THE FREEDOM OF LIMITATION

I know I’ve written about this multiple times, but I’m observing this phenomenon outside of the realm of lifting so much that it’s sticking inside my head.  I’ve recently become addicted to “Erik the Electric” videos on youtube which, if you’re unfamiliar with Erik, are videos of a 5’9 160ish ultra endurance athlete tackling massive food challenges.  I already feel a kinship with Erik being of equal height, he is a San Diego native, much like myself, I’m (sadly) around his weight as well, I enjoy eating prodigious amounts of food as well, and my heart is one of an ultra endurance athlete, but Erik is also addicting just because he actually ENJOYS the food he eats in the challenges vs the horror one observes at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating competition wherein competitors are effectively choking down food to meet the goal.  But weird competitive eating tangent aside, Erik is so talented at his “craft” that he often goes out of his way to impose challenges WITHIN already absurd challenges, because the initial wasn’t challenging enough.  He’ll take on the infamous “octuplet bypass cheeseburger” from the Las Vegas Heart Attack Grill (yes non-US readers: all of that is really a thing) and then make it more challenging by eating a SECOND one AND only allow himself an hour to accomplish it.  These are no one’s rules but his own: a self-imposed challenge and limitation. And quite often, Erik will meet the ACTUAL challenge just fine, but fail to meet his own self-imposed challenge, and hold himself as a “failure” for having done so.  My friends, there is so much to learn from this black hole given human form.

If my subconscious could be photographed, it'd look like this

First of all, it’s worth observing that, again: Erik is not unique in this style of competitiveness.  We can observe this with video game speedrunners as well: people so good at games that they race to see who can beat them the fastest.  Eventually, they all learn the same tricks and strategies to maximize win speed, so they move on to FURTHER handicap themselves, with rules like “no moving left” or “without glitches”.  We’ve seen combat sports athletes that will only use 1 or 2 techniques to win a match.  The list is extensive, but the point to observe is that these folks are so GOOD at what they do that they need to impose limits on themselves “just to keep it interesting”.  But in keeping things interesting, they keep themselves sharp as well: they force themselves OUT of their own comfort zones and give the opposition a leg-up.  Growth is an outcome of overcoming, and in order to overcome one must experience adversity, and in the ABSENCE of the necessary adversity to promote growth, one is challenged to CREATE the very challenge necessary TO grow.  The challenge is to challenge: how fitting!

Let’s take a few lessons out of there.  1: no matter the situation, we can find a way to make it worse.  That almost sounds sarcastic, but here: it’s liberating!  This was a lesson many of us learned during COVID.  Resources were limited, and soon it became a competition on HOW we could make things more challenging.  Dan John (shocker) is a master at just this: give him 1 kettlebell and he’ll find a movement that puts you in such a poor position that this KB, irrespective of weight, will force you to grow.  Many people were limited to just bodyweight, so they had to learn all the tips and tricks OF bodyweight work to maximize it, finding ways to maximally disadvantage the body.  Some had SOME weights, but very limited amounts, and minimal ability to obtain more…so out came the pre-exhaust work, dropsets, stripsets, rest pause sets, etc etc.  And HERE there WAS a forreal limitation placed upon us: the world of COVID forced many away from their training spaces and stole their equipment.  Absent that FORCED limitation, we can still create our own.

Limitations in other ways I suppose

Along with that, though, consider the necessary degree of creativity that must be there when we CREATE these challenges AND formulate the execution plan to accomplish the goals.  First, there is a necessary element of creativity in creating a challenge: as the word “create” is right there.  We must be able to think and act in an inventive manner in order to invent a challenge for us to overcome, and if we lack said creativity the very repetition of attempting to create these challenges will drive us.   There’s no shame in employing dice or a spinning wheel or a random number generator to determine your fate.  Consider the mental bandwidth that gets relieved when one outsources their own creativity externally.  But, alongside that, there comes the creativity necessary once the challenge is underway!  If mere conventional manners of approach were enough to overcome the challenge, It would be no challenge at all: it would be the status quo.  Instead, because we created a unique challenge, we need to create a unique plan of execution.

You can again observe this with the elites like Erik.  If they give themselves an hour to eat a 5lb cheeseburger and order of onion rings, you’ll see them attack the food in an unconventional manner, eating the protein first and saving the carbs for last, since they are the most filling, for example.  There is an exponentially effect of creativity: creating the challenge forces us to create the solution.  But I’d say one of the biggest boons here is that we are no longer shackled by the chains of “optimal” once the challenge has been issued: we’ve now simply climbed into the realm of “survive”.  And through surviving we grow, and through growing we achieve.  By artificially hamstringing ourselves, we put ourselves intentionally off-balance and can now only simply maximize from our current position rather than from the most ideal position, which is to say that there now is no longer “THE” right way to do things: simply A right way to do things.  Once again: THAT is freedom.  When success has many avenues, you are in an ideal state.  When there is only one path, if you miss it: it’s game over.  Going back to the speedrunners: if they miss one jump in Super Mario on one particular stage, they’ll just quit and start over.  It’s known what needs to get done to reach “optimal”, and if it’s missed: it’s over.  But if playing the game with your feet?  Who KNOWS what the optimal time or strategy is for that: let’s just see if we can do it first!

Oh my god it all makes sense now

There are so many lessons to be learned from all of this, but what I want to impose on those reading is that this can happen TODAY.  We can place a limitation on ourselves and use it NOT as a limitation but as a vector.  As a “freedom granter”.  In a world with an abundance of choices, we can suffocate from too much freedom, but we, in turn, have the freedom to DETERMINE our limitations.  Much like “the myth of Sisyphus”, we can CHOOSE a less than desirable fate and, in doing so, be liberated.  I’ve been most likely boring many of my readers with how big a fan I’ve become of the carnivore approach to nutrition, but it’s because of this very freeing limitation that I enjoy it so much.  I thrive with restrictions and flounder with freedom, and for so long I employed the restriction of “low carbohydrate” that I became TOO GOOD at it, and was, in turn, consuming all manner of keto junk food, treats, tricks and hacks while still abiding by my own rules.  By making the game harder and saying “animal only”, I’ve once again placed myself in a corner and have to use creativity to solve it.  It is liberating: I no longer need to think about WHAT I am going to eat: it’s an animal of some variety.  I’m following Easy Strength right now, and therein is a program where the limitations are hard set: 40 workouts, 3-5 exercises, 3-5 days a week, no more than 10 reps, never miss a rep.  The program is SUCH a breath of fresh air if you’ve been suffocating on percentages and RPEs.

Take this homework assignment and run it to completion.  Give yourself some limits and see what you come up with.  Imagine if you said you could only use a rack and barbell, like the York lifters did back in the day.  The precious bench press is gone: however will you survive?  Probably by building a set of shoulders so massive and dense that they draw all surrounding light into themselves and actually prevent humans from being able to observe your pectorals.  You can only do squats AFTER 10x40 yard prowler runs: better get fit if you wanna get jacked!  Try a month of eating BELOW recommended protein intake and see how the REST of the world somehow manages to put on muscle DESPITE inadequate protein intake.  Use intermittent fasting during a gaining phase and learn how to get in 4000 calories in a 6 hour window.  Come up with your own, try it for a training cycle and see what the impacts are.  You don’t need to wait for an injury to train like you’re injured, you don’t need to wait for a food shortage to train like there is a famine, you don’t need to develop allergies to cut wheat out of your diet: these are all opportunities to learn, grow, challenge yourself, overcome and, through it all, improve your creativity so that, when the time comes, you have THAT skill readily developed and deployable.  

Tell me more stories Uncle Pavel

And you will be free.  There will be no right choice: just the choice that’s right at that moment.