SCHEDULED SUFFERING

I have run into this situation SO many times, and it’s happened recently enough that I finally figured it was time to write a post about it.  People read my blog or see my youtube videos or follow me on reddit and decide that I am a guy who knows things about physical transformation, and they end up seeking my advice on things (you fools!)  An individual ended up finding me from youtube, set up a chat with me, and laid out his situation for me to advise on.  He worked a hard physical job that was exhausting him, especially since it involved shift work, and on top of that with the training and being a dad, he was exhausted.  He wanted to know my solution for recovering better.  And I asked the question that I KNOW everyone hates to hear from me, based on the responses that I get: “Do you do any conditioning?”  

How I imagine it feels when I ask this question

Right away, I got the response I tend to always get: “I consider my job to be conditioning”.  So then, I persisted: “That’s cool, but do you DO any conditioning?”  “Aside from the job, no.”  “Ok, so you’re NOT doing conditioning then.”  Which is how I quickly lose friends and alienate people, but it’s ALSO one of the reasons I never accept money for any of this stuff: I’m beholden to no one, I can say whatever I think or feel, and people are free to take it or leave it.  I never need to bend my message to make it easier to hear or prevent cognitive dissonance.  And to this dude’s credit, he told me he would TRY to add some conditioning to his training, primarily because I gave him my whole “conditioning is magic” spiel (which, for shorthand, not ONLY does conditioning help you recover BECAUSE it gets restorative bloodflow through your body, but it ALSO makes it so that you are better, stronger and fitter WHEN you are called upon to perform, do it’s doubly beneficial).  And through that dialog, it dawned on me: we ALL will have to endure the same AMOUNT of suffering: it’s simply a question of WHEN.  So why not schedule your suffering for when YOU want to experience it?

We go back to that dude with the physical job: at his job, he suffers.  The work is hard and it physically exhausts him, and it taxes him OUTSIDE of the job due to the physical demands.  That person has scheduled his suffering to his work hours.  BUT, suppose this individual, instead, decided to engage in some regular and hard conditioning work?  If, for 20 minutes a day, every day, he did some brutal challenge that jumped his heart rate through the roof and made his lungs catch on fire?  Every SINGLE time he did this, he would suffer (at least, if he wanted the effects of the conditioning), BUT…outside of that he would NOT suffer.  When he goes to his physical job, he would be more fit for the tasks before him and better able to handle them.  The job would no longer detract from his recovery: it would simply be ADDITIONAL physical activity, and in that regard, possibly even RESTORATIVE physical activity.  And when he engaged in the conditioning again, it would help recover from the demands previously placed upon him.  

Unlimited power!

…but the suffering doesn’t change.  That’s the takeaway here.  We must be at peace with the reality that there is no ESCAPE from the suffering.  It is our plight as humans to endure suffering.  And I’m not profound in saying that: I’m pretty sure Buddha beat me to that by a few thousand years.  But it STILL holds true.  And once we stop trying to hide from it, we can do the one thing that IS within our power to do: schedule it.  We suffer on OUR terms.  Previously, we were at the whim of the universe: suffering happened as a necessity.  In order to earn our livelihood, we had to suffer.  Like some sort of awful trap from the movie series “Saw”, we endured suffering in order to continue living.  But now, we suffer not to survive, but to THRIVE.  We suffer, on OUR terms, so that we become a BETTER human: a superior member of our species.  We suffer on OUR terms so that, when the universe attempts to MAKE us suffer, it simply cannot conjure up the degree of suffering that matches what we have already inflicted upon ourselves.

I experienced this exact exchange in that grappling competition I wrote about recently.  I showed up without having engaged in any grappling training for 18 years, but I had scheduled MUCH suffering in that time and, in turn, showed up in significantly better shape than my competition.  Those folks were more skilled, but they did NOT schedule their suffering as I had done.  The result?  THEY suffered in the competition: I felt their stamina leave them, their breathing become labored, and their strength fade.  Meanwhile, as they tired, I would find another gear: my stamina INCREASED, my strength improved, I smelled blood and went in for the kill.  I had scheduled my suffering in advance, I ALREADY suffered, and so, when it came time to perform, I was able to perform.  As exhausting as grappling CAN be, it did not match up with the suffering I voluntarily endured,

The conversation my body and brain regularly have with each other

“Cry in the training hall and laugh on the battlefield”, once again: I’m not original for coming up with these observations, but they continue to hold true, and are also apparently STILL worth bringing up because all these thousands of years later folks still think there is some sort of cheat code to avoid the suffering.  That’s what the “fitness industry” is always trying to sell: how to succeed WITHOUT suffering.  How do you lose fat WITHOUT being hungry?  How do you get jacked WITHOUT hard and heavy workouts?  How do you transform without suffering?  The answer?  You don’t!  BUT, we have the freedom to decide WHEN we suffer.  Do we suffer when we go to the beach and have to wear a t-shirt because we look like a beached whale, or do we suffer in the gym with the hard training and in the kitchen with the sound nutritional decisions?  The suffering WILL happen: but WE can decide the when and the how.

THAT is our power, and it is a huge power to wield.  Don’t squander it.