EVERY DIET IS A FAD DIET

Oh boy here we go again.  I’ve been on the nutritional fringe since 2002, because a lot of my early “education” in physical transformation came by way of the GameFAQs martial arts message board.  By 2002, I had already been engaging in regular exercise for over 2 years, and had lost 25lbs through portion reduction (still eating the same foods, just less of them) and had been training in Tae Kwon Do since 1994 while also being a massive video game nerd (among other hobbies), which is how I ended up in this specific corner of the internet.  And for reasons I myself am not particularly sure of, at this specific moment in history, the Atkins diet had gained a resurgence in popularity, and the loudest members of this corner of the internet championed it and ketogenic diets in general.  And exposed to this “radical” idea (in truth, my Grandfather and Grandmother had both already employed the Atkin’s diet a few years earlier and successfully lost a significant amount of weight with it, while my family considered them all nut jobs at the time), I drank up ALL the (low-carb) Koolaid, employed a terribly stupid attempt at it by living off of lunch meat and fast food burgers without the bun, and thus my journey into nutritional fringe was well underway.  And over 20 years later, I still find I prefer low/no-carb diets and tend to look, feel and perform my best in this manner, and I STILL find people chiding me for “falling for a fad diet”, to which I retort that, today: EVERY diet is a fad diet.

It's amazing how you had to be around in the 90s to even understand this

 

How so?  Well let’s examine the initial argument.  Those that deride low/no-carb/paleo/intermittent fasting/carb cycling/etc nutritional approaches tend to prose that the NON-fad approach to nutrition would mean simply counting one’s calories and eating the right amount of macronutrients based on one’s goals (weight gain, weight loss, or weight maintenance).  Some will simply end the conversation there, existing in a camp of “If It Fits Your Macros”, whereas some will further contend that it’s ideal to eat nutritious foods in this pursuit, which tend to be those foods that are NOT hyper-processed, and, instead, exist in a mostly whole/unprocessed state.  Eating in a manner OUTSIDE of this confine is considered a “fad diet”.

 

Ok, so now let’s look at what a fad is, and in doing so I’m going to employ the horrible trope of using the dictionary.  Oxford defines it as “an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object's qualities; a craze” and Merriam-Webster goes with “a practice or interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal”.  So why are ketogenic diets, paleo diets, intermittent fasting, etc etc “fad diets” while calorie counting and macro tracking are non-fad diets?  Because of their recency in employment?

I have that talent

 

Well hold onto your butts folks: when did we discover the calorie?  In the early 1800s, Nicolas Clement created the definition of the calorie as it related to thermal energy, but it wasn’t until 1887 that Wilbur Atwater used a calorimeter to measure energy in food, and it wasn’t until the late 1890s that he published food composition tables to allow for the measurement of calories in food for public consumption.  When did we first see ketogenic diets employed?  The first documented case was Dr. Russell Wilder in the Mayo Clinic in 1921 YET we had William Banting recommending a low-carb/high-fat nutritional approach in his “Letter on Corpulence” in 1863.  This means that macronutrient restriction, as a form of nutritional intervention, predates calorie counting OR, at most, is only 30 years behind.  And when you factor in that we emerged as Homo Sapiens about 300,000 years ago, we really can’t let 30 years make or break what is and is not a “fad”.

 

But let’s go even FURTHER down that rabbit hole, shall we?  What of those that are claiming to quit being so weird about nutrition and just eat a healthy whole food diet?  Healthy whole foods ARE a fad.  If we’re judging fads as short-lived/followed for a time with exaggerated zeal, the modern food environment is INCREDIBLY faddish.  Because if you’re eating any vegetables TODAY, those things flat out were NOT around for our ancestors to eat.  Almost every vegetable we eat today is derived from Brassica oleracea, a type of wild mustard plant that we, as a species, SELECTIVELY bred in order to create the vegetables we WANTED to eat, vs what nature actually provided us.  Modern fruits are also a total abomination, with bananas that are almost pure sugar and seedless, compared to the heavily seeded bitter monstrosities that our ancestors had access to.  Apples have been engineered to ridiculous proportions, and we have grapes that taste like cotton candy for the love of god.  And don’t think I’m letting the carnivore community off easy here too: modern livestock and farming is abhorrent from a historical-biological perspective, with animals selectively bred to remove all biological defensive advantages and effectively only exist SOLELY as a food source, fed on a diet of bioengineered feeds and shot up with all manner of substances to improve their yield.  And even if you try to hunt, you’re STILL not out of the woods (pun partially intended), because your game meat is most likely getting into our frankencrops and eating that stuff.  I know the deer here get into the sweetcorn and will end up with marbling in their meat: that should NOT exist in nature.

Even Bobby can tell this isn't "natural"

 

And all of this is if you are TRYING to “eat clean, healthy whole foods”.  If you’re eating ANYTHING out of a box, you’re DEFINITELY eating a “fad diet”.  Food processing is a VERY modern advent as far as our nutrition goes, with the very basics of it dating back to dehydrating/salting meat to preserve it but the more contemporary approaches resulting in us having stuff like “blue raspberry pancake syrup” amongst other monstrosities.  Count your calories while eating your Pop-Tarts and explain to me how you’re not eating a “fad diet”.

 

Because we, as humans, have constructed an artificial food environment such that there is NO diet that ISN’T a fad diet.  If you look at any other animal on this planet, NONE of them have to think about how they eat: they just do it.  They know WHAT they’re supposed to eat, and they know how MUCH they’re supposed to eat.  The only fat animals that exist are the ones that we domesticate, and that’s primarily because we feed them the foods that WE made, similar to how we, as humans, have gotten fat and sick eating our own foods.  We, unfortunately, no longer exist in an environment where we can just eat what we’re supposed to eat until we’re done eating it and move on with our lives.  Unfortunately, SOME manner of nutritional intervention is necessary in order to survive this environment we’ve created, and ALL of them are fads.

Meanwhile, Crom laughs at your modern solutions

 

With that being said, it means there’s no shame in following a fad diet: simply follow the one that suits YOU.  EVERY manner of nutritional intervention that exists is a VERY recent form of intervention, for it’s only very recently that we’ve created this impossible environment for us to navigate.  300,000 years ago we arrived on the scene and knew what to eat and how  much of it to eat, but as time went on and we got “smarter”, we stupidly tried to circumvent the system and ended up with quite the Faustian deal.  So if your way of surviving is to try out this new-fangled calorie counting so that you can make sure you don’t eat too much of the weird mutant “food like substance” we have to live off of: go for it.  If your approach is “I’ll eat the animals but not the plants”, that’s cool too: you’ll probably avoid a lot of bad stuff by cutting out so much stuff.  If your approach is “I’ll only eat during THESE times”, you’ll probably eat LESS of that weird stuff, since you’ll be eating less in general.  And when the new fad comes out, give THAT one a go and see how you like it, because it looks like, for the foreseeable future, there really isn’t going to be any other solution readily available to us.             

BOOK REVIEW: THE VERTICAL DIET 3.0

I was a good boy for Christmas and this year Santa, by way of my in-laws, brought me Stan Efferding’s “Vertical Diet 3.0” paperback book.  I’m aware that Stan has gone on to release a 4.0 version, but it’s currently an e-book only, and those aren’t fun to unwrap on Christmas morning.

 

I promptly took this book with me on my family’s New Year’s Disney Cruise (which I’m sure I’ll also write up about) and read it in what was one of the finest bits of irony while dinning on keto bricks and biltong while traveling and enough meat and eggs to put Conan AND Gaston to shame.  But I read through the book quickly, because it was honestly very enjoyable and easily digestible, which, yes, is a wonderful and topical pun as it relates to the book.

 

Bottom line is: buy the book.  Again, I’m specifically referring to 3.0, which is available on amazon as a paperback for $25 as of my writing this.  As far as value per dollar goes, this is well within that range.  I cannot speak to the $100 4.0 e-book, as I have not read it.

 

WHAT I LIKE

I mean, yeah

 

·       You know my bizarre approach to nutrition, and its current state is very carnivore forward.  With that background, I very much appreciated how Stan approached the topic of nutrition.  He’s incredibly practical and pragmatic, and is willing to slaughter sacred cows along the way if it means getting to (what he proports) is the right answer.  He doesn’t say “eat your veggies: they’re good for you”, it’s “eat THESE specific veggies for THESE reasons, whereas THESE ones may be causing you some issues to watch out for”. 

·       This ultimately pulls from Stan’s motto of “compliance is the science”.  If you aren’t going to stick to the diet, it doesn’t matter if it’s “the best one”.  So Stan presents his reasoning and justification for what is and is not part of the Vertical Diet, and even provides some examples of acceptable substitutions, but ultimately drives to the reader the importance of being able to comply with the diet.  That said, he hopes to outfit you WITH a diet that CAN be complied with.  It aims to eliminate decision fatigue, flavor fatigue, and energy/satiety concerns that tend to come with nutrition plans.

·       What’s included in the plan seems quite beneficial as far as nutrition goes, with minimal controversy irrespective of where you fall on the nutrition spectrum.  I read this as a pro-keto/carnivore person, and could appreciate the arguments Stan made for what was in the book, and honestly felt like this was a great general nutritional protocol.  It’s also scalable depending on goals of gaining/losing/maintaining weight. 

·       Despite being called “The Vertical Diet”, Stan goes on to discuss sleep protocols, resistance training, cardiovascular training, injury recovery, etc.  It’s not QUITE an all-in-one manual, as there isn’t an actual workout split/protocol provided for the resistance training, but enough of an overview to get just about anyone going.

·       There is also a recipe section in the book, which I’m always a sucker for.  They are simple, but that’s kind of the point: it’s not a complex nutritional approach.  It’s sustainable.  Stan also includes instructions on ordering out and still surviving, along with traveling and staying on the program.

·       You also have to appreciate the source of the information.  Stan talks the talk, walks the walk, and has coached those in the highest levels to do the same.  And in that regard, he writes incredibly well: the book is VERY easy to read and enjoyable.

 

WHAT I FOUND ODD

I honestly don't know what I'm more afraid of

·       At the end of many sections of the book, Stan does a great job of providing a quick summary/checklist of all the points he covered.  In turn, I REALLY wish the end of the book contained this.  Basically, a “Vertical Diet Checklist”.  Primarily because, I felt like the most valuable part of the book was the HORIZONTAL diet that Stan lays out: all those foundational foods that you SHOULD eat before you focus on getting your macros from steak and rice.  In the book, Stan lays out all this information, but that’s the thing: it’s IN the book.  When I finished reading, I remembered things like, I should eat potatoes…but how many per day?  Bell peppers were recommended: what amount?  How many baby carrots?  How much Greek yogurt?  I can easily go back to theses sections, re-read them and take notes to compile all of this in one handy spot (and I intend to), but it would have been a great way to end the book with an overview.

 

·       In that regard, the sample diets that Stan provides are an absolute trip, because there’s no internal logic/consistency to guide them.  It’s awesome that he provides sample diets in 250 calorie increments starting with 1500 all the way to 4000, but when examining each “step” of the diet, there doesn’t appear to be any logical method on HOW to advance the 250 calories up.  The primary example is that the 2750 calorie diet has the HIGHEST protein total of any other diet in the book, to include the 4000 calorie diet.  In the book, Stan recommends pushing protein up to increase satiety if the goal is to lose fat, but what if the person eating 2750 calories was actually doing so to GAIN weight?  In a similar manner, because the protein is so high, the carbs are far lower on this diet compared to the 2500 calorie diet right before it, whereas the 1750 calorie diet and 2000 calorie diet have almost matching carb totals.  I understand these are just sample diets, not gospel, but for someone looking at how to progress their diets upward or downward depending on their shifting goals, it doesn’t really lay out a practicable example of what changes to make along the way.  There are enough words in the book to help guide a trainee, but this was just tricky to sort out.

 

·       In the exercise section of the book, Stan has some photos of band exercises that are incorrectly labeled.  This honestly stands out just because the rest of the book is very well edited.  As an exercise nerd, I knew what he meant, but a newb would be left stranded.

 

·       Stan brags about how the Bibliography in the book has over 200 sources, and he’s absolutely right.  It’s massive…and never once within the book is any of it referenced.  It’s on you, the reader, to go look up every single study/source listed there and see how it applies to the book.  I’ve got a Masters Degree: I can tell when someone is academically filibustering/bluffing.  Jamie Lewis has managed to cite his sources in his own works: I know Stan can too.  And maybe he did that in 4.0, and maybe that’s why it’s $100.

 

·       Stan must have gotten burned bad by a physical therapist at one point in his career, because his view on their value as far as injury recovery goes strikes me as bizarre.  He appears to be opposed to their worth, claiming that whatever aid they provide is temporary and can make problems worse, and that most injuries will resolve over time without intervention.  Part of me feels that the issue may be that Stan is only approaching this from the lens of a back injury, as that is what he discusses as his own personal experience.  He goes into further detail on recovery of back injuries, how stretching does not help back injuries, how back injuries require stability, etc.  All of this may be true, but as someone that has had surgery on their shoulder and knee alongside chronic knee pain: I’ve absolutely experienced the benefit of physical therapy first hand, and it SHOULD be doing the things that Stan advises FOR recovery: strengthening weakened areas and improving mobility.  I think it’s good that Stan addresses injury recovery, but I feel personal bias may be clouding his judgement.

 

·       I’m not a fan of what Stan recommends for improved satiety to improve compliance with the diet.  Specifically when he discusses employing water and roughage as a means to fill the stomach to increase satiety.  We’ve observed enough that this just plain doesn’t work: at most, it provides a VERY temporary relief from hunger, but more often it causes severe digestive distress as one fills their stomach capacity to fullness while they STILL experience hunger because they are lacking in nutrients.  Stan addresses the difference between hunger and appetite (the former being physiological and the latter being psychological) elsewhere in the book, and I feel he should lean further into that.  If you’re HUNGRY, you need to eat something with NUTRITION in it: not lettuce and water.  If you’re BORED, you need to figure out something to occupy yourself that ISN’T food.

 

IN SUMMARY

 

I mean, it's good enough for these two...

It seems like I wrote a lot of negative stuff about the book, but that’s honestly a bit of “survivor bias” at play there.  The book itself has so many positives that it’s hard to dial it down to just one thing, whereas the negatives are so precise that it’s easy to discuss them.  “The Vertical Diet” would be the perfect gift to anyone struggling with “how/what do I eat”.  The horizontal structure it lays out provides an excellent general purpose guidance for eating to be healthy and energetic, and the vertical framework provides a way to eat toward more specific goals.  The emphasis on general activity and resistance training gives helpful guidelines to achieve the majority of one’s goals, in a manner similar to what Dan John prescribes in his Armor Building Formula and Easy Strength books.  In fact, this would be a wonderful pairing of such books, giving a well fleshed out nutritional protocol and training protocol for “real people”.

FAILURE IS A PYRRHIC VICTORY

As anyone who has been in the physical transformation space for a few decades will note, trends are cyclical, and what’s old is new and vise versa.  Hell, anyone who has read this BLOG has already noted that, for I started off an advocate for abbreviated training, went through a phase of absurd volume and frequency, and have settled back to abbreviated training (almost as though there was some form of periodization at play…).  In turn, it appears that the likes of Mike Mentzer and the HIT crowd have popped back up in popularity as a result of TikTokers attempted to fleece undiscerning babes in the woods with “cutting edge” 1970s methodology, attempting to market it as “training secrets from 50 years ago that the pros DON’T want you to know”.  I, personally, am a fan of Dave Tate’s philosophy in that the reason things ARE “training secrets” is because they sucked back then so we all forgot about them, but let’s explore just a little bit here.  The principle, I find, that is causing the most difficulty with new trainees is the overvaluing of training to failure, seen as THE sole method necessary in order to secure sweet precious “gains” from training.  Training to failure is THE objective of training, according to those “in the know” on such matters, and whenever someone is NOT obtaining results, it’s purely because they’re not training hard enough.  I, of course, am a fan of a “no true scotsman” whenever encountered in the wild, because the circular reasoning is the perfect defense for attacks against the efficacy of one’s method.  “Oh no, the method definitely works: you were just doing it wrong”, which was the calling card for many an Aikido practitioner (shots fired!)  However, let me discuss WHY it is that the very PURSUIT of failure is, in itself, a pyrrhic victory.  Even when we win: we lose.

Keep chasing after failure and you eventually catch it

 

Ok, so first, the phrase “training to failure” is already way more of a clusterf*ck that it ever really should be.  There is only ONE way to fail: unsuccessfully attempt to succeed.  What does that mean?  That means, you have the bar on your back for a squat, you squat down, you attempt to stand back up, but you don’t make it.  You either dump the bar over your head (poor form in a competition) or it falls behind you or crashes onto the safety pins, but in either capacity, you FAIL the rep.  That’s training to failure.  …right?  No!  In order to make “training to failure” more approachable, we’ve decided to allow MULTIPLE definitions of failure to exist in the sphere of physical transformation.  Apparently, you can have “technical failure”, which means once you’re so fatigued that you can no longer execute a repetition with perfect technique.  Folks, you’ve most likely SEEN how my technique looks: if I operated off technical failure, all my sets would end at the first rep.  And if we’re advising new trainees looking to grow to train to TECHNICAL failure, they’re simply NEVER going to achieve any manner of meaningful training volume, because they’re going to cut ALL their sets short.  Some, instead, decide to focus on bar speed, and say that we’ve reached failure once we experience a significant slowdown in repetition.  Once again, I stand before you as the mutant that proves the rule, because I am effectively slow twitch given sentience, and even my warm-ups move slow.  But I also know I’m not the only one out there.  We are legion: those of us that can take the first rep and have it look like a 1rm only to manage to eek out 8 more reps.  If we terminated the set based on slowdown, we, simply, would never train.  So, already: failure has failed us.

 

But it gets worse my friends!  Let’s say a trainee DOES decide to take “training to failure” to it’s most literal (and correct) definition: we find that these trainees construct the TRAINING to suit the method, rather than the other way around.  What do I mean?  I gave the example of a squat for training to failure, and with that, you can already see the issue at hand.  If we’re training 3x10 in the squat “to failure”, this means, on set 1, we attempt to squat the weight, fail, let the weight crash onto the pins of the safety bar, strip all the weights off the bar, re-rack the bar, reload the bar, and then repeat this WHOLE process for 2 other sets, before moving onto the rest of our workout.  For one, this is going to flat out be EXHAUSTING, and for two, your gym owner is most likely going to kick you out of the gym after set 2.  So the method is non-viable right?  WRONG!  The solution is simple: let’s just pick ONLY movements that we can “safely fail” on.  What does this mean?  Basically all machines and isolation exercises.  Failing on a bench press can quite literally end your life: failing on a set of lateral raises results in a small cramping sensation in the deltoids.  There’s practically ZERO risk of injury…and practically zero opportunity for success…

Whereas some movements have no opportunity for success but MASSIVE risk of injury

 

Folks, I don’t care who this upsets: a program of all machine isolation exercises is NOT going to result in successful physical transformation.  I don’t want to denigrate exercise: if you’re getting out there and being active, I am happy for you.  HOWEVER, if your goal is meaningful physical transformation, such an approach is NOT how you get there: it’s more suited for senior citizens looking to stave off sarcopenia.  Look at ANYONE that has ever achieved meaningful success in regards to physical transformation, and almost 100% of them have spent SOME time under a heavy barbell with a set of squats, or did SOME manner of heavy pulls, or in some way, shape or form, performed training with a movement that was NOT ideal to train to absolute failure.  These big, heavy and hard movements FORCE the body to grow, because they place such a significant demand on the body to change, whereas a set of curls with an elastic band until you “feel the burn” is most likely just going to cause you some elbow tendinitis.  But again, because the trainee has prioritized failure above all else, they are excluding the very movements that are crucial to their development BECAUSE they can not use them to achieve failure.

 

Because what is fundamentally happening is that trainees are seeking “feedback” WITHIN the training session, due to our intense need for instant gratification and inability to appreciate long term investment/growth.  The reality is, the mark of success from a training program does not occur WITHIN the workout, but OUTSIDE of it.  We grow when we RECOVER from the training: not within the training itself.  This, in turn, means monitoring and tracking our outcomes to determine the efficacy of our training…which is wholly unsatisfying for a trainee who “wants it now”.  Instead, it’s FAR more satisfying to completely obliterate a muscle by smashing it to failure, walking out of the gym and saying “I had a good workout: my muscles are exhausted”.  But did we come here to exhaust our muscles…or did we come here to grow?  And if it’s the latter…is that happening?  Or are we, instead, just constantly exhausting our muscles in our pursuit of failure and achieving exactly that which it is that we pursue: failure.  Perhaps, instead, a fight wherein we “live to fight another day” is more what we shall endeavor to?

If you know, you know

 

Training to failure is a TOOL in our toolbox that we can employ in order to achieve a desired outcome: it is not the outcome itself.  If all we do is chase after failure, we will eventually catch it.  Instead, we must understand the context wherein such an approach CAN work, which is, most likely, within a limited window of a training block.  It must be employed strategically, within a given context, under the consideration of recovery, with a goal of achieving growth.  Look at male gymnasts, weightlifters, powerlifters, sumo wrestlers, American football players, etc: we can clearly see many instances wherein strong, muscular bodies were built WITHOUT needing to approach failure in training.  Training to failure can be A way, but it is certainly not THE way: don’t let it get in YOUR way.     

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”.