ON LEMONADE

  

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” is one of the most stoic pithy phrases out there that people are willing to drop at a moment’s notice whenever a bit of misfortune occurs.  However, the truth is, this expression could be SO much more inspiring if people were willing to look a little deeper.  Specifically at the fact that life will NEVER give you lemons.  And by that, I don’t mean in some grand cosmic sense that all of your bad luck and misfortune is self-generated and that life only seeks to provide for the good and it’s merely how you respond to that stimulus that causes you misery ala what Marcus Aurelius wrote in “Meditations”: I mean lemons literally do not exist in nature.  It’s true: the lemon as we know it is a hybrid of a bitter orange and a citron.  Someone or something OTHER than life MADE the lemon, and then, after we got done making lemons, THEN we made lemonade.  Just imagine how much more powerful the expression has now become: “When life DOESN’T give you lemons, go make lemons.  Then, go make lemonade.”

As usual, Bender is right

 

I honestly really dig this because it can go in a couple of different directions.  First, let’s tackle the obvious: this is about genetics.  Anyone who has read my blog knows how much I love to discuss this, primarily because it’s the immediate go to for those who fail to accomplish anything in training.  Trainees with a whopping 3 months of off and on training will instantly bring up how awful their genetics are and THAT’S why they can’t grow.  I already wrote in my last post about how you’ll get no sympathy from me, but folks: it’s time to go make some lemons.  You can’t control your genetics, nor can you control the genetics of others (I mean, you can genetically engineer things now, but that’s getting off topic), but you CAN control how hard you apply the things you have.  I’ve always said that some dudes are gonna be bigger, stronger, faster and better than me, but I’m not gonna let any mother f**ker be CRAZIER than me.  Life didn’t give me the lemons of natural athleticism, and it takes me a LONG time to grasp very basic physical skills, I have zero explosiveness, I am long limbed with a short torso and a slight frame with a shoulder that slips out of the socket if I turn over funny in my sleep or shampoo my hair too aggressively and my left ACL is actually a harvested portion of my hamstring while I’m missing 20% of that meniscus, but I can still make the choice to push myself harder and further than anyone else will willingly push themselves.  That’s my lemonade.

 

But going further than that, we understand that the original phrase of “when life gives you lemons” refers to receiving adversity from life.  Well when we turn the phrase to say “when life DOESN’T give you lemons, make lemons”, what we are discussing is the notion of MANUFACTURED adversity.  Adversity and hardships are opportunities for growth, and quite often it is those exposed to the greatest of hardships that demonstrate the greatest of growth.  Is that survivor bias?  Absolutely!  I don’t care about the non-survivors: they were going to not survive no matter what.  But I take significant interest in those that experienced, endured, and grew.  I recall Bill Kazmaier lamenting at a seminar how tough it must be for those strongman competitors that DIDN’T have a rough upbringing to try and make it in the sport, because those dudes that had it rough their whole lives were going to eat them alive in competition.

You don't get eyes like this from a normal life

 

All that said, sometimes life won’t GIVE us the lemons of adversity in order for us to make lemonade.  Sometimes we have to go MAKE some lemons so that we can make lemonade.  Just as adversity is an opportunity for growth, life is an opportunity to create adversity.  Try putting yourself BEHIND the 8 ball every once in a while.  It’s why I am so vocally and vehemently AGAINST pre-workout supplements: the last thing you should be doing in TRAINING is stacking the deck in your favor like that.  Don’t get me wrong: in a competition, I’m sucking down Rockstars as good as anyone else, but before I train?  Hell no.  I’m not going to come in with an ADVANTAGE: I’m going to come in hurt, tired, hungry, sore, and in a bad mood.  Why?  Because when I thrive in THAT environment, I absolutely KILL it when things are going my way.  Meanwhile, I’ve seen dudes completely fall apart in competition because they were so used to everything being optimally configured for them in the training hall that, the instant they couldn’t have EXACTLY 4 minutes between warm up sets, or they had to lift in the morning when they ALWAYS train in the afternoon, or McDonalds ran out of McMuffins and they had to get a biscuit instead and it totally threw off their pre-workout nutrition ritual, they crumbled and performed well below how they did in training.  Training is the worst place to set your PRs, because no one cares.  PR in competition, because then you win something.

 

And I’m just talking pre-workout prep there.  There are unlimited opportunities to go make some lemons.  Choose to train with inadequate sleep, poor nutrition, stomach too full, not properly warmed up, too many days in a row, 2 a days without adequate recovery between sessions, etc etc.  Make yourself so many lemons that you can open up your own lemonade stand.  I genuinely don’t know how that metaphor shakes out: those of you playing along at home can probably make something of it.  But the point is that those who sit around waiting for opportunities to present, for good OR for ill, are going to get passed by by those that are out there making lemons so that they can go make some lemonade.  Sometimes, life isn’t going to give you what you need to make lemonade: sometimes it’s gonna fall on you to make something that wasn’t there before.