BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE TO

One of my favorite bits of media regarding training was the interview series Elitefts put on where Wendler did a Q&A session with Kroc.  And in that series, my favorite moment comes right away in part II, where Wendler asks “Why don’t you wear knee wraps” and Kroc offers an impish smile before responding “because I don’t have to.”  You can watch it here

Let me set up some context for you, for those that aren’t totally versed in the Kroc lore.  At the time of this interview, Kroc had already out-totaled the person interviewing him, and did it at 2-3 weight classes lighter.  He had placed/won in the WPO at the Arnold, which, at the time, was the biggest powerlifting competition in the world.  Raw (or RAW, for those of you with simple minds) wasn’t even a thing, the IPF was single ply, and the top strongest dudes in the world who wanted to compete against the others did it in multi-ply at the WPO.  There was NO restriction on gear; wraps were certainly allowed.  After this interview, Kroc would go on to set the all time record total, and did that ALSO without wraps, even though they were allowed.  Every single person Kroc competed against used wraps, and used them to their advantages.  By all reasonable measures, using wraps made sense.

Kroc, seen here, not making sense

To this day, it remains the best possible answer I’ve ever seen to any question of “why don’t you do X.”  There’s no refuting it: all Jim can do is chuckle, because really, what else can you say to that?  And the response came so quickly.  Kroc didn’t have to sit and think, weigh the pros and cons of wrap use, justify his practice with facts, figures, studies (Russian and otherwise), historical precedents, words of gurus, etc etc: the answer was rapidly ready and justified itself.  This interview happened well over a decade ago, yet its wisdom has sadly been lost or never even realized among the training population in the first place.  Last year, I gave you all the mantra of “brute force and ignorance”, so how about for 2019 we embrace “because I don’t have to.”

“Because I don’t have to” is about understanding what is of real value in your training and your life.  So many trainees cram their training with all sorts of meaningless drivel simply because it’s THERE. Without any need for it, they engage in half hour warm ups with 400 mobility drills and foam rolling, they throw in every single gimmicky piece of training gear they can into their workout, they calculate MRV and compare outputs on their tendo units, etc etc.  They do all these things despite the fact that they were progressing BEFORE they started implementing them, or they implement them before they even try training without them.  And suddenly, they’re trapped in a routine of a million different movements that takes 4 hours to complete and they have no idea how else to train, they burn out, don’t have any time to train anymore, and ultimately still look like they’ve never actually set foot in a weight room before.

Clearly, at some point, someone should have asked "Do I have to do this?!"

Everything has a place, but everything also has a TIME, and you need to recognize when that time is.  If you try to do everything all the time, all you end up being is bad at a lot of stuff at once.  This is very very basic periodization, and trainees HATE the idea, because all they ever look at is a finished product.  Its super cool to look at Arnold or Mariusz or Kaz and go “why can’t I be big, strong, and a total freak just like them?” but the individual needs to realize that they’re looking at a finished product of work that stems from MANY decades of training, and in turn they’re observing them at their peak in THAT moment.  Even mighty Arnold lost his abs in the off season, and Mariusz had to learn how to fight when he got into MMA, and he got smaller through that process.  These guys did what they had to do WHEN they had to do it.

And on the converse of that, there’s no shame in NOT doing something you don’t have to do, even if everyone says you have to.  Ok, that previous sentence was a triple negative, so let me explain.  I am notorious for doing zero mobility work, never warming up in competition, barely warming up in training, and having “bad form” as far as the internet is concerned.  I never hit depth on squats in training, I don’t push my head through on overhead presses, my back rounds frequently, etc.  And why is that?  Because I learned a while ago “I don’t have to”.  These are things I simply don’t have to do if I want to succeed and meet my goals.  And it GREATLY upsets vocal members of the internet, because it causes them cognitive dissonance to see someone succeed NOT doing what they do.  And they will get violently upset about it, and call me all sorts of horrible names and insult my intelligence and legitimately wish harm upon me…because I train differently than they do.  I like to think of myself as crazy, but these people are certifiable. 

How I view these exchanges

Look; I’ve not ruled any of this stuff out.  I’m sure it has a place: I just don’t have to do it.  Not right now.  “Yeah, but you’ll WISH you did it later”.  Dude, it’s been 19 years; I’m not sure how much longer I can train the “wrong” way before I start suffering from it.  I have too many things I HAVE to do right now to start wasting any of my training time and effort on things I don’t have to do.  And what I have to do is going to be different from what you have to do, or what other trainees have to do: we have our own weaknesses to bring up, and our own strengths to fall back on.  Your job is to be able to sort out the signal to noise out there and know what is what YOU have to do.  Every year, something becomes the new “thing”, and everyone starts doing it, and everyone who doesn’t do it is an idiot living in the past…and then another year passes, that thing falls to the junk pile, and a new thing takes its place.  Don’t fall for these traps; learn what YOU have to do, and do that.

Give yourself your own interview this year, and see how many questions you can respond with “because I don’t have to.”  For those that you don’t have that response, you now recognize your weaknesses and what you need to improve on.  If you ask yourself “Why don’t I do more conditioning work” and your response is “Because I don’t have the time/I’m lazy/it sucks/I don’t like it” etc etc, you’ve hit step 1 of the 12 step program and identified you have a problem.  But, if you ask yourself a question, look at you current trajectory and find yourself satisfied with your course, you can fire back with “because I don’t have to.”