SIMPLE IS HARD: OPTIMAL IS EASY

I’ve written on many occasions about the bane that is the hyperfocus on optimization at the expense of doing the things that actually MATTER when it comes to physical transformation, and it dawns on me at this point that what we’re observing is yet another form of advanced laziness on the part of those who claim they desire said transformation.  It’s no secret that physical transformation is a long and arduous process, and it’s ALSO no secret that humans, in general, detest such processes and desire ways to make it faster and easier.  Enter optimization, because the more we examine optimization, the more we realize that the optimal “tweaks” are just that: small, easy adjustments that are supposed to yield maximal output for minimal investment, but, in truth, they yield minimal output for minimal investment when performed in the ABSENCE of those initial simple interventions that necessitate LARGE adjustments in order to, in turn, yield large outcomes.  Allow me to demonstrate.

Feel free to check my math here

 

Over the years, I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite simple interventions as it relates to having significant impacts on physical transformation.  This is the much beloved “80% solution”: the gameplan that’s going to get you very near your ultimate goal, and leave it up to you to get the rest of the way.  Much like my development of “Chaos is the plan: the plan”, the driveby advice I’d offer to someone wanting to radically transform themselves would be: eat only whole/unprocessed food while aiming to get 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight per day WITHOUT protein supplements, walk 8k steps per day, to include 3 10 minute walks after meals, engage in resistance training 2-3x per week, drink only zero calorie beverages, sleep at least 7 hours per night.  Honestly, this is another great “e-book in a paragraph”, and if I wanted to flesh out what to do for the resistance training, I COULD just throw in the “Chaos is the plan” program and call it a day.  But observe the reality of what is written here: it’s simple, but it is NOT easy.

 

I’ve recently taken to lamenting the tragic state of our food environment, but in summary: the deck is stacked against us in the modern age.  It, truthfully, should NOT be hard to eat only unprocessed/whole foods, but for a lot of folks this is going to be a SIGNIFICANT undertaking.  They’re going to have to restructure their entire lives, most likely spend some time learning how to shop and cook, possibly buy cooking equipment, etc.  A call to drink only zero calorie beverages will be an eye opener to many folks regarding how they don’t ever actually drink ANY water whatsoever (self-included: I lived off diet soda).  People tracking their steps suddenly discover that they’re racking up 2k in an average day. And this isn’t even speaking to the possibly withdraw symptoms people may experience as a result of coming off “the dope” of the chemical crapstorm that is contained in many processed foods, or the actual cessation of drugs and alcohol as a start of this process. 

It's sad how fitting this metaphor is

But, appreciate the reality that NONE of these interventions are complex.  People bemoan how “complicated” health and fitness is when it comes time to start, but ultimately that’s a result of hucksters trying to make a buck by making fitness APPEAR complicated so that they can sell you a solution.  Because no one is going to make money selling what I outlined up above, yet, as far as results go, taking these simple interventions is going to yield MASSIVE returns on investment.  Legitimately, if everyone on Earth did this, we’d extend our livespans, eradicate many diseases, and no one would want to be a doctor anymore because there’d be no money in the business. 

 

Optimization, on the other hand, tends to be incredibly complex and, in turn, something sold by the aforementioned hucksters as a solution seeking a problem.  Eating whole foods?  Nah, what you NEED to do is make sure you take a FAST absorbing protein paired with a low molecular weight carbohydrate 38 minutes into the lifting session the MAXIMIZE anabolism, or else the workout doesn’t count.  But THANKFULLY we have that pre-mixed into a powder that tastes like Fruity Pebbles that you can put in your shaker bottle before going home and order Door Dash.  You don’t need more sleep: you need more pre-workout!  THAT is how you’re going to maximize gym performance, and instead of engaging in a sleep hygiene ritual, you can just take ANOTHER powder.  And how will we solve getting the necessary protein to gain muscle?  Why yet ANOTHER powder: this way we won’t have to deal with all that messy cooking or yucky “real food”: we can just have ice cream and protein powder.  The powder absorbs better anyway!

We got this all locked down!

 

This is the primary reason why folks hyperfixate on optimizing rather than settling for “good enough”: because the optimization part is the EASY part.  People like to argue that they already have the basics “locked down”…but do they really?  Are they actually sticking with the resistance training long enough to see a training effect, or are they changing programs every 4 weeks in order to continually re-activate the novel effect of training and feel sore all the time without any actual progression?  Are they ACTUALLY complying with the nutrition, or is it Monday through Friday on point and weekends are a free-for-all?  Did they pick binge watching Netflix over getting in their steps today?  Or, in an ultimate sense of irony, did we spend all day binge consuming media regarding optimization that we forgot to actually engage in our 80% solution? 

 

And again, it’s also why confusions exists amongst the ranks, because when you get the big names together in a room to talk, all they talk about IS optimization BECAUSE they have the simple interventions locked down…but for real for them.  It wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for them to talk about eating whole foods for all their meals because they already got that sorted out.  And, if they have any interest in getting traction regarding what they’re discussing, they know people are going to disconnect once the conversation goes toward the basics.  But there are a few holdouts out there that are still beating this drum, with Dan John, of course, leading the charge, but there are a few others worth seeking out as well.  What we can take from this is the accuracy of Occam’s Razor: wherein often the simplest solution is the most correct one.  And, in turn, we can appreciate the inverse relationship between complexity and difficulty.  Which, in and of itself, can be extrapolated as it relates to training a more advanced trainee, such that, if we’re in a state where we need to increase the COMPLEXITY of the training in order to achieve a training effect, it means that the solution is not ALSO to increase the INTENSITY of the training program.  A beginner trainee MAY simply need to train HARDER in order to get better, but as we trend up the scale of ability, we may need to actually ease off the throttle a touch in order to implement methodologies that allow us to continue achieving our desired outcome.              

THOUGHTS ON SQUATS

I’ve been training the barbell squat since 2003.  Steely eyed readers will note that this does NOT line up with my persistent claim of (as of this writing) having lifted weights for 26 years.  This is, of course, a testament to the reality that, in 1999, when I first started lifting weights, all I had was an adjustable standard weight bench with spinlock collars with a leg extension/curl/preacher curl station built in, along with some spinlock adjustable dumbbells, which meant I, of course, only did bench and curls 5 days a week, with some occasional leg extensions and curls.  And then I joined our football team for 1 season, wherein our coaches demonstrated the barbell squat to us and then promptly informed us it was a dangerous lift that would hurt our backs and that we shouldn’t do it.  Yeah: our program wasn’t super great.  So I spent my formative high school years NOT squatting: it wasn’t until I got to college that saw OTHER lifters performing this “dangerous” movement that I got the gumption to actually give it a try (fun fact: THAT college weightroom had a rule against DEADLIFTS, because THOSE lifts were dangerous, required a high degree of skill, and could hurt your back.  You’d get kicked out if you were caught deadlifting…so I called all my deadlifts reverse hack squats.  Also fun fact: this was the same college gym Jon Andersen lifted in…)  This incredibly long and undesired background story is here just to establish my bona fides as it comes to the following thoughts, observations and blasphemy I’m about to express regarding the squat, but why don’t I provide a little more background: the ONLY way I knew how to squat from 2003 to about 2023 was a low bar squat.  I never even tried high bar.  I then went through a stint of ONLY doing high bar, no belt, stupidly full ROM squats for about 2 years before returning back to my beloved low bar squat, for reasons I will discuss momentarily.  But for now: here are some thoughts on squats…

 

IT’S A BODYBUILDER: NOT A LEG BUILDER

And a soul crusher

Alright, before I get any further, let me clarify that when I say “squat”, I’m referring to what many other people call “the back squat”.  Since I’m pedantic, I do NOT call it the back squat.  Saying “THE” squat means it is, by default, with a barbell on your back.  All other squats are variations of this squat, and I’m not going to say “back squat” the same way I’m not going to say “overhead” when it comes to the press.  So anyway…

 

The squat always comes under fire in discussion on building muscle because of the fact that we have numerous various studies that absolutely confirm that there are tons of better movements out there for building leg muscles.  Leg extensions, leg pressing, belt squatting, and I’m sure various other machines and exercises have all come out ahead of the squat.  And this argument is used to remove the squat from muscle building programs, saying that it’s an obsolete movement and there are better choices out there for building the legs.

But still not this

 

This is missing the point.  The function of the squat in a mass building program is not, specifically, the building of the legs: it’s the building of the body as a whole!  And as much as glasses pushers wanna make a meme out of “squats make your arms grow”, there’s a reason the old school folks believed that maxim.  For a while, the idea was that training large muscles released more growth hormone, and though that may be true, the amount raise is, most likely, inconsequential.  No, my thought (yes, it’s my theory, the joy of solipsism is I don’t have to prove anything) is that it’s the whole body systemic loading of the squat that, in turn, promotes a whole body systemic RESPONSE to grow from the load.  THIS is why the squat features so heavily in mass building programs, like Super Squats, Mass Made Simple, Building the Monolith, Deep Water, much of the work of Stuart McRobert, Paul Anderson’s training, etc etc.  It’s not about the bending and extending of the legs, because if that were the case the leg press would be an adequate substitute here: it’s about the time spent with a load on your shoulders compressing your entire body.  Let’s use a little philosophy to compensate for a lack of biology here with this follow on explanation.

 

We take it as a given that, if you train a muscle DIRECTLY, that muscle responds by growing (assuming the training is correctly executed of course, balancing stimulus against recovery and fatigue).  It’s the whole reason isolation exercises exist: we want to target THAT muscle and make it grow.  But we ALSO know, through studies and experience, that even if we train only ONE side, the OTHER side of the body will respond.  If we train ONLY one arm, the other arm will STILL grow in response to this stimulus.  The body does NOT want to be asymmetrical, and will attempt all manner of hormonal and metabolic tomfoolery to be able to achieve balance even if we ham-fistedly try to make it do otherwise.  This is why you’re advised to train the uninjured side when you have an injury: in order to limit the amount of muscle lost during the recovery process.  When we take both of these ideas to be true, we understand something Dan John has been saying to us for years: the body is all one piece.  It actually CAN’T be isolated.  Even when we try to do so, the stimulus travels to the OTHER side of the body.  Which stands to reason, then, that even IF we’re doing “squats”, and the targeted muscles are in the legs, due to the sheer load of the exercise being placed across the ENTIRE body, the entire body will, in turn, grow.

 

THE WORSE YOU ARE, THE BETTER YOU ARE

Yeah, kinda like this

 

Referencing even more Dan John, he talks of the 4 quadrants of lifters: pullers, pushers, hingers and squatters.  In this case, we’re going to ignore those first 2 and speak specifically to hingers and squatters.  Some people are naturally built to hinge, and some are naturally built to squat.  If you need examples of either, Mark Felix, Steve Goggins and Layne Norton are natural hingers, while Tom Platz is going to be our example of a natural squatter.  Why do these distinctions matter in this discussion of the squat?  Because it further reinforces the notion of the squat as a BODYbuilder rather than a leg builder.  Because for certain naturally built squatters, it may actually BE the case that the squat is an awesome leg builder.  Tom Platz built the most noteworthy set of legs in the world relying primarily on the squat, and set a feat of strength so incredible with his 525lb squat for 23 reps that Bill Kazmaier flat out said it was fake and it took 30 years, lots of drugs and about 100lbs+ more bodyweight for anyone else to top it.  In turn, though, when you watch the footage of Tom squatting, you see a human that was practically lab built to execute the squat.  His legs are short, his torso is long, and each rep looks like machine precision, with a bolt upright torso and feet close together.  Kaz referred to these as “sewing machine squats”, like the needle in a machine bobbing up and down.

 

Compare this to the natural hingers I referenced.  You look at their bodies and see long, gangly legs with short torsos.  When they squat, they lean far forward, practically in a good morning, and the ROM of the squat is a journey that would give Frodo pause.  It takes FOREVER for these folks to find depth, and the return from it is an agonizing and awkward process: EXACTLY what we need for growing!  I suppose they said the same thing about middle school.

Keep in mind he was the first person to squat 1100lbs in competition, so it's not like he was a BAD squatter...

Because, again, the squat is building our BODY through a prolonged systemic load.  Super Squats figured out how to extend the duration of the load by use of the breathing mechanic, Dan John figured out how to do it by just cranking the reps up to 50, Jon Andersen figured out how to do it by forcing you to do 10 goddamn sets of 10, but examples abound, we observe how spending significant time stressing the body under load results in the body growing significantly.  This means that those UNNATURAL squatters are going to get even MORE benefit from the squat as an exercise that builds the ENTIRE body by nature of them being poorly suited for the squat.  Each rep is going to take FOREVER to get done and will place the body under significant stress, whereas the natural squatter may, in fact, find that the squat is an EXCELLENT leg building exercise because they are actually built to benefit FROM the squat as a leg builder.  These folks may, actually, need to learn more into hinging as a means to achieve a similar effect.  “May” being the word there: I bet squats still do an excellent job of growing those folks too.

 

THE ROLE OF THE SQUAT

Close enough

The big takeaway from all of this is that the squat needs to be evaluated against its actual intended purpose, AND it must be implemented in a similar manner.   When I want to grow, I put a bar on my back.  I KNOW it’s going to do the job.  But when I need to start getting stronger?  The bar moves off my back and in front of me.  Front squats are always my featured lift in Operator phases of Tactical Barbell.  Why?  Because these WILL strengthen the legs for me more than a squat will AND they put less total systemic stress on me, which means I can SAVE that stress for MORE strength work: specifically strongman events that are taxing on the whole body WITHOUT allowing for the same loading I can experience with a squat.  Atlas stones, sandbag carries, log pressing, etc, all tax the whole body significantly, but don’t “build” like a squat does due to how the loading pans out.  There still needs to be a balance between stimulus, fatigue and recovery, and swapping out the squat for a front squat achieves that.  The Safety Squat Bar can potentially achieve a similar outcome as well, simply because loading can be manipulated with it, but I find it a bit more “playing with fire” compared to a front or zercher squat, and tend to still employ the SSB in gaining phases.

 

Dan John (again) has observed that increasing his squat doesn’t tend to have much significant impact on athletic performance, whereas improving the front squat DOES have much better carryover (along with the goblet squat, double kettlebell front squat, etc), BUT that increasing the squat number DOES tend to result in growth in an athlete, which, again, speaks to the premise that we need to employ to squat for its beneficial function.  CAN the squat make your legs bigger and stronger?  Certainly.  Is it the BEST tool to do so?  Most likely not, at least not directly.  There’s a reason we don’t tend to see it prominently featured in the training of strongman or weightlifters, outside of in the off season.  But when its time for us to grow?  It’s hard to find something better. 

 

IN SUMMARY

Yeah pretty much

 

Critiquing the squat as a leg builder is missing the point of the exercise (pun fully intended).  The squat is an excellent movement for what it does: adding size to the entire body.  Shying away from it in a mass building program because there are “better leg exercises” is shortchanging yourself from the benefits contained in a whole body load that comes from this movement, but at the same time, attempting to strengthen this movement in pursuit of improving your own athletic capabilities is most likely putting you at a disadvantage.  And if it feels awful, it’s most likely working for you even better!

      

RESTRICTION: NOT DENIAL

I write this post knowing full well I have a post titled “body by denial”, but, hopefully, longtime readers of the blog will recognize that, ultimately, these past 14 years have been a process of my thoughts changing and, ideally, evolving over time.  Starting off with rough edges and getting refined through experience and exposure, often times with me doubling back right back to where I began, but with a different lens, similar to that “Newgame+” post I wrote previously as well.  And in that regard, I wish to discuss the distinction that exists between restriction and denial, and how it relates to the path of physical transformation.  One of my readers pointed out that all effective training programs and diets employ some manner of restriction.  For nutrition, this restriction can come in 3 different variants: energy restriction (amount of calories we eat), nutrient restriction (cutting out 1 or 2 of the 3 macros) and time restriction (fasting).  In the realm of training, restriction is more far reaching, but ultimately it’s employed in a manner to balance stimulus, fatigue and recovery in a manner wherein we achieve enough stimulus to promote growth without requiring more fatigue than we have the ability to recover from.  We can either push our limits and restrict ourselves by employing a deload week, meaning a week where we DON’T get to push our limits, or we restrict ourselves by always employing a reasonable degree of stimulus so we don’t overfatigue, meaning we don’t get to always go balls to the wall.  But in all these instances, the operating word is restriction: NOT denial.  Because when we restrict, we merely temper the destructive drives for the sake of achieving something greater, but when we deny, we set ourselves up for the inevitably counter-reaction of denial, which tends to set us back further than we progressed, taking 2 steps back for every one step forward.  Let’s continue to discuss.

Had it just been restricted, we wouldn't be in this mess

 

What are the key operating differences between restriction and denial?  I’m going to be terrible and use the word IN the definition, but quite simply put: restriction does NOT deny.  Restriction ACKNOWLEDGES, whereas denial ignores, and as anyone that has ever raised a child understands: ignoring something only makes it become more powerful and urgent.  And it is this underlying understanding that guide the implementation of successful restriction WITHOUT denial.  We must understand that it is imperative we do NOT ignore in our quest to employ restriction, but that we instead acknowledge, so that we can,  in turn, strategize and effectively overcome and succeed.

 

Ok, that’s all pretty conceptual: let’s get to brass tacks.  In the realm of training, let’s say we have that athlete who HAS to go balls to the wall in their training.  They wanna huff chalk and smash their skull on the barbell and they have an ammonia habit that could send a kid to college.  If we tell this trainee to go do Dan John’s “Easy Strength” program, what we do is deny.  Easy Strength is an incredibly effective program, it has a proven pedigree and track record, and, if followed correctly, will make a trainee stronger.  But “if followed correctly” is the operating premise here, and we have to face facts.  Telling Johnny Cocaine that he needs to never come CLOSE to failure and the weight should feel easy for 40 training sessions in a row of the same 5 lifts is flat out denying his nature, and, most likely, he’s going to get through 2 workouts before he decides to make Easy Strength into “Hard Strength” and make all sets absolute and total grinders, and, assuming they SURVIVE the end of the 40 days, they are going to be ground to dust, with a fried out nervous system, a bunch of joint and ligament damage, and completely and totally weaker than when they started.  We attempted to deny this person’s nature, giving them “the best program”, and in doing so, we did them a disservice.

This is NOT how we should look before a set of Easy Strength...

 

For this individual, restriction would be to acknowledge their psychology and find them a program that suits it while putting in the necessary restrictions to keep them from self-destructing.  As previously mentioned, the simplest avenue would be structured deloads, which already are quite an ask for someone like this, but when presented with the idea that “you do these deloads so that you earn the right to be able to smash PRs in training”, we are at least ACKNOWLEDGING this individual for who they are, vs if we give them Easy Strength and say “It doesn’t matter what you like: this is the best way to train”.  And other interventions exist too: some have speculated that “dynamic effort” work at Westside was honestly just a method to get those meatheads to cool down a few days a week, Dan John’s “bus bench-park bench” openly acknowledges the dualistic nature of a trainee and gives them the opportunity to unleash as needed, Super Squats gives you 6 weeks of low rep work to rechamber for the next round of insanity, etc.  And, of course, it all works the other way as well.  We’re not going to take granny and tell her she HAS to do Super Squats if she ever wants to grow, but we will, at some point during the run of Easy Strength, let her know that the weight DOES need to go up at one point, and we can’t just stay in our comfort zone forever. 

 

And we, of course, see this all the time in the realm of nutrition as well.  We like to use the term “overly restrictive” when referring to dietary approaches, but “overly restrictive” simply means “denial”, because it says “no” not “not now”.  People, in the pursuit of physical transformation, will engage in nutritional protocols with SIGNIFICANT amounts of denial, primarily because ANYONE can diet hard for ONE day, or one week, or one month: it’s the consistent, day-in and day-out over the long haul that gets us.  And, consequently, it’s our consistent habits that ultimately define our outcomes: NOT the month long “lettuce and water” diet.  These “diets by denial” can achieve their intended short term outcome, but the long term consequence always leaves the trainee worse off than where they started.  In the realm of fat loss, hardcore crash diets result in the shedding of a significant amount of weight, yes, but this includes a significant degree of lean tissue, primarily because, when you tank the body’s hormones by piling significant stress on it through severe caloric denial, it compensates by prioritizing fat storage and hemorrhaging all that inefficient lean tissue.  So congrats: we’re now a smaller version than we were when we started: not a leaner version.  And while we’ve been denying our hunger for so long, as soon as we allow ourselves to eat again, we enter a compensatory state of hyperpagia, because “the house always wins” when we attempt to deny.  The body has a setpoint, and it wans to get back to that NOW, and it doesn’t care WHAT kind of mass it takes to get there.  So now we gain RIGHT back to our original bodyweight (most likely a little heavier) with LESS lean tissue than before: a significantly worse body composition.  And then, like idiots, we repeat the cycle AGAIN, except this tie we need to eat even FEWER calories to get that weight loss result, because we have less metabolically active lean tissue, which means MORE denial, which means GREATER compensatory binge, etc etc.

It's so predictable we actually have multiple television seasons of it to observe

Successful nutritional strategies do NOT deny: they restrict, and in doing so, they ACKNOWELDGE the individual where they are at.  In the realm of fat loss, we can NOT deny hunger.  Attempting to white knuckle it just results in what I wrote above.  Instead, we acknowledge it and find methods of restriction that manage it.  Some find time restriction the solution: allowing them to eat to satiety by limiting the window of time allowed, such that they can only physically stomach so much food and it happens to allow for fat loss.  Some operate better with macronutrient restriction, finding that, in the absence of carbs or fats, they do not get the same hunger triggers they experience compared to when combining those two macros together (notorious for creating hyperpaltable foods).  Some find that they are “volume eaters”, and can operate well in an energy deficit so long as they are consuming large quantities of food, figuring out methods to take low energy foods and consume large quantities of them.  No singular strategy is “the right one”: it’s the right one for the right individual, and attempting to employ one that is a poor fit simply because we feel it’s “the best” is an act of denial, and, in doing so, an act of sabotage.  And, of course, this was all in the discussion of simply fat loss: you should see what I deal with on the weightgaining subreddits telling trainees that they don’t HAVE to eat their “daily required fiber intake” while in a gaining phase and that it’s OK to eat a protein source that ISN’T chicken breast.  Social media has created so many artificial barriers and methods of denial that I’m so glad I grew up in an era where I was told to drink a gallon of milk a day and I’d be like Milo of Croton.

 

Honestly, this could go on forever.  It’s taken me QUITE a while in my own life to realize and discover this, but there is always a trial of breadcrumbs to follow.  Success leaves clues, as does failure, and I’ve seen firsthand the compensatory binges that happen as a result of denial (reference by 2 year fast food bender after making weight for my last powerlifting competition), and I’ve seen how I thrive when I operate within self-imposed restriction.  Funny enough, I got inspired by this post as I was driving to pick up my favorite Friday meal of a double order of pork spare ribs, sliced and chopped brisket from my favorite local BBQ place after a day of fasting, acknowledging how, due to the restriction I had employed with the fast, I didn’t have to deny myself the joy of delicious BBQ.  I’ve lived pure denial before, and it’s just plain not worth it.

Not when you have a place at home that serves this

A life without restriction is hedonism.  A life of denial is asceticism.  Somewhere in between is humanity, and it’s achieved with restriction.  For we cannot achieve our maximum human potential by denying our humanity, but we must restrict in order to refine, focus, and overcome.        

JRPGS AND WRPGS

I already feel bad for my audience that isn’t fluid in nerd, because this is going to be incredibly nerdy.  Let me start by breaking down the two acronyms in the title: Japanese Role Playing Games and Western Role Playing Games.  These distinctions will matter as it relates to the subject matter I’m about to discuss, and credit to u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog over on r/kettleballs for providing the inspiration for writing on this topic.  I don’t feel like this is even really an intro at this point: me a mea culpa, so let’s actually start talking.

In a few paragraphs, this will be hilarious

 

In the world of video game nerdery, role playing games are constantly divided into 2 categories (which, yes, like heavy metal, there are a million SUBcategories, but we’re not going to talk about them today): Japanese RPGs and Western RPGs. The distinction between these two primarily relates to degree of linearity present in playstyle.  Traditional JRPGs typically provide you with preset characters to play with and a direct path to get there, providing an almost “on rails” experience as you play.  The focus is on making the characters you have strong enough within their own playstyle to be able to get to the end of the game.  WRPGs define themselves through their “open” playstyle, wherein you typically get to build a character/party of characters in whatever style you like, and there are multiple solutions and paths to the end of the game, to the point that you can decide if you want to even be a hero in the first place or play as a villain instead.  WRPGs are like playing a video game coded version of Dungeons and Dragons, while JRPGs feel more like a traditional video game in general, where you’re trying to “beat the game” within its own specific set of rules.  Why even discuss this?  Due to the parallels that exist between this and the world of training.

 

Much like how you can never step into the same river twice, you can never play a JRPG for the first time twice.  The significance of this is that, the first time you play it, you’re discovering it as you go, and the world is magical and incredible (assuming it’s a good game) and the story is full of twists and turns and it’s an epic journey…but the second time you play it, it simply can’t be as magical because you already know what’s coming.  Sadly, in physical transformation, we experience this same phenomenon.  Joel Greene, among others, discuss the premise of how we aren’t able to keep eliciting the same responses to training/nutrition as we get when we first experience them, and how this relates to the necessity of variety in both instances in order to continue growing.  Aside from just newbie gains and the novel training stimulus effect in general, the body is a mechanism built around adaptation, and once it adapts we are no longer forcing it to change.  Super Squats will trigger ridiculous growth the first time you run it, and then pretty decent growth the second time, but if it ALWAYS added “30lbs in 6 weeks”, we’d be 150lbs heavier in just 30 weeks.  The Velocity Diet can trigger rapid fat loss, until our body downregulates metabolism and we’re forced to do some reverse dieting in order to rebuild our caloric runway.  Even my beloved Tactical Barbell necessitates changing the program through periodic training phases to keep growing, as does 5/3/1, as does just general basic periodization.

Change does a body good

So enter the WRPG, wherein we can actually have a NEW experience each and every time we play it BECAUSE it’s on us to make the character that we play and the decisions our character makes as they navigate the world.  You CAN get a new experience with multiple replays of the game, and as you do so you discover more and more about the gameworld.  Games like Fallout New Vegas can have over 100 hours of gameplay tucked away, with various secrets and hidden easter eggs, and hell, I still play the original Fallout released in 1997 and STILL find new things in that game with my replays.  HOWEVER, in order to discover these hidden gems, it necessitates NOT playing these WRPGs like a JRPG: you have to actually be willing to play a different character and do some experimenting.  It’s honestly why I was hesitant to tackle this topic at first: because it was originally proposed from the lens of DnD, wherein, in truth, I’m ALWAYS a barbarian because it’s what I love being, but it is from the branching out and discovering the contents of the game that we learn so much.

 

Which is the lesson we can take to physical transformation: the more we’re willing to get out there and explore, the more we’re able to pick up tips, tricks, hacks and skills that we can apply UNIVERSALLY to the quest of physical transformation.  Aside from the fact that you can avoid stagnation simply through the act of changing the approach, you’ll also learn along the way in order to discover what works best for you AND have a bunch of tools in your toolbox for whenever you encounter a challenging situation.  Much like how various playthroughs of a WRPG can equip you with the necessary background to be able to tackle the problems you encounter from a variety of angles, trying out different programs and nutritional approaches can allow you to personally craft the solutions you need in order to overcome the problems you experience.

I appreciate the irony of this meme being over 20 years old

 

But fascinating enough, we enter into another realm of discovery here: challenges.  Because for avid JPRG fans, this tends to be how one reconciles adding replay value into a game that has preset rules, limits and paths to explore.  In order to make the game “new” again, we impose artificial restrictions on ourselves to see what solutions we overcome.  I’ve played JPRGs where I didn’t allow myself to use magic, where I couldn’t use certain powerful equipment, didn’t allow my characters to level up beyond a certain point, etc.  The game was STILL beatable: but it was up to ME to figure out HOW to come up with the solution in order to succeed.  Since the traditional way “wouldn’t work”, I had to develop new strategies, and in doing so, I once again learned new things about the game that I could apply further.

 

These same challenges allow us to take what is old and make it new again.  Our training doesn’t need to ALWAYS be played like a WRPG: with a completely new take on the game each time. We can replay a game we’ve played before and just implement a new challenge.  I once ran Super Squats where, instead of 1x20 and adding weight each workout, I kept the weight the same and added a REP each workout, until I got to 1x30.  I took Jamie Lewis’ “Famine” workout and ran the whole thing like a circuit, instead of running it linearly.  Running Building the Monolith in under an hour is a challenge many other trainees have taken on.  OR we can take a method that worked for one lift and apply it to others.  I've taken ROM progression from deadlifts and tried applying it to squats and seated pin presses, and I've taken the Zeno squats workout and tried it in combination with deadlifts.  And nutritionally, I’ve run various permutations of the Velocity Diet, the Apex Predator Diet, The Maximum Definition Diet,  and my own “Red Meat and Black Coffee” variant. 

 

How my dietary changes appear to outsiders

Interestingly enough, we’re getting into the area that Dan John describes as “wild, mild and none” in terms of variation, which he originally applied to Easy Strength, but the theme applies universally.  Easy Strength completely captures the JPRG mentality: you’re doing the same workout 5 days a week for 8 weeks for a total of 40 workouts, effectively “level grinding” so you can level up at the end and be stronger than where you started.  Within the workout, there are no forking paths or game changing decisions to be made.  But once those 40 workouts are done, we now have the option to just replay the game again (which, sometimes, for JRPG fans, that’s exactly what we want, just like re-watching a favorite movie or re-reading a favorite book), or we can introduce a “mild” variation (going from flat bench to incline bench) or a WILD variation (going from flat bench to clean and jerk).  And then we have the WILDEST variation possible: we just do a whole new program.  Dan talks about cycling 8 weeks of Easy Strength with 8 weeks of the Armor Building Formula, and we can always throw in a Mass Made Simple block to really shake things up, or the 10k swing challenge…and these are JUST Dan John programs.  If we threw in some 5/3/1 or Super Squats or something else, we’d REALLY be playing something different: like transitioning from Squaresoft (they’ll always be Squaresoft to me, not Squarenix) RPGs to Interplay.  A whole different RULEST to abide by.

 

We’re seeing the lessons we can learn from these games here.  If we’re a JPRG fan and just want to keep running the programs and diet we like over and over again, we simply owe it to ourselves to implement some challenge runs from time to time in order to keep the game fresh.  As much as we may consider Final Fantasy 7 to be the zenith of game design and story, we can only play it so many times in a row before our eyes start to bleed.  And if we’re a WRPG fan, variety is a necessary part of enjoying the experience.  We can’t just keep playing the game the same way over and over again: it’s missing out on the point of the experience.  We must, instead, try new characters and make new decisions and see what we can learn and discover through that process.  We make the most of our games playing them in this way.        

ONE LITTLE SPARK

I recognize the insanity in my own writing, which I’ve often written off as “duality”, because I frequently find myself screaming sentiments that are the exact opposite of what I’ve said almost in the most recent post, and today will be no exception to that.  For though I’ve written much on the subject of going to extremes in order to get extreme results, today I wish to discuss the notion of just how LITTLE it takes in order to make progress.  But, in turn, because of that, we are truly so very liberated in our pursuit of physical transformation, for it means that effectively ANY avenue we take will lead to success: we simply need to take one.  Which, in turn, speaks more toward one of the most significant principles at play here: intention.  And this may well be the missing variable in many folks quest for physical transformation: a lack of clearly understood intent, operating instead of a nebulous constructs, hopes, thoughts and prayers.  And unwillingness to flat out say “THIS is the thing”, perhaps out of fear that, once identified, their intention is vulnerable to critique, whereas an undefined concept renders itself impervious to criticism by means of a “no true Scotsman” defense.  But let us explore just how little is required in order to achieve change, such that we no longer need fear having an understood intent and can, instead learn to embrace just what “one little spark” can ignite.

And now the song is stuck in YOUR head

 

Our current state of existence is alien to our biology.  Our bodies are old (at least 6000 years!  …if you believe certain schools of thought, but realistically more in the hundreds of thousands of years) and were designed to operate in old environments, and in such environments they operate VERY well.  Unfortunately, one of the cool things ABOUT our old bodies is the big brain they carry, and those big brains got our bodies in some trouble, because they went about INVENTING an environment that we were in NO way suited to exist in.  We had bodies built for migration and scavenging, but we created agriculture and a static environment.  We adapted to eating seasonally, but we learned how to force the plants to grow on OUR schedule.  We were built to experience stress in limited capacities, engage our sympathetic nervous system to mitigate the stress, and resume relaxing, but instead created “fake stress” by means of employment, deadlines, social obligations, etc, and put ourselves in a perpetual sympathetic state.  We were built for motion, and then we built chairs.  What is the end result of this?  We have bodies that were built to move, to flux between periods of feast and famine with the changes in the season, to exist in a state of low stress and instead we have locked ourselves down to a point where we can get HUNDREDS of steps per day while eating processed “food like substances” and still be stressed out of our minds without relief.  Our current existence is destroying us.

 

WHICH MEANS that literally ANY intervention is going to be a POSITIVE one as it relates to physical transformation, so long as it is one with intent.  So long as we specifically identify SOMETHING that we are going to do differently than what we are currently doing, we stand to make SOME sort of improvement to our situation, irrespective of how insignificant it is.  Quite simply, this is because, often, the introduction of ONE thing necessitates the cessation of some OTHER damaging thing that is in our current environment.  For an absurd example: if you decided you were going to go on the “Big Mac Diet”, where you ONLY ate Big Macs…this would ACTUALLY be a significant improvement from the current state of existence for the majority of Americans.  If you’re ONLY eating Big Macs, this means you AREN’T eating the fries, milkshakes, office candy, or other processed garbage that exists out there: you’re limited the dosage of your poison.  You cut OUT a lot of junk by deciding you’re only going to eat ONE junkfood.  We’ve witnessed these sorts of interventions work COUNTLESS times: people switching from regular soda to diet soda, people swapping from beer to vodka, from triple whoppers to double whoppers, etc.  When I was 14 and lost 25lbs over a summer, I went from eating 6 slices of pizza during “pizza night” to 3 slices, and from 3 cheeseburgers to 1.  In all these instances, the avenue to success is the same: IDENTIFYING that there is, in fact, something wrong with the current environment and engaging in AN intervention of some variety.

This outcome looks MUCH better than how the Subway diet went for Jared...

Again: this is liberation!  It means we can do whatever we want and make progress, because the only place to go from rock bottom is UP!  Which means we never need to stress on if we’re making “the best decision”, because ALL decisions are the right one.  It simply boils down to you making a decision you can actually sustain.  And THAT is “the rub”.  Interventions only work if you actually abide by them, which is WHY they must be “intentional interventions”.  People that approach transformation by just saying “I’m going to eat better and exercise more” do neither, primarily because they have no northern star to follow.  People that engage in seemingly stupid interventions STILL succeed simply because they actually ABIDE by them.  It’s why “fad” diets and programs work: because they are AN intervention from our currently destructive environment, and often it is the gimmicky nature of them that ALLOW for compliance, because it’s just ONE thing to do.  So many folks are simply lacking in bandwidth AS A RESULT of our ridiculous environment that they don’t feel they have the capacity to navigate anything with any actual nuance, but tell them “don’t eat bread”, “don’t eat after 8:00pm”, “do 300 push ups a day” and they can now approach intervention with intent and, in turn, succeed.

 

So give yourself the permission required to attempt any means of intervention you desire in the quest for physical transformation: it’s ALL going to work.  ANYTHING is better than our baseline, and “one little spark” will ignite a significant change simply because it will get us moving AWAY from center toward something different and better.           

MAKING THINGS EASIER IS MAKING THINGS HARDER

The longer I train, the more I marvel at the reality that, the harder we try, quite often, the SLOWER we go, as it relates to physical transformation.  It’s an interesting bit of biology and alchemy where the body seems to function like a non-Newtonian fluid: resisting more when we push harder yet giving way when we let off.  However, to continue in this trend of irony, it appears that the opposite seems to hold true as well: in our attempt to make things easier IN the course of physical transformation we end up actually making things harder for ourselves.  Specifically, it seems when we attempt to employ scientific advances as a means to supplant nature, nature laughs at us like Crom on his mountain and asks “how’s that working out for you?”  This is because our biology is hundreds of thousands of years old, whereas our science is still quite new, and when the two meet, age triumphs over beauty.  And as is most often the case on this journey of transformation, we perceive this in the realm of training AND nutrition, and most often new trainees commit both of these errors simultaneously, exponentially increasing the difficulty of their journey in their attempt to increase the ease.  Let us discuss.

And nature finds a way

In the realm of training, I’ve discussed previously the topic of training in a state of emotional arousal (psyched up), but to re-iterate: it’s less than ideal.  I know it makes for good social media posts to get incredibly psyched up, blast heavy music, huff ammonia, slam your head on the barbell and crush a grindy new PR set, but once the camera stops rolling and all the likes go away, we’re left having to deal with the SUBSTANTIAL inroad on our recovery we’ve created.  This is because our brain and biology naturally places governors on our physical output in typical circumstances as a means of self-preservation.  Our bodies all possess INCREDIBLE physical potential, reference the stories of mothers lifting cars off their infants in a moment of sheer physical panic, HOWEVER the activation of this potential can be incredibly destructive on a body that has not been conditioned to produce this sort of output.  Stan Efferding has discussed the stretching, as an activity, is less about making muscles more pliable and more about training the body how to RELAX enough to be able to achieve it’s flexible potential, citing the notion that, if you were to render a person unconscious, you could most likely get them into a full splits without an extensive stretching regimen.  Where this relates to a state of emotional arousal is that, in the absence of it, our bodies are designed to exert a certain degree of output, and it’s only through the activation of our sympathetic nervous system (entering a state of fight or flight) wherein we’re able to EXCEED these limitations.  HOWEVER, this is a ancient deeply encoded biological defense mechanism: meant to be employed in EXTREMELY limited circumstances as a means of survival, the body effectively making the bargain that it’s worth experiencing a non-lethal amount of damage LATER if it means saving it from a lethal amount of damage NOW.  Effectively writing a check to be paid off in the future, and the pay is recovery: we need to dump the flood of cortisol, rest, eat, and recover.

 

So now, already, we understand that ALWAYS psyching up for training is putting us in a bad way…now what if we decide to go BEYOND our biological capability to do so by means of some sort of chemical assistance?  Pre-workouts and caffeine supplementation prior to training are incredibly popular among new trainees (AND trainees who SHOULD know better) because they allow one to rapidly reach levels of emotional arousal that are BEYOND what one can normally achieve, to the point that it can happen even if one is not in a state to be ready FOR such arousal.  We constantly hear stories of dudes who “aren’t feeling it” that day, take their pre-workout, and then are ready to tear the doors off the gym.  Folks, that’s a bug: not a feature.  You don’t WANT to constantly be triggering your fight or flight response just go to lift some weights: that response is there for a reason, and this ISN’T it.  Trainees do this because it allows them to lift more weights for more reps in training, and think that THIS is the shortcut to faster gains, but INSTEAD what is happening is their shortchanging themselves on the part of the process that actually GETS them the gains: recovery.  They’re digging DEEPER into their recovery well than their body is naturally poised to be able to recover FROM, and each training session just keeps on digging deeper and deeper.  In order to recover from an unnatural degree of fatigue generated, one would need to employ unnatural means of recovery…and that’s a game of whack-a-mole to discuss for another time.

In fairness, Rocky was drinking raw eggs, which Gironda said was just LIKE a steroid cycle...

 

But in the realm of nutrition we see another interesting manner in which apparent ease has hoodwinked us into greater difficulty, and it’s a surprising source: protein supplementation.  Protein supplements have been around since the 60s, once we discovered just how darn awesome protein is at building muscle, and it seemed like a very logical answer to the problem of just HOW do we get enough protein in our diets.  Interestingly enough though, as more and more research unfolds, we find that we may not need QUITE as much protein as we estimated based off those 1960s numbers (quite possibly due to the fact that the folks that were selling the protein were ALSO telling us how much we needed…but I digress), but irrespective of that, there’s a long established tradition of meatheads trying to take down a LOT of protein in the quest for muscle, and with the recently released new food pyramid here in the states, we’re ALSO seeing predatory food companies engaging in “protein maxing”. This is the latest trend where EVERYTHING is labeled “high protein” by shoehorning some incredibly low quality and cheap protein source into an already chemical crapstorm of a “food product” (yes, “high protein Pop Tarts” are out there) as a means of riding the wave of the cultural gestalt for “health”.  Needless to say, it’s never been easier to get in your protein these days…and that’s the problem.

 

My favorite bit of nutritional advice is “eat only non-processed foods and try to get 1g of protein per pound of lean bodymass”, which, if I ever DO release the Chaos is the Plan training book, that might be what I do instead of “meat and eggs when hungry”.  The reason being is this, if you try to eat 1g of protein per pound of lean mass using ONLY non-processed foods (don’t be stupid, I get it that any food found at a grocery store is “processed” because the butcher had to butcher the meat and the farmer had to harvest the fruit, but the rest of us on planet Earth understand what this word means), you end up making a LOT of good nutritional decisions in general, IRRESPECTIVE of your goal.  This is because we only have SO much stomach space and capacity AND our body’s natural hormones for regulating hunger and satiety (ghrelin and leptin) will effectively auto-regulate intake with that protein goal being the northern star.  If you decide you’re going to try to do this pure vegan, it’s most likely just plain not going to work, as you’ll run out of room or appetite for beans and rice.  If you decide you’re a living carnivore meme and are going to try to do it eating 50% fat pork sausages, our gallbladder will tap out before you get to your protein goals.  You effectively won’t be able to overeat, nor will you truthfully be inclined to, as unprocessed food isn’t hyperpalatable.  And, unless you specifically go out of your way to ONLY eat the leanest protein possible (egg whites, chicken breasts, shrimp, etc), you most likely won’t UNDEReat either, as natural protein sources tend to bring either fats or carbs along for the ride.

You can see the night and day difference in physique outcome

And through this explanation, I imagine you’re already understanding how attempting to make the acquisition of protein EAISER is, in fact, making the whole process more difficult.  For one, let’s consider the fact that almost ALL protein supplements (to include protein spiked junkfood) is artificially flavored and sweetened, which is going to bypass the body’s natural satiety signals and most likely INCREASE hunger rather than satiate it.  We compound this with the reality that protein supplements tend to be devoid of OTHER macrounutrients, being PURELY a source of protein.  So now we’ve rapidly achieved our protein goal for the day WITHOUT having come close to meeting whatever needs we have for other energy sources (fats and carbs) and are found seeking sources for these IN ISOLATION of protein…a completely alien way to eat, and who better to help us meet this demand than the processed/junk food industry that will GLADLY package fats and carbs together with minimal protein in a means to make their food hyperpalatable and prone to overconsumption.  And as Alan Aragon’s protein powder and ice cream (with whiskey) experiment has demonstrated: attempt to live this way is depressing and non-sustainable.  Our current food environment is so toxic that, in an attempt to make the process of nutrition easier by employing a protein supplement to reach our protein goals, we’ve ended up making the nutritional process FAR more difficult, having to rely on willpower and white knuckling to get us to “stay on target”, compared to if we just reached our protein goals by eating real, honest to goodness food.

 

There’s an old saying of “you’ll have plenty of time to do it right the second time”, a cautionary tale of how, in our attempt to rush the process, we end up spending EXTRA time fixing our mistakes and then doing it “the hard way” as we should have done it in the first place, and that continues to hold true here today.   As we attempt to make things easier, we just make it harder.  We’re not going to outsmart our biology.  We need to, instead, work to understand and appreciate it, because it has a LOT of cool stuff to teach us, once we’re ready to sit down and listen.

 

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