

“That’s unhealthy!”  “That’s too much sugar!”  “There’s not enough protein!”  Etc etc.  Meanwhile, these dudes are STILL 5’11 and 126lbs and crying out to the world in frustration: why can’t I gain weight!?  Folks, let’s get the needle moving FIRST and THEN we can start working on some course correction.  That’s all I’m aiming for here: let’s break inertia and get some momentum going and THEN we can try to improve from there.  And quite often, in that pursuit of breaking inertia, we’re going to use any which way we can to get there, because ANY movement is better than no movement.  Much like X-men’s the Juggernaut, just the smallest of steps forward can eventually snowball into something mighty.

 

There’s a self-defeating mentality out there that, if we can’t do things to the most extreme and best way possible, there’s no reason to do anything.  This is an interesting approach people take to allow them to not actually invest their effort, energy and resources toward obtaining goals: maintaining comfort with their status quo and avoiding the discomfort of new experiences and the effort and strain that coincide with them.  They create artificial rules and restrictions for their path that make it completely impossible to actually move in ANY direction: stuck in a prison of their own design while they lament their life sentence.

Pretty much like this

 

Instead, what we need to do is identify those baby steps we can take in order to build up to something much greater.  It is the SMALL habits that eventually accumulate and build into what we call our character and identity.  A couch potato does not need to embark on a 6 day a week lifting protocol paired with an hour of cardio per day in order to affect physical transformation: they can simply go for a 30 minute walk 3-4 times per week.  Is this the GREATEST intervention they can possibly engage in?  No.  Is it moving the needle?  YES!  And from there, a habit is built, physical improvements are accomplished, and we can course correct and improve from there.  No different than having an undersized trainee simply add one peanut butter and jelly sandwich to their daily diet.  Are there better choices?  Absolutely.  Will this choice fail?  NO!  Going from 0 PBJs to 1 a day for an undersized trainee will absolutely have an effect, and from these small victories we can chain together bigger and bigger ones.

 

It's too easy to sit back and snipe at solutions while offering none of our own.  We refer to that as “problem admiring”, NOT “problem solving”.  And it’s BECAUSE it’s too easy that we do exactly that: instead of taking action and committing to SOME sort of plan, we can just sit comfortably and deconstruct everything and point out how it’s not AS effective as some OTHER method or approach which has significantly larger barriers to entry, limitations and restrictions.  We deride the Gallon of Milk a day for having too much sugar and causing the trainee to put on “unnecessary amounts of fat”, completely ignoring the fact that said trainee is most likely DEFICIENT in bodyfat to the point it’s negatively impacting their hormonal profile and that at LEAST the gallon of milk will have them FINALLY moving in a positive direction as far as bodyweight gaining goes.  For a trainee that has experienced nothing but failure in their pursuits, can’t their be some value in achieving A success?  If, for no other reason, to be able to establish what it actually FEELS like to achieve success, so that we have that as a baseline for establishing future successes?  If someone has never won before, how will they know WHEN they’ve done it?  Why not get them A win for a frame of reference?

Remember: they eventually learned how to win

 

Let’s just get the needle moving FIRST.  We can figure it out from there.