MAGIC THE GATHERING AND LIFTING: COLORS

 

 Once again, I divulge just how much of a nerd I am by discussion Magic the Gathering.  I picked up the habit (I use that phrase because it really was an addiction like smoking, right down to going through packs a week and having no money) in elementary school and got full tilt into it in middle school, and have recently picked it back up again with the release of “Unhinged” as a way to teach my kid some reading and math.  Get ‘em hooked young, once again, like smoking.  In re-discovering the game, I’m now able to observe the parallels between it and training and how, through the game, I went through a very similar evolution as I did through my lifting.  Before I continue, I’m going to preface in saying I was a casual player, having played in only 1 local tournament, and that you super nerds out there are most likely going to get extremely upset at my noobness and the terrible ways I summarize the game, but since it’s my blog I get to write what I want.

I'm nerd enough to know that there is no escaping nerd rage

 

For the people that didn’t spent their middle school lunches having food thrown at them by the popular kids while you and your degenerate friends played cards, here’s a super quick summary of magic: there are 5 different colors of cards (white, green, blue, black and red) that each focus on a specific element of the game.  White is holy and focused on protecting the player and gaining as much life as possible (each player starts with 20 life, and when you get down to zero, you lose, but you can get above 20 with certain spells, like the stuff in white).  Red is fire and focused on chaos, destruction and direct damage with powerful spells.  Black is unholy, fixated on death, sacrifice, disease, and the cessation of life.  I only intend to discuss those three colors, but just to not leave you hanging, green is nature and focused on lots of creatures and growth, and blue is deception, misdirection and countering.

 

The reason I intend to only discuss white, red and black is because that’s the evolution my playstyle went through and, in turn, something I realize is the evolution that training goes through as well.  When I started playing, I gravitated toward white.  White made the most sense: it had cards called “circle of protection” that made it that certain color cards simply could NOT cause you damage.  How crazy!  And then a bunch of cards in white made you gain life.  What?!  How can you lose?!  You’re going to be protected from everything AND have the most life.  It’s pretty much broken.  How is this color even allowed in the game?!  Yeah well, it turned out that this was a REALLY boring way to play the game and I still ended up losing a bunch because, surprisingly, NOT losing is not how you win: it’s simply how you stalemate.  You know what kept kicking my butt?  Red.

This is how you tell someone to go f**k themselves in MtG

 

Red, of COURSE: the way you win the game is to get the other guy down to zero life.  What better way to do that than with a color built around dealing DIRECT damage?  I even had a “burn deck”, which at the time was a super taboo deck that had no creatures in it and ONLY direct damage spells.  These decks were hated by other players because it seemed almost entirely indefensible: you just kept getting pounded with damage every turn.  Red, with its intensity and rage and fire, surely the answer to everything.  And yet again, it eventually got boring to just play the exact same game every single time, and people eventually wised up to burn decks and developed specific counter measures to prevent that.  In addition, something I observed with both red and white decks was that, whenever I’d play with more than 1 other person, I was targeting by the other players to be removed from the game quickly so that I was no longer a threat.  It was about denying me a chance to gain momentum.

 

This is when I discovered black: a color I had written off since the beginning.  It seemed like every single black card I read involved the word “lose X life”.  What the hell: who wants to do that?  I wanna stay alive so I can WIN…right?  But then I started reading further, and realized that the life I was losing for these cards was in exchange for VERY powerful effects that no other color could grant me.  While a red card might do 1 damage to 1 creature or player, a black card, at the same cost, would do 1 damage to ALL creatures or players: self included.  I realized this was a HUGE return on investment.  I built a deck around a very common card called “Pestilence”, which allowed me to damage all creatures and players for as much damage as I was willing to spend for, meaning I could effectively wipe out the board if I were so inclined.  Suddenly, my play style shifted entirely.  I no longer cared about winning the game: I just wanted to make everyone else lose.  It frustrated people immensely, because I’d just kill us both and end in a “tie”, but to me, it was a victory because it ended on MY terms.  And suddenly, on multi-player games, NO one ever engaged me on the offensive, because it was understood that, as soon as I took some sort of damage, the gears were set in motion and I’d say “well, if I’m going to lose 1 life, I may as well lose the other 19…everyone else too”.  Sometimes, the best self-defense is self-destruction.

 
See this guy gets it

Man, this post is already getting long, but hear me out: this is EXACTLY what happens in lifting.  You can observe it on your own.  Pretty much every new trainee comes into the game a white color player: all they’re concerned about is self-preservation and protection from damage.  “What’s the safest form of exercise?” “How do I prevent injury?” “How do I keep from overtraining?” “What’s the best thing to eat?” “What’s the most optimal X”, etc etc.  And, just like a white color player, you don’t WIN the game of lifting by playing this way.  Playing NOT to lose is not the same thing as playing to win.  Playing in this style is just going to result in a stalemate which, as far as lifting goes, means no progress, just maintenance at best.

 

And inevitably the lifter becomes a “red player”, upset with their lack of progress by playing it safe they turn to passion and rage as the solution.  These dudes are memes: amped up on pre-workout and heavy metal, screaming at the weights, PR or ER, constant maxing, etc etc.  And just like playing that red burn deck, it sure seems effective at first, especially compared to back when we played white.  And just like that red burn deck, you’re regarded as annoying by everyone else, and eventually that style of play becomes unsustainable.  Much like how everyone at the table gangs up on the burn deck player to remove them from the game before they can build momentum, LIFE gangs up on the red lifter to stop them from gaining momentum.  Injuries can mount up, obligations will limit you, you develop tolerances to your caffeine and pre-workouts, you train too long “on the nerve” and completely fry yourself out, etc etc.  Much like red, the spark is quite, the flash intense, the duration short and unsustainable.

 
The calling card of a Red player

Enter black.  The lifter one day realizes that the only way they’re going to get further than everyone else is through a willingness to sacrifice what others won’t.  The passion has burnt out and things have become calculating and mechanical.  There’s no longer the concern of self-preservation at all costs, it’s no longer about giving as much as you can every single time: it’s about a willingness to sacrifice to make unheard of growth.  Sacrifices of time, safety, the security of a safety net of scientific backing, eating all the yummy food you like all the time, doing your favorite movements, etc etc: it’s the time of sacrifice.  And while life gangs up on the white player and the red player, it leaves the black player alone, because whenever it comes around and tries to impose something, the black player just goes nuts and sacrifices more and more to overcome it.  Injuries are met with Rube Goldberg-esque solutions, limited time results in cutting down sleep to make room for training, limited equipment means nothing but Super Squats for months, etc etc. 

 

For the black color player, the sacrifice isn’t martyrdom: it’s just their playstyle.