STOP WORKING SO HARD TO NOT WORK SO HARD

 The title of this post is something I could only come up with in a post “Super Good Mornings” delirium state, because it’s an absolute jumbled mess and I love it.  And for those that don’t follow my every move, “Super Good Mornings” is the inevitable outcome of me having hurt my hamstring twice within 3 weeks of running Super Squats and having to come up with some sort of solution as to HOW I am going to meet the intent of the program when I can’t bend my leg fully.  My solution was to ask “What Would Bruce Randall Do?” (future blogpost: be on the lookout!), and the answer, alongside “gain 200lbs of bodyweight” was “good mornings”, because that’s what HE did when he broke his leg in 7 places in a motorcycle and couldn’t squat.  I figure, if it’s good enough for that, it’s good enough for a hamstring pull.  And that was ALL I needed in order to greenlight the idea and go and execute it.  I needed no studies to back it up, no research, no science, no blessings, no gurus: I knew the answer was simple: hard work.  And if the answer is so simple, why does no one else seem to realize it?  Because ya’ll are working SO hard so that you don’t have to work so hard.

Think how much energy was invested in these energy saving devices

 

Hah!  Speaking of working hard, I sure had to do that to shoehorn that transition sentence there.  Ok: let’s talk hard work.  Why am I emphasizing that?  Because it’s the most obvious and simple solution to the question of “how do I achieve physical transformation”.  And this includes positive AND negative transformation.  You don’t accidentally become obese: that takes some hardcore dedicated negligence.  And it’s the same when it comes to become a positive unique physical specimen: hard work is THE solution.  It’s hard work in the training space AND in the dinning space.  We train hard and we “eat hard”, in the sense that we put in the sweat equity to achieve consistent access to nutritious food that supports our goals, rather than live out of boxes (when Mark Bell summarized a pantry as “a closet full of dead food”, it was a great paradigm flip for me).  And this, in turn, is why the physique produced by hard work is so pleasing to view: it’s a reflection OF hard work, which communicates to other members of the species “I am strong, healthy and capable”.  We KNOW this.  On an instinctive, lizard brain, survival of the fittest level, this is all so obvious.

 

And yet…and yet.  How much research have people done in an attempt to DISPROVE hard work?  In an attempt to demonstrate that it is through EASE that one achieves physical greatness; NOT through labor, effort and exhaustion.  Someone came up with the idea of “junk volume”, to save us from 10x10s.  Don’t you know that you get the majority of your growth from those first 3 sets and anything after that suffers from “the law of diminishing returns?”  Yeah: talk with any Deep Water swimmer; you TRANSFORM between sets 7 and 9.  But ok, you wanna talk junk volume, then I’ll do Super Squats: ONE set.  Oh, but it turns out you need to train at RPE 8 to achieve maximal hypertrophy and going to failure is bad for us?  No, wait, I know: Super Squats doesn’t work because you HAVE to train EACH muscle group 2x a week, and the ONLY way to do that is with a 6 day a week push/pull/leg split.  No, wait, I KNOW: the program CAN’T work because the book says you can gain 30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks and I’ve read ALL the studies that say that’s not possible (yes: someone actually said that to me).  And don’t you DARE follow the Building the Monolith diet, because a dozen eggs a day is SURE to give you heart disease: as said by a trainee that’s eating breakfast cereal for carbs.  Should I even get started on the hormones you can find in a gallon of milk a day?  And oh my god, don’t you know you should NEVER gain weight if you’re above 16% bodyfat, as measure by a photo posted online?

And if you follow ALL that bad advice at once AND eat meatloaf sandwiches during workouts, you unlock Pat Casey

If you want research for ANY topic, you will find it.  If you want studies, they are there.  And the biggest issue is that so few people lack the academic rigor to even be able to READ a study to be able to mine the actual useful data from it that there’s SO much potential for miscommunication and misunderstandings when intentions are GOOD, let alone when someone goes looking just to disprove something they don’t like.  To say nothing of those individuals that don’t even look at the actual research, and instead simply take the interpretation of any talking head Mr Wonderful at full gospel truth value.  So if you WANT to find a reason not to work hard, whether it be in the training space or the kitchen, you WILL find it…but…

 

But that will never actually change reality. This isn’t quantum physics: the outcome doesn’t change simply because it’s been observed.  If someone works hard in the forest and no one is around to see them, they will still get jacked.  All my go to programs for physical transformation, from Super Squats to Deep Water to 5/3/1 Building the Monolith or 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake to what I imagine will soon be a full run of “Super Good Mornings” are simply codified methods of working hard.  If you don’t want a program, sign up for a strongman competition with lifts that are WAY outside your capabilities with a deadline of 12 weeks: you WILL grow.  The nutrition protocols I like for growing are ALSO codified hard work. A gallon of milk a day, 1.5lbs of beef and a dozen eggs, the Deep Water Diet, even Dan John’s PBJs: you are going to eat like it’s your job!  And some could even argue that this is “lazy hard work”, as it’s just building a diet around a cornerstone vs taking a more nuanced approach, but the latter is going to be even MORE hard work to MAKE it work. You’re not going to unlock the secret of anabolism with 4 protein shakes a day, cereal for carbs and peanut butter for fats.  Those that succeed in this endeavor AREN’T going to be the people who are the most well read, but the people that are the most well versed in working as hard as humanly possible. 

Bob Peoples was too busy farming all day and destroying the world at deadlifts to get bogged down with reading

 

When confronted with an absolutely bonkers way to achieve physical transformation, that looks like way too much volume, too much intensity, too much food, too much stress, etc etc, instead of working really hard to prove why it won’t work, why not work REALLY hard to prove that it will?