THIS ISN’T LIFE: THIS IS CANDYLAND

My dad side is gonna show through here, but I imagine some of you are young enough that, if you’re not a parent, it hasn’t been that long since you’ve played Life and Candyland.  But allow me to give you a quick primer.  Life and Candyland are board games typically played by children, the latter for an even younger crowd.  Board games were things we played before we discovered electricity and fun.  As a Pen and Paper RPG player, I’m hoping the full tongue-in-cheekness of that comment has registered with you.  One of the reason why Candyland tends to be more appropriate for younger players compared to Life is due to its simplicity.  There are no die to roll: movement is determined by drawing from a stack of cards shared amongst the players, telling you which colored space to move to.  There are no words to read: everything is done by pictures.  There are no decisions to make: you just go where the cards tell you to go.  Winning is simple: get to the end first.  Life, meanwhile, utilizes a spinner to move, requires literacy, constant decisions to be made, money to be tracked, and reaching the end doesn’t ensure victory: it’s the person that gets there with the most money who is the REAL winner of life.  Funny enough, there’s a reason why we start off with Candyland before moving on to Life: it’s because “Life” isn’t life, but Candyland is.

He was SO close

Alright, I’m gonna wheel this back to training before it gets too out of hand, but for those of you super interested in the real philosophical ramifications of this, you’d get a kick out of looking into arguments against free will and for predestination.  But today, as we talk about endeavoring for physical transformation, there are FAR too many Life players and not nearly enough Candylanders.  Life has conditioned you to the notion that your decisions matter.  Not only do they matter: they’re critical to your success.  Do I go to college or join the workforce right away?  Go the family route or focus on my career?  Should I invest in “6” at the start of the game?  You do this same nonsense with your training.  Should I lift 3 days a week or 4?  Carbs before or after training? Westside or Sheiko?  BULK OR CUT?!

Folks, this isn’t Life: this is Candyland.  Once the game of Candyland is set up, the outcome has already been determined: it’s simply up to us to play it out and see what happens.  It’s honestly wild how apt Candyland is as a metaphor for the absence of free will and predestination.  Once the cards are shuffled, there is no longer and randomness at play: the players will draw the cards in their predetermined order, advance where the card tells them to go, and effectively “discover” the winner over the course of the game.  No player actually has a say or impact on the outcome: they are mere observers.

For some, this is helping prep for the future

These decisions DON’T matter.  They really really don’t.  They REALLY don’t.  Folks, I have been training “wrong” for SO long and I get accusations of good genetics and steroids quite frequently.  I’ve won competitions against people training right.  I’ve put on muscle without carbs and sleep.  We confuse “optimal” with “effective”, but the truth is that NONE of us are doing things optimally, so at this point it’s simply a matter of riding out time and compliance to experience the inevitable outcome that is “success”.  The cards are already shuffled, the deck is laid out, all that’s left for us to do is play the game and get to the end.

THAT is the ONE decision you get to make: the decision to play.  You can always say “I don’t want to play Candyland”, and then the cards remain in the box, no one reaches the end, and there is no winner.  But if you choose to play, all that’s left for you to do is keep drawing cards, moving where it tells you to move, and watch the end unfold.  None of your decisions beyond that first one matter: this is the illusion of choice.

This is missing the real end screen where you decide between the ribeye or the porterhouse

This is NOT a bad thing at all.  There could be nothing greater than knowing that victory is assured: we simply have to play.  This is the mentality I bring to every intense workout.  When I do the Deep Water deadlift workouts, I approach them KNOWING that I’ve already DONE the workout.  I’ve already pulled all 100 reps, I’ve achieved success, I got the results I wanted.  THAT victory is already out there: it’s simply up to me to play the game and experience it.  It’s the same for any skullbreaking conditioning workout: I know the end has already been reached, I simply need to play the game.  There is no anxiety, no fear, no concern about “not being able”: I KNOW that victory is on the other side.  And I know that I have no control over reaching that end.  I am simply observing the game unfold in front of me.

This ALSO means you can stop “trying to win”.  Stop trying to cheat, quit trying to sabotage the other players, stop running back to the rulebook while you look for loopholes: the end has already been determined and you are merely observing it play out.  We’re sitting down and having fun.  There will be no table flipping, arguing, grudge matches or belligerence.  Hell, just imagine if we were trying to play Monopoly?  No: This is Candyland, fun for all ages, everyone has an equal shot, all we have to do is decide to play.

Had a few deadlift sessions go this way as well

**BONUS CONTENT**

Folks, while we’re talking about kid stuff, allow me to share a fun spin on an old topic.  Dan John has a FANTASTIC quote about “eating like an adult”, which I will share here

“Here is an idea: Eat like an adult. Stop eating fast food, stop eating kid's cereal, knock it off with all the sweets and comfort foods whenever your favorite show is not on when you want it on, ease up on the snacking and—don't act like you don't know this—eat vegetables and fruits more. Really, how difficult is this?”   

Dan, seen here, clearly tired of your sh*t

I fully support and endorse the words and sentiment behind this statement.  And then, of course, here comes the but.

BUUUUUUUUUT…for an interesting idea of a middle ground, between eating like an adult and eating like a child, I propose, for a trainee looking to gain: eat like a SUPERVISED child.

So not like this

And, interestingly enough, it was Dan John that inspired this as well.  His fantastic work, “Mass Made Simple”, makes a solid argument for the use of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the sake of gaining, based around the premise that they are calorically dense, easy to transport, and a food you will actually be inclined to eat en masse during a weight gaining phase.  Anyone that has ever engaged in serious weight gaining attempts will understand how significant all those variables are.  And what’s interesting is: those same factors that are valuable for an adult to gain weight are ALSO valuable for a kid to eat…anything.

Anyone who has ever been a parent, cared for a child, or remembers being a child will understand the frustration that surrounds “meal time”.  It’s a time of compromise.  Anyone that claims that they don’t make any special meals/everyone eats the same thing is most likely living in a fantasy household.  For those of us in reality: our parental instincts compel us to feed our kids SOMETHING so that they will live.  And what’s interesting about kids is that they’re in a state of RAPID growth.  People talk about steroids and puberty like they are something magical, but dude, go watch a 5 year old put away 3 hot dogs at a cookout and realize that they weigh like 50lbs and put away the equivalent of an adult winning a Nathan’s competition.  Kids will regularly out eat adults in a direct 1 for 1 comparison, with room for dessert.  In turn, when you look at food that is “kid food”, it tends to be INCREDIBLY calorically dense, because along with just being more palatable (sugar and fat fix everything), it’s a question of getting in as much calories per bite to accommodate stomach size and logistics.

Check out how little food that is for 430 calories.  Put in perspective, that's like eating a 1lb Piedmontese sirloin steak

For a trainee looking to gain, they could stand to bring back a few of these “kids dishes”, but, once again, approach it like a SUPERVISED child.  A child, left to their own devices, will have a dinner of Pop-tarts covered in ice cream.  A child, under the watchful eye of a caretaker, most likely won’t be eating steak, broccoli and rice, but there’s a good chance they get some mac n cheese (pasta with fat and protein on top?  Anabolic!), or some chicken drumstricks or tenders instead of breasts, or a quality made cheeseburger (lean ground beef, high fiber bun), or the already aforementioned PBJ.  If they get the munchies, the kid will probably grab some Cheetos (orange powder dust is delicious fresh off the fingers), but if they bug mom for a snack they’ll probably get some ants on a log (peanut butter spread on celery sticks with raisins), or some apple slices with peanut butter to dip in, or a plain old piece of fruit.  Dessert time? How about some old fashioned rice crispy treats?  A bakesale classic, pretty much pure carbs, honestly great for around workouts, and you can make them at home with quality ingredients.  Or how about some jello?

As I wrote: meal time is a time of compromise with children, and nutrition, as we grow, will always be a system of compromises.  There’s a balancing act between being locked in our diets vs having a damaged relationship with food, and there’s also a compromise between “eating to gain” and “eating like a child”.  Sometimes, when the situation requires it, we compromise between eating like a child and eating like an adult into eating like a supervised child.