BEHIND THE 8-BALL

One of the biggest struggles I’ve had for writing this post was coming up with a title: I had too many to choose from!  I settled on “behind the 8-ball”, but other choices were “You’re failing: how excellent” and “No better place to be than surrounded by the enemy”, and the fact I was struggling to choose between so many great answers was one of those “life imitates art” proof of concepts.  Primarily because my goal is to discuss just how awesome it is when things AREN’T going great, because it allows you SO many more amazing options compared to when things are dialed in and perfect.  For the life of me, there’s no better place to be than behind the 8-ball.

Some of us a bit more familiar with the 8-Ball than others...

This notion upsets so many trainees who are hoping to “outsmart” physical transformation.  They think that, if they frontload their training career with a bunch of reading (by which I mean watching videos, by which I mean Instagram shorts, by which I mean memes of shorts), they’ll have ALL the answers BEFORE they even lift their first weight, and be guaranteed the MOST gains per ounce of effort, ensuring maximal efficiency of effort and optimization, not like those big dumb meatheads at the gym who just show up for a few decades and get jacked.  MAN…that was quite a sentence.  Anyway…yeah, that’s just silly.  We’ve all seen how that shakes out.  Absent an actual physical understanding and experience, all this “knowledge” is just trivia.  The trainee can’t comprehend the nuance or application of the information: they know it purely on an “intellectual” level (heavy emphasis on the quotes).  Similar to how Peggy Hill spoke Spanish on “King of the Hill”: the person who is only educated through literature and does not have the necessary pedigree of application is, at best, HALF educated.

But that’s not even what I meant to write about, so consider that paragraph just a little present from me to you.  I just wanted to point out the demographic of people that get anxiety about being behind the 8-ball.  And clearly, that’s not a demographic you want to belong to.  So, in turn, those that appreciate being behind the 8-ball tend to be those that have an appreciation for the reality of physical transformation: the “human” element, the chaos factor, all those elements that come into play when we have to live outside of a vacuum and inside of reality.  And when we deal with reality, we deal with things like injuries (minor or significant), compromised sleep schedules, compromised nutrition, compromised training situations (ever roll up to the gym ready to get in a monster squat session only to find out that someone bent the ONE decent barbell?) etc etc.  

But I'm sure what's holding you back is lack of high quality nutrition and a reverse hyper...

The thing is: these limitations are LIBERATING, NOT confining.  Because now that we are BEHIND the 8-ball, we are no longer restricted to making the perfect decision: we can instead simply try to do the best with what we have.  Instead of using the “right” volume, the right intensities, the right movements, the right rest periods, etc, we use the “right now”.  We let EFFORT dictate our plan: so long as we’re sending it, we’re doing our part.  And how much simpler can things be than to only need to focus on ONE variable?  When all else is chaos, “effort” is the one variable we control, so let’s make it our guide and measure all efforts AGAINST effort.

Recently, I had to travel for work for 4 days, come home for 1 day, turn right around and travel for 7 days for leisure.  The 4 days for work allowed me access to a hotel fitness center with 50lb dumbbells, the days at home I had 2 20kg kettlebells stashed at my parent’s house.  I got in 11 of the absolutely craziest workouts I’d ever done in my life during those 11 days, because I no longer was constricted by a plan nor did I have any ability to be in a BETTER situation.  I had what I had, and the only variable I could control was effort, so I turned that up to 11 and got after it.  And when I returned home, the very next day I started 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake, jumped into the deadlift workout first thing, and didn’t skip a beat, because all that effort reflected in my ability to push myself, even THOUGH I had dropped to the lowest bodyweight I’d held in 15 years.  

This is what living off fish tacos and In n Out gets you

And we can put ourselves behind the 8-ball WITHIN a training session itself!  And when we do so, we alleviate all pressure on ourselves to meet or match any previous bests: once again, all we can lean on is effort.  This morning, after my bench workout, I did a gnarly conditioning workout where I set a goal to get 50 burpee chins done as fast as possible BUT, every minute on the minute, I would do 2 Barbell Bear Complexes with 95lbs.  I got it done in 11:53…then immediately grabbed my 24kg kettlebells to do 5 minutes of Armor Building Complexes, per my daily routine.  On MOST given days, I average around 23-26 rounds of ABCs in 5 minutes.  Today, I managed 18, because I was BEHIND THE 8-BALL.  I wasn’t doing these fresh: I was doing these after nearly 12 minutes of constant movement, at the END of a bench press workout.  I was GRINDING reps out: this was absolutely brutal, ugly and SLOW…but the EFFORT was as high as it’s ever been, and I know that, from that, I was growing.

When we get behind the 8-ball with injury or equipment limitation, we are no longer beholden to make the “best choice”: we simply choose that we can do best AT THAT TIME and send forth maximal effort.  When our sleep is compromised, we simply train as hard as we can.  Same with our nutrition.  Or how about when our nutrition is compromised, we simply eat as well AS WE CAN?  We get the fast food salad, or the burger with no buns, and are at peace that we exerted our maximal effort of choice.  We are no longer confined to ONLY one path, but can instead choose from a variety of adequate choices and give it our all.  

No

There’s no better place to be than behind the 8-ball: because there is where you find freedom.