ANTAGONISTICALLY STRONG

Folks, I’ve come to terms with something: I’m a jerk.  I really am.  Twice this week, instances have reminded me of this.  And amazingly enough, it was RUNNING that inspired this instead of lifting.  As many of my regular readers know, I engage in the Murph Memorial workout each year in May, typically on or around Memorial Day.  This year, I’m doing it twice: I did it once on the 18th as part of a group workout my work was putting on, and I’ll be doing it again this Sunday with my wife, as she wanted to give it a try.  The group workout was put on by a local crossfit affiliate, and when I showed up, I discovered, much to my horror, that we were going to WARM UP before we did the workout.  As many of you know, my warm-ups are sparse, if at all existent, and the sheer notion of doing this before such a challenging workout was mind boggling to me.  The last thing I was going to do was change how I had been training on the DAY that I needed to perform.  When the group went for a 400m warm-up run, I stayed behind.  Someone asked me why, and I responded with “I’m not about to go run before I go run.”  The person took that response, said it made sense, and then went about with their warm-up.  Later that week, my work hosted a 5k run that I partook in.  Training for Murph got me into good running shape, and, in turn, I ended up coming in first.  Unbeknownst to me, among our group was a running analyst, whom I had passed at the end of the run.  This gave them time to analyze my gait from behind, and, in turn, they informed me that I have an awful running style, marred with poor form and technique.  My response, was once again simple: “I beat you, didn’t I?”

Perhaps it was my footwear affecting my stride

And it’s forced me to reflect a little bit here.  I AM a jerk, but my hand has also been forced in that regard, because I just simply cannot buy into so many of the things that are so cool and fun and popular and en vogue and party approved.  I’m now a 20 year veteran teenager, which means I’ve perfected counter-culturalism simply for the sake of not liking popular things, and it reflects in the things I obsess over.  But, in turn, I feel I’ve accomplished so many unique things that these folks that just do the same thing everyone else is doing haven’t, nor will ever, due to their approach.  I’ve written before about how you have to do abnormal things to get abnormal results, and the trend continues.  I’m honestly at the point now where, if I hear an idea being championed enough, I know it’s a bad one.  Or, if nothing else, it’s at least ineffective for my own goals.

I aim to be antagonistically strong.  That is to say, I am to be strong in spite of all the things out there that tell me that, by all accounts, I should NOT be strong.  I aim to be strong even though I use poor form, bad programming, the wrong nutrition, poor sleep hygiene, no mobility or stretching, etc etc.  Why?  Because I am proof of concept that people aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are, and that maybe we’re overcomplicating this whole thing a bit too much.  Maybe, just maybe, instead of foam rolling and cryobaths and 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep and perfect mobility patterns and not an ounce of scar tissue to be found, maybe the results can be realized simply through hard work over a long time.  Maybe, if you never warm-up, you’ll never NEED a warm-up. 

I'm always warmed up

And if you can’t be an example, you can be a warning, right?  Maybe it’s all going to come crashing down one day, like so many people predict it will.  Maybe I’ll get my due, and be broken and ruined.  Or maybe I’ll die TOO early to see the effects of my training, an accusation I recently saw levied against Konstantins Konstantinovs as something of the ultimate grasping at straws.  But hell, at least that’s SOMETHING different than the norm. 

Because man, I might get broken LATER, but some of you folks are already broken NOW.  Why do you need to spend 30 minutes warming up for a 60 minute workout?  Why not just warm-up for 5 and then you have 85 minutes to train?  What good is your expert running technique doing for you if you get beat by a guy missing 20% of his meniscus with an obese BMI?  Your prime is going to rapidly vanish at this rate, and you’ll spend so much of your life being OLD while you spent all of your youth living like you were already there.

Youth truly is wasted on the young

And with this approach of being antagonistically strong, you’ll never run out of motivation or goals.  So many people are out there putting limits on others and saying what’s impossible that it can easily trigger your “a-hole response” protocol.  Apparently, that’s in full effect on me, because as soon as I see someone saying something isn’t possible I’m quick to give it a try and prove that wrong.  At my Murph workout on Saturday, they taught us how to kip, because they said trying to do the full 100 pull ups with a weight vest strict would be too big of an undertaking.  I had already planned to do them strict, but this just drove it even more home.  Can’t gain on low carb?  Watch me.  Can’t make your running and lifting better at the same time?  I got this.  Need a coach if you wanna do cleans?  Nope.

So many trainees are lost, because they just see the same routines everyone else is doing and get hooked into the gameplan and, after a few months, ennui sets in and they wonder if this is some sort of life they’ve been doomed to.  Well here’s how you relight that spark: start becoming bigger, stronger, fitter and faster in spite of all that you do.  Be antagonistically strong and overcome the status quo.