MAYBE YOU SHOULD JUST QUIT

A few years ago I was at a Bill Kazmaier seminar, which, if you’ve not attended one, you owe it to yourself to do so.  Bill has an incredibly rich history in powerlifting and was one of the founding fathers of strongman, and he’ll even discuss his time in pro-wrestling if you prod him to do so.  He also is completely unafraid to share his opinion on anything and anyone, and much like many of the other greatest of all times, he shares a general frustration with people who just can’t try as hard as he did.  One of the best quotes from his seminar was a bit of wisdom he shared (paraphrased) “if you’re having a rough time with this lifting weight stuff, what you should consider doing is just take 2 weeks off, think about what you’re doing…and then just quit”.  This soon became one of my favorite parts of the seminar, because it’s something I’ve employed to a variety of questions and comments I encounter in lifting.  For a lot of folks, quitting may in fact be their best option.

This dude definitely shoulda known when to fold 'em

Worried about genetics?  Yeah: maybe you should just quit.  I’m so sick of people crying about genetics when they’ve only trained for a few months.  “But my friend has trained just as long as me and he’s in MUCH better shape than me”, yeah, cool, and some folks were born without legs.  If you have all your limbs and the normal number of fingers and toes correctly distributed, you are incredibly genetically blessed: so go do something with it.  Go train skull splittingly hard for a decade and THEN find out where your genetics leave you.  Because there’s something funny about that: once you do that, THEN other people will start telling you you’re genetically blessed.  I come from a total stock of non-athletes, my dad is 5’8, my mom is 5’, they’re both tiny framed people, yet I constantly have people tell me that I must have “good genetics”.  They’re just those special kind of good genetics that only turn on after 20 years of training.  And I’m talking a decade of uninterrupted training, not the “off and on” training that is FAR more “off” than on.  If you’re willing to quit before you ever start, maybe you should just quit.

Worried about injuries?  Yeah: maybe you should just quit.  Everything has risk and there is no guarantee of safety in any activity, and your constant hand-wringing and pacing is, quite frankly, getting on my nerves.  How about some goddamn power of positive thinking for a change?  And you safety-minded people already confuse the f**k out of me by the choices you make.  Ok, cool, you’re not going to bench with a thumbless grip because it’s “too dangerous”, but you’re going to speed on the highway while texting and driving, not come to full stops at stop signs, not use your turn signal, etc etc?  You’re going to drink alcohol (a literal poison), eat known carcinogens, shower without an anti-slip mat, not get a flu shot, not chew your food properly but bench pressing is where you think the REAL danger is?  And folks, I’m guilty of a lot of the above, because I understand life has risks and we take risks in the pursuit of the things we want.  If you’re too crippled by fear of injuries to ever actually push yourself to the point of achieving something, maybe you should just quit.  I hear kazoo is a lovely hobby.

Or you could take a more crossfit style approach to music

Worried about getting fat?  Yeah: maybe you should just quit.  Ever notice how much we mock the folks that are afraid of getting “too muscular”, as though it happens overnight, yet whenever someone worries about getting too fat this mockery doesn’t occur?  It’s the same goddamn process folks: eating more food and the accumulation of mass.  The sole difference is WHAT kind of mass is accumulated.  You’re not going to accidentally become fat: there will be signs and indications along the way.  In turn, it’s not going to happen overnight.  I’ve seen so many idiots critique 5/3/1 Building the Monolith saying that the eating plan will make you fat, and my response is always the same: if you get fat in only 6 weeks, you were already fat to start.  No one goes from ripped to fat in the span of 6 weeks while following a program like that.  In addition, if you’re absolutely, totally and completely unwilling to put on even the slightest bit of fat in the pursuit of physical greatness, if you’re unwilling to let your 6 pack go to a 4 pack, if you’re unwilling to suffer just the smallest inconvenience in order to actually achieve something, maybe you should just quit. 

And I feel the slightest bit of guilt over the fact that I didn’t really address the whys and hows on the topics I discussed in the above, but the truth is that I’ve done that before elsewhere, as have many other authors, which, in turn, is part of the reason behind my advocacy of quitting.  This information is already all out there, and we all know it.  If, at this point, you just don’t want to accept it, quitting is your best choice.  And there’s nothing wrong with quitting: not every activity is suited for every person.  I have an electric guitar and amp in my basement right now that I have moved between 3 different houses and haven’t played at any of those locations.  It just gets moved, and serves as a reminder of something I took up and subsequently quit because I was unwilling to do what it took to get good at it.  Rather than bang my head against the wall or complain to anonymous strangers online about how unfair it was that guitar wasn’t easy for me, I accepted my losses and moved on.  I’ve quit quite a few things in my time.  Knowing when it’s time to quit is valuable.  Recognize these signs in yourself, and when it comes down to it, ask yourself if quitting is the best move.

This dude definitely should have asked the question earlier

And if you refuse to quit, then just shut the hell up, put your head down, settle in, and go do some damage.