ON INSURANCE

This was something I came up with this morning as I was getting ready for my 7th of 18 Super Squat workouts for my third run.  Anyone that has ever run this program knows that it beats the holy hell out of you AND that the only way to survive it is to eat.  I’m not going to lie or be humble here: I looked at myself fin the mirror and thought to myself “Holy f**k I look jacked for being in my 3rd week of Super Squats”.  And that statement was significant BECAUSE I had been eating my face off since starting this program, primarily because I’m not doing the gallon of milk a day, primarily because I’m 37 and have a kid and don’t need them seeing me living like that.  BUT, even more profound, as my mind meandered even further, I got to thinking about the fact that I really can just eat completely unrestricted for this 6 week training block and realize some insane potential, and it’s due to insurance.

I relate too much to this

And no: I’m not talking about having health insurance that will be able to take care of me if I make some terrible mistake (although that IS worth having, be sure to write your blood type on your Chuck Taylors before your widomakers kiddos!).  No, I’m talking about the insurance of knowing what I am truly capable of when I dedicate myself to it, and being able to fall back on exactly that when I need it.

Why can I eat as much as I need on Super Squats?  Because I have the insurance of knowing that I know how to lose fat when I need to.  I’ve lost fat SO many times that I’ve gotten pretty good at it, and I must point out that I’ve done that as someone that DOESN’T count calories or macros or track or log stuff.  If you make use of all that stuff, you should REALLY have some insurance there.  And each and every time I engage in fat loss, I come into it with the background of knowledge I had already accumulated which gives me an opportunity to learn even MORE about the process, so I get better and better at it, making it easier and easier.  In turn, this allows me to have even greater insurance as I gain, because I know that I KNOW how to reverse any of the “damage” of the process.  I can just focus on eating to recover and getting huge.  Which absolutely boggles my mind when I see so many young trainees who DID lose a bunch of fat post online about how they don’t want to go “on a bulk” because they’re worried about “getting fat”.  You’ve demonstrated that you KNOW how to get un-fat: you need to go prove to yourself that you can put on some muscle!

The fact you can make it into a video game is proof that the process is so fast and simple it can appeal to the shortest of attention spans

Going off a little bit more on a rant there, trainees have this other weird fear about how, if you get fat and then have to go on a fat loss phase, that’s time spent away from gaining.  When someone presents that argument to me, I can tell without even looking at them that they’ve never put on a serious amount of muscle from training.  Anyone who has ever undergone a TOUGH muscle gaining program knows that it’s entirely unsustainable over the long term.  You will WANT that fat loss phase, because you NEED a break from gaining.  And trying it back to insurance again, those fat loss phases of training are some of the best FOR experimenting and finding new things that work, because all you really need to worry about with your training during fat loss is training hard enough to keep muscle on your body.  The pressure is really on when you gain, but when you lose?  Just lose the RIGHT tissue and you’re fine.

Which ties into another fun bit of insurance: non-optimal training.  For some reason, trainees have it in their heads that they MUST train in the absolute most optimal way possible…OR ELSE!  …or else what?  What is the consequence of sub-optimal training?  Sub-optimal results?  Oh my: how awful!  What do they call the guy who graduated last in his medical school?  “Doctor”.  You can still get REALLY goddamn big and strong with sub-optimal training, and going full tilt INTO some sub-optimal training will teach you just that.  You learn about the 3 principles of effort, consistency and time, and realize that, once you have those in place, the finer details are going to account for maybe a 1-2% variance in outcome.  If it’s worth training in a way that just plain does not gel with you so that you can get that 1-2%, cool, but for anyone else: train sub-optimally for a while, observe that your results are “just fine”, and suddenly you give yourself a LOT of freedom to explore, play and LIVE.

The man on the right didn't even make the Olympic team and apparently never won against a big name.  How sub-optimal!  The man on the left is technically classified as jello.

And my absolute favorite: the fear of injury.  What insurance do we have here?  Many trainees go about this the wrong way: trying to create artificial insurance by “doing everything right”.  They have PERFECT form, they have dialed in their fatigue management, they stretch AND foam roll AND do mobility AND are properly hydrated etc etc.  Injuries STILL happen.  Life is a full-contact sport: wear a helmet.  No: the insurance from injuries is GETTING injured…and then recovering…and learning that we CAN heal and recover and come back better, faster and stronger than before.  And just like fat loss and sub-optimal training, through injury we LEARN.  I never would have discovered ROM progression if it weren’t for injury, or the value of good mornings, or the degree of body control I have to shift emphasis away from a wounded point.  And through semi-frequent injury, we get GOOD at BEING injured: I know how to wrap a knee wrap around a torn muscle to fake connective tissue and get through a set of squats.  I know the difference between “this is healing me” pain and “this is setting back my healing” pain.  Just like fat loss: I get better and better, which heals me faster, which gives me MORE insurance against injury.

But again, the comedy of trainees: in attempting to avoid injury, they avoid pushing themselves hard enough to REALLY grow.  Well why do they NOT want to get injured?  Because an injury will prevent them from training hard enough to grow…hey wait a minute!  In attempting to AVOID the injury, we already suffer the consequences OF the injury.  What irony!  Fear itself IS the injury.  But when we can operate without it, with the insurance of knowing that nothing can TRULY stop us, we can achieve great things.  And should we get injured, we know it will just be a matter of time and patience before we are back even better than before, and in the time between we can learn and grow.