Jack LaLanne
had a fantastic quote regarding nutrition: “if it tastes good: spit it
out”. All people looking for the latest
and greatest fad diet, take note: you could do no better. It’s a perfect sound bite, and the guidance
will take of just about everything. And
will it be a fun, enjoyable, diverse, adaptable diet? Hell no, but that wasn’t what Jack LaLanne
was about: he was about strapping 70 boats to his body and towing them 1 mile
by swimming…with his hands and feet shackled…on his 70th
birthday. Jack was about accomplishing
absurd feats over and over LONG into his twilight years: being a ridiculous,
unrivaled physical specimen. And, in a
similar regard, may I offer you, to go along with this nutrition advice, the
training advice of “if it feels good, stop doing it.”
If you look like this, you're not running hard enough
The origin
of this thought actually comes from a conversation between me and my wife. She still thinks it’s amusing how much I hate
training, and when I brought up that I had a squat workout coming up, she
chided me “Yeah, the squats that you hate.”
I affirmed it, but then she shared with me “You know, I LIKE squats…or,
at least, I did, until you had me use the safety squat bar.” To which I reminded her that, after swapping
her to the SSB, she set some running PRs and completed her first Murph
WOD. I chose the implement SPECIFICALLY
because it sucks to squat with it and it makes you stronger all over when you
do it, and suddenly the squat went from an enjoyable movement to one that
sucks: and with it, its effectiveness increased.
Which is why
I struggle when I hear of people that talk about how much they enjoy training,
as, to me, it’s a sign of ineffective training.
In total “no true Scotsman” form, enjoyable training can’t be effective,
because effective training ISN’T enjoyable.
If one is enjoying their training, they are not doing what training is
meant to do: specifically, make one big and strong. Primarily because the body grows bigger and
stronger in response to trauma. And
yeah, science is telling us it’s not about microtears anymore (so I hear), but
the fact remains that body grows bigger and stronger in response to a DEMAND
placed upon it to grow bigger and stronger, and the only reason such a demand
can be placed upon the body is for the body to experience discomfort and
trauma. And, quite frankly, if you ENJOY
discomfort and trauma, you are a literal masochist. (And, as an aside, people will refer to
themselves as sadists on this topic, but that only makes sense if you consider
your body a separate entity form yourself…in which case, maybe you’re ahead of
the game).
Yes: EMBRACE the suck. Keep it platonic please.
And again, I
fully understand that not everyone’s goals are the same when it comes to
training. But, in truth, when it comes
to lifting of weights, I genuinely can’t understand the “enjoyment” factor that
goes into it. Lifting weights is what
OTHER sports do to get BETTER at their sports: it’s the boring training one
does so that they can get better at the fun GAME of their sport. Hell, even in lifting sports, the GAME of the
sport is vastly different from the training of the sport. And so maybe you can have some fun during a
pseudo-events day you slide into your training, but that’s not going to be a
staple of your training: at least, not if your goal is to actually GROW to be
bigger and stronger.
People will
inevitably get stupid about what I’ve written here and think it is, yet again,
some sort of call to trainees to go out and get intentionally injured. Allow me the principle of charity here. You can experience discomfort WITHOUT it
being the result of impending injury and, in truth, as an individual that has
suffered a few catastrophic injuries, allow me to elucidate that there was
NEVER any preceding pain. What I am
talking about is training that is simply unenjoyable due to any variety of
manners that exist that can rob you of joy.
I have done both Super Squats and Deep Water. Super Squats has ONE set of squats: Deep
Water has 10. BOTH are awful, miserable
experiences. Both rob you of fun. In between sets of Deep Water, I would read
old Seanbaby articles just so I could REMEMBER what joy and humor were like
before the next set started. Yet they’re
both completely DIFFERENT means of achieving discomfort and misery. One is the feeling of a barbell crushing you
for 3 to 4 minutes while you try to take the deepest breaths of your life, the
other is the psychological torture of having to get back under a bar after 6
sets of 10 and knowing that, even AFTER you finish this set, you STILL have 3
more sets to go, and that you will be NOT recovered when the rest times
end. And these programs are both
ridiculously effective. Meanwhile, I see
trainees on all sorts of fun, enjoyable, varied, exciting programs…making no
growth.
Just as an example
Lifting
weights is such a poor manner of fun available: why try to turn it into something
it’s not? It’s a square peg in a round
hole. The point of the activity is
self-improvement: not entertainment. In
much the same way that attempts at “edu-tainment’ tend to result in both poor
education AND lame fun compared to simply separating studying and leisure,
“enjoyable training” gives the trainee lackluster enjoyment AND subpar
results. Instead of investing your
energy into trying to find ways to sneak as much fun as possible into your
training, why not invest that energy to INSTEAD figure out how to make the
training as awful as possible so that you get as much benefit as possible from
it, and then you can be done reaching your goals sooner and have MORE time for
fun?
With this
guiding principle as your astrolabe, much like the simple brilliance of
Lalanne, you suddenly have the easiest programming principle possible. You no longer need concern yourself with
percentages and peaking and pet lifts and fun: you simply seek out that which
is miserable and attack it with aggression and brutality. And again, a reminder, this isn’t about being
as STUPID as possible, but about removing all fun from the equation. It’s not about driving nails into your arm
(no disrespect to Kroc) but about looking at your programming and going “Man,
what is something I REALLY don’t want to do today?” and then KNOWING that this
is exactly what you need to be doing.
And when your body goes “that wasn’t’ so bad”, you know it means you
need to make it worse. And when it
decides that it’s going to quit, you KNOW that means you have to do at least 2
more sets. You just absolutely beat it
into the ground until it goes numb and can no longer REMEMBER what fun is, and
then the training is done.
VERY fair chance these dudes forgot what fun is...
If it feels
good: stop. If it doesn’t, keep doing it
until you can’t feel.
Great piece. Going off that middle paragraph, this is yet another great example of the hilariously polar differences between general lifting vs. any sort of athletic training. Definitely an area where I went/have gone wrong as a former athlete and coach, transferring some of that athlete mindset and training approach to our less refined pursuits. Athletic training is always about building capacity, be it technical, load, work, etc. The next training session is the most important training session, because basically every rep and set is an asymmetrical risk for taking an athlete out of play. We accept that athletes likely won't achieve peak strength or muscularity during their competitive career, because that's not what their sport is about.
ReplyDeleteWhat's our asymmetrical risk as lifters? You tore your hammie and spent a couple workouts or weeks working around it. I spent a couple months doing low-load/unilateral training while PT rehabbing a back injury earlier this year. You took a YEAR with the ACL and came out the other side bigger and stronger. By comparison, pain and possible medical costs and a bit of working around the injury is a very balanced risk for the opportunity of putting more into, and therefore getting more out of, a training session.
WR
Always love what you bring to the comments dude. The framing of what we're observing is huge. People want to emulate the training of athletes, thinking that it's the way forward for achieving physical greatness, but the context of "greatness under X constraints" is a big takeaway.
DeleteAnd so what is the "big game" that the average everyday trainee is saving themselves for? People like to say things like "You keep that up and you're going to be sorry when you're 80", but like...really? Is that why we train? To be the most spry 80 year old?
Of course, I DID bring up Lalanne, so it begs the question...
That perspective on injury is big too. I feel like it honestly speaks to the value of just getting injured and getting over it. Hell, I PULLED my hamstring real bad in 2011 and was stupid about recovering it. This time, I had a solid way forward and knew just how to bounce back from it.
I second the whole 'thinking of the body as a seperate entity from yourself' thing - it really makes a massive difference. From protecting the body from any mild discomfort to 'piloting' it towards your ends.
ReplyDeleteI haven't done anything as gruelling as Super Squats, but I've had some tough ass workouts recently and I was just laying on the floor completely exhausted thinking like "holy shit, I still have like 5 more sets of this" and then still managing to do it.
The difference is huge! The thought process can definitely be unnerving to some, but when you form an antagonistic relationship with the body it makes the hard training easier. Instead of "you" giving up, it's just this stupid weak body that wants to quit, and then YOU can decide that's not going to happen.
DeleteLaying on the floor between sets is definitely a sign of something good in the works, haha. I remember when I discovered that during Deep Water. I had never had to do that before, and suddenly all semblance of dignity went out the window and I just needed to not be standing any more.
I wonder if this a thing that depends on the stage of athletic progress. People need to find their own reason and meaning to accomplish the hard, aversive yet necessary work of training to achieve their goals. Seeking fun enables one to focus on something else besides that ultimate goal, which helps the person to have some progress towards their goal and enables them to *ignore* whether their goal is ultimately all that meaningful to them. But where does the serious trainer get their own goal?
ReplyDeleteI think the there's an opportunity for synthesis here. Maybe the serious athlete and the fun run Sunday athlete were once the same - when they were both athletic children, the latter either regressing into it in the name of fun or remaining at that level for the rest of their life, if that.
Children explore, have fun and hopefully develop the sense that barriers can be gradually overcome, thus developing esteem in their own capabilities. Gradually develop their own personal goals that they can delay gratification for. I don't think that one can reason themselves into wanting to become a winner or just a strong SOB, you need to live through a pattern of life that inculcates the need into you. Then it can become a need to progress into athletic adulthood, the world of means-goal analysis and persistence. As 1 Corinthians 13:11 says: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."
It's the fun run athlete who needs to think like a child to continue their exercise pastime. And there's nothing wrong about it in itself. I however have the gnawing suspicion, given how common a sedentary childhood is, that many beginning trainees simply never got to have their athletic childhoods and develop their own goals and meaning that could serve a basis for commitment in reaching their goals. Can it then be a surprise that failure is so ubiquitous? The ego wants to look better naked or become more buff, but the id wants to have fun for it never had the opportunity to develop a lust for pride. The superego then has to cook up candy sauces for the training broccoli - the perfect preworkout, the perfect playlist, the next earth shattering PubMed reading session, feeling satisfied with the pump and admiring it in a mirror, lifting memes, and somehow the trainee thinks they're being genuinely resourceful.
>It's the fun run athlete who needs to think like a child to continue their exercise pastime. And there's nothing wrong about it in itself. I however have the gnawing suspicion, given how common a sedentary childhood is, that many beginning trainees simply never got to have their athletic childhoods and develop their own goals and meaning that could serve a basis for commitment in reaching their goals.
DeleteMythical has never written from the perspective of encouraging or discouraging athletic recreation or participation. This is a first-person blog written by someone who wants to be big and strong, for no target audience other than himself, but which happens to be read by other people. His advice is not advice to anyone other than himself. If it happens to be relevant to you, then great. It's a fascinating premise for a blog.
I've seen your name in the comments before and suspect you know all this yourself, so I'm identifying this for others reading and as a bridge to my next point. The issue of framing is a central one in fitness and sport training. For example, the periodization works considered foundational in sport training (then adapted hamfistedly to general strength training), by Matveyev, were originally written from more of a human resources perspective: how do we manage the Soviet athletic population to enter as many athletes in as many events as possible, giving us the greatest chance to earn as many Olympic medals as possible, to promote our socio-political agenda on the world stage?
It was never about eliciting peak performance from one individual human being doing one specific sport task, and certainly not developing maximal strength and muscularity for a non-sport task. The concept of macrocycles, mesocycles, and microcycles was created to manage a national sport system in a vast nation (with an oppressive political regime). That's not a methods issue, that's a framing issue.
There's absolutely a connection between the long-term athletic development concepts that you're describing, and the issue of this specific blog. Maybe we need a new LTAD term for "long-term meathead development," although the creation of such a pathway would be just as much a fallacy as any other.
WR
Solid discussion, and so WELL above my paygrade that I'm glad you dudes are able to have it, haha. I think there's a lot to be said about the patterns developed in childhood carrying into adulthood. Along with sedentary children, even those that aren't sedentary are far more guaranteed an opportunity to "always win" or, at the least, never lose, during their recreational athletics. Failure can be so rarely encountered in childhood that one can grow into adulthood without the means of developing any coping strategy for it. When the only way you can have fun is by winning, you'll never do anything with any possible risk of not winning (or, god forbid, losing), like embarking on a new fitness activity, pursuing a hard goal, reaching for something beyond your grasp, etc.
DeleteThe discussion on framing is a fascinating one, and well worth taking into consideration. As we keep discovering: context is key, and trying to apply things outside of said context can be disastrous.
Thanks for the comments guys. They're always appreciated, even if I don't get to them in a timely fashion.
I always tell people you don't enjoy training, you enjoy the result of training. I fucking hate doing Widowmakers, but I fucking love the results I get from them. It took me a long time to figure this out. I used to do high volume sets like 10x3 and thought how much I loved doing them but I didn't get as big and strong as I had hoped. Once I started doing 20 rep Widowmakers everything changed. I dreaded squat and deadlift days, but the feeling you get when you complete them is different. I never gained PRs as fast I have doing them. I am not looking forward to the day I enjoy doing them. Great write up man!
ReplyDeleteThanks dude! Absolutely spot on. The same is true of nutrition. People think I have an "iron will" because I can pass up all the "temptations" of foods out there, when the truth is that I've been fat while eating lots of good food before and I HATED being that way. All the good food in the world didn't make me feel any better. Meanwhile, being lean and fit with bland food? That's an awesome experience. The choice is way too obvious.
DeleteLove this one. Personally I've always been a bit of a masochist with training so I actually enjoy running hill sprints till I puke, but this applies to basically every other facet of life that you want to get better at. Lately I've been forcing myself to "eat my vegetables" while playing guitar and practice slowly with a metronome. I fucking hate it but man does it work wonders.
ReplyDeleteThanks man. Absolutely right mentality. The things that get results tend to be the unfun things.
Delete