LEARN FROM BACHELORS: FEAR COMITTMENT

A fun fact my readers MAY not know about me: I got married at age 21.  I was engaged at 20, to a girl that I had been dating for a year, and had been best friends with for a year before that.  We’re still together to this day, and are going stronger than ever.  I say all this to show that I clearly do NOT have a fear of commitment: I knew a good thing when I found it and locked on like a shark.  But from reading how some of you trainees out there operate, ya’ll put me to shame when it comes to not fearing commitment, because some of you dudes are locked in on a program/diet for LIFE.  Or at least, that’s the impression I get, because you guys are trying to make the PERFECT program/diet to run for the rest of your lives.  Ya’ll are ready for the long haul commitment, “till death do we part”, a true “ride or die”…and why?  Why do you owe so much loyalty to a single method?  What do you get from this?  Learn from the lifelong bachelors out there: don’t get hitched to just one wagon, don’t buy the cow when you can get the milk for free (GOMAD anyone?), go sew your wild oats and enjoy all those fish in the sea.  In general: fear commitment.

That sums it up well

 

Here’s what I see: a trainee says “I want a program for hypertrophy”.  Hey, great, go do Super Squats, Mass Made Simple, 5/3/1 Building the Monolith or 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake.  They’ll all get you big.  Within minutes, having not run a single DAY of the program, let alone a week, let alone a training block, the trainee fires back with “It doesn’t have any lateral raises/not enough curls/no calf raises/etc: this program isn’t for me”.  Dude, you wanted a hypertrophy program: these programs will get you big.  That’s what they do.  Are they absent of those movements?  Yeah, sure.  Know how you solve that?  AFTER you run these programs, you go do a program that DOES have these movements built into it.  Not EVERY program you run has to have EVERY movement you want to run.  Sometimes, movements get left out for THIS program so that they can be employed in ANOTHER program.  Because it’s true that there are a LOT of great movements out there to get big and strong and, in turn, EVERY decision we make is a decision with an opportunity cost.  We do barbell bench at the expense of dumbbell bench, we do squats at the expense of front squats, not all things can be done all the time.  But the solution is simple: we’ll just do those other movements LATER.  We’re not going to be married to this one program: we’re going to go out with it, have some fun, and then say “see ya later”.  And we very well MAY see it later, if we really DID have a good time with it.  And if we didn’t, hey: plenty of fish in the sea.  It’s why we date: to see what’s out there.

 

It's no different with diet, and once again, I’ll go to the topic of getting jacked, because that’s more fun to talk about.  “I wanna get big: what should I eat?”  Super Squats says a gallon of milk a day, Jim Wendler had his athletes do 1.5lbs of ground beef and a dozen eggs, Dan John recommends the Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich between meals (as does Paul Carter: very opposite sides of the coin reaching similar conclusions), etc.  What, inevitably follows up?  “Isn’t that unhealthy?”  I mean, maybe, sure.  Let’s say it objectively is: does that matter?  It’s 6 weeks: just how much damage can you do to yourself in 6 weeks?  How long will it take to undo 6 weeks of damage?  Especially if you came into this IN good shape to start with.  This isn’t a “for life” suggestion: this is a SPECIFIC approach for a specific block of training.  We match the nutrition with the training, because otherwise we WASTE the training by not providing our body the fuel it needs to achieve the objectives.  Once again, no one is saying “do this forever”: once you’ve gotten what you need, you get out.  This is the “one night stand”…just for 6 weeks.  Maybe consider it more like a summertime fling. 

Worst beach vacation ever

 

This is why periodization is a thing.  This is why there are “training seasons”.  But there’s an issue with that: one needs to be able to appreciate that there WILL be a future, and this, in turn, means a willingness to engage in some critical thinking and explore the realm of nuance.  People don’t want to do that: they want to make ONE decision ONE time and then just shut off their brains forever.  It’s why you see people run Starting Strength for 4 years, just running into the exact same stall over and over again, backing down the weights, ramping them back up, and stalling again.  They only wanted to take the time to learn ONE program (if that…most folks are just running an app to do all their thinking for them) and just do that forever.  Because learning TWO programs was too much…like, legit, read Super Squats: it gives you TWO programs to run back to back, and if you did just that and nothing else you could DEFINITELY get pretty damn far.  You need to be willing to play the field at least a LITTLE bit.  I can keep up the analogy here and say that you can get married, but you’ll want to have a mistress.  Just SOMETHING to keep the spark alive.  Dan John (who is NOT an advocate of bigamy, just to be clear) has “Bus bench-park bench” which is more than awesome to explain this.  You could easily take Easy Strength and Mass Made Simple and just run them back to back forever and be good.  It honestly doesn’t take much to get these benefits, but it takes SOMETHING.  It takes SOME degree of willingness to change.

 

I get it: change is scary.  This is how people end up in dead end relationships: they love the security of the relationship more than they love the actual person on the other end of that relationship.  But those relationships are so hollow they achieve the opposite of the intended effect: you’re now existing in isolation WHILE cohabitating with someone.  You rob yourself of the potential to actually have a connection with another human because you are TECHNICALLY “taken” and no longer available, yet you’re not getting ANY of the actual benefit of a real relationship.  Getting locked into these “forever” programs and diets do the exact same thing to you.  You will stagnate to the point that the effort you’re putting into the training and nutrition is having a NEGATIVE effect.  Once again: all decisions are an opportunity cost, and that hour you spent on workout 1,948 of Starting Strength where you just hit the same numbers as last time was an hour that could have been spent training ANYTHING else…or even an hour spent DOING anything other than that worthless workout.  Because MAINTAINING muscle doesn’t require that much effort: we could’ve done that in 20 minutes.  And it’s the same if we’re not going to vary our diet in any meaningful way to match our training: why did we just crush ourselves for an hour doing Super Squats if we’re just going to intermittent fast for 16 hours and then eat 1800 calories in our eating window?  Yeah, maybe that “works” day-to-day, but this is a NEW day: it needs a new approach.

Because if we do the same thing all the time it just gets stale

 

Fear commitment.  You’ve got your whole life to settle down: go out and have some fun. 

A RAGELESS BARBARIAN IS JUST A MEDICORE FIGHTER

Once again I am delighted that I get to write about Dungeons and Dragons and, in turn, my favorite class: The Barbarian.  I have written on many occasions about the glory of the Barbarian and why I consider him so much more awesome than the fighter, but it dawned on me this morning that the awesomeness of the Barbarian can only be realized IF we choose to make USE of his awesomeness.  And that statement may SEEM obvious, but I’ve run into enough people that are unable to appreciate this reality that it seems necessary for me to write on this point.  The primary boon of the Barbarian is his ability to enter into a berserker style rage, wherein, upon entering this state, he gains a bonus to strength and constitution (his ability to withstand damage), an extra attack per round, and an immunity to a variety of magical effects aimed at targeting his mind.  He gains extra hit points and can fight BEYOND the point where most folks would be incapacitated: he is simply fueled by pure rage and adrenaline.  But, of course, nothing comes for free: AFTER the rage, the Barbarian enters a state of fatigue: heavily exhausted by the effort of being so enraged, they suffer a PENALTY to their strength and constitution and are, quite simply, knackered.  Knowing this though, the decision to USE the Barbarian’s rage in combat is still an obvious decision, for if one were to NOT do so, they no longer HAVE a Barbarian: they simply have a mediocre fighter.

The world's strongest man acting as the world's okayest fighter

 

Barbarians and fighters both occupy the “warrior” sphere of DnD: guys who are good at swinging swords and taking damage, not so good at casting spells or picking locks.  Where the two differ is that the fighter knows a lot of cool little tricks when it comes to fighting (parrying, kicking sand into an opponent’s eye, hitting 2 enemies with one blow, etc), while the Barbarian is a rage-monster that smashes stuff.  The Barbarian is The Hulk, the Fighter is Black Panther (yeah yeah, he’d be a monk: just stick with me here).  Knowing that, we have to appreciate the specific unique quality the Barbarian brings to the table to justify his existence within the game.  If the Barbarian did NOT rage, he would simply NOT be a Barbarian: he would be merely a fighter with no tricks!  And a fighter with no tricks is not useful at all: they are mediocre at best.  So why would one CHOOSE to be a mediocre fighter?

 

Out of fear of the consequences inherent in using the rage: the exhaustion.  Those players that are too concerned about EVER being in a less than ideal state will refuse to rage for they fear the after-effects of being fatigued and weakened.  They will, under no circumstances, ever allow themselves this opportunity of vulnerability in the game, because it means a moment of weakness…but, in turn, it ALSO means that they will NEVER experience a moment of greatness. They’ll never actually get to experience the fun inherent in PLAYING the barbarian class, because they’re too concerned about negatives to be able to appreciate positives.  Instead, these players resign themselves to a very lukewarm experience: they play a mediocre fighter in the form of a rageless barbarian.

For when bland rice cakes aren't bland enough

 

Where are you, you rageless barbarians?  You are the ones that refuse to engage in a decades, if not CENTURIES long tradition of bulking and cutting.  And yes, I dislike those terms because they tend to suggest that eating dictates training vs the other way around, but it gives us at least a common understanding for dialogue here.  You rageless barbarians REFUSE to put on any fat in the pursuit of gaining muscle, and you refuse to experience any hunger in the pursuit of getting lean, and, in turn, engage in the rageless barbarism of “maingaining”, or “leanbulking”, or “gaintaining”, or “long slow bulks” or whatever buzzphrase is trending on social media these days, because it immediately appeals TO you rageless barbarians that want to believe you have secretly found the way to min/max physical transformation.  Because you REFUSE to experience any negatives in your pursuit of transformation, you will also not experience any POSITIVES.  Think of all of those that have achieved physical greatness before you: they ALL engaged in these rages.  They all had dedicated periods of gaining, of “softening up”, of bulking, of dedicating themselves 100% to the pursuit of gaining mass at the expense of other qualities, AND, when the time came, they went full tilt in the other direction, shedding the fluff and revealing the greatness achieved.  From Bruce Randall to J M Blakely to Ronnie Coleman to Arnold to Dave Drapper to John McCallum: the history and heritage is all there.  What do we call those that spend years eating the same, weighing the same, and looking the same?  They are wheel spinners: they are merely a mediocre fighter, NOT a barbarian.  Reframe it right there: you aren’t bulking and cutting: you’re raging and fatiguing! 

 

We see you rageless barbarians in the training arena!  Those of you that REFUSE to ever see your max numbers take a slight dip in the pursuit of achieving other physical goals.  Those of you that REFUSE to ever engage in a short conditioning/GPP block, where your lifts suffer in the short term but your ability to train harder for longer improves.  Those of you that REFUSE to cycle out your favorite pet lifts to try to bring up weak points.  Those of you that REFUSE to accept that training is phasic: that there is a time for hypertrophy, max strength, and conditioning/GPP.  Those of you that give a program 2 weeks to “work” before jumping back to what wasn’t working in the first place!  You refuse to use your rage ability for fear of the short term consequences, but in doing so you never get to actually achieve the very thing you were designed to do!  You’re the only one at the table NOT having any fun, because you aren’t actually playing your character: you’re playing a weaker version of someone ELSE’s character.

Everyone at the table WISHES you'd just come back and play right

 

Learn the lessons from the Barbarian’s cycle of rage: the fatigue and exhaustion is not a penalty but a NECESSITY.  It’s exhausting for us to be BEYOND our best, and that’s exactly what a barbarian is when he rages.  He taps into that hidden, dark, lurking potential, in the “in case of emergency, break glass” portion of his being and unleashes his full glory upon the battlefield.  And after he’s done with that, he takes a breather and gets himself right before he does it again.  That’s all this is.  When we are gaining, we are training and eating SO hard so that we can grow into something BEYOND ourselves…and that IS exhausting.  So we take a breather, recompose ourselves, and resume.  It’s WHY achieving greatness is a phasic pursuit, rather than a linear one.  It’s why Dan John has “park bench-bus bench”.  It’s not a penalty: its balance!  The gamemasters HAD to come up with some way to make a barbarian “fair” compared to the others, and they did so by giving him a cooldown.  Life has done the same to you: it would be unfair for you to simply achieve awesomeness in a straight line.  Chase after it, cool down a bit, and get after it again.  Because a rageless barbarian is simply a mediocre fighter, but a barbarian that rages is ALWAYS a better choice than the fighter.

 

But, if nothing else, I think we can all agree that wizards are nerds.

   

 

 

INTENTIONAL STUPIDITY

I’m more than certain I’ve written about this already, but that tends to happen when you write once a week for nearly 12 years on the very limited subject of physical transformation.  BUT, the fact I’m wanting to still write about it means it definitely has some staying power.  In fact, I just remembered the post, titled “Dare to Be Stupid”, taken from the Weird Al song of the same name, but allow me to once again sing the praises of stupidity, so long as the stupidity we engage in is INTENTIONAL stupidity.  Yes, stupidity can be a downfall when it happens to us accidentally, but when we CHOOSE stupidity, when we use our powerful monkey brains to analyze a situation, come up with a solution, determine that this solution is incredibly stupid and then WILLINGLY choose to still pursue this path?  THAT, dear reader, is empowerment.  We are no longer a victim of our own stupidity but, instead, a PATRON of it.  We are blessed with the gift of this stupidity. We humans have been granted the capability to determine good and bad decisions AND the free will to intentionally pick the stupid choice among the two.  …so why would we?

If only it was this easy

Allow me to let George Carlin shed some light on the subject of stupidity.  He gifted us many amazing quotes, and it is this one in particular that I find relevant to this discussion.  “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”  George definitely had a talent in illuminating us to new ways to view the world, and as a misanthrope I could not help but cherish this quote.  But aside from the sheer comedic genius of it, let’s consider what this really means to us: “common sense” is of little worth to this seeking UNCOMMON outcomes.  The party-line, the agreed upon consensus, the status quo, the established norms, etc etc: all of these things are irrelevant if one is seeking to be DIFFERENT from average.  And someone seeking a goal of physical transformation absolutely seeks to be different from average.  Ideally, that difference is BETTER than average, putting one at the top of that bell curve of humanity, but if nothing else one is still seeking a break from the norms.  And much like George Carlin talked about regarding stupidity, extend it further: think about how physically unimpressive the average person is, and realize half of them are less impressive than that!”

Which is WHY it should be of no concern to us if we are considered stupid for the actions we take.  So many live in fear of the judgement of others, but are we really to be so concerned of the thoughts and opinions of these average people?  Or of the half of them that are LESS than the already unimpressive average?  Are we to lend any degree of weight to their opinions of us and what we do?  Nietzsche has expressed the idea that, in order for us to be offended or insulted, we must first consider the offender to be our equal, and, in turn, we empower those who insult us.  So, already, we have established the protection from judgement for acting on our stupidity: there is no need to be concerned with the opinions of those that would consider us stupid.  If we abide by what the average person considers to be well thought out and intelligent action, we doom ourselves to their fate.

This is why Skynet kills us

But going beyond that, why would we do something that WE consider stupid?  Because being smart is how we got to where we are…and now we seek to be somewhere else!  I’m willing to entertain the notion that there ARE good ideas out there, that there ARE intelligent individuals out there in the sphere of physical transformation, that there IS an established road and path to success…but we must ALSO appreciate the reality that, often times, we get stuck.  Things work until they don’t.  “Everything works…for 6 weeks”, per Dan John.  When we’ve exhausted our intelligent approaches, what avenue remains?  Stupidity!  Because the smart path has STOPPED working, so now comes time to do something stupid.

And again, the empowerment is in the CHOICE to be stupid.  We are engaging in this stupidity willingly, because we are wanting to explore uncharted avenues that MAY prove to be illuminating because they’ve been hidden under the cloak of stupidity.  We previously wrote off these ideas, saying “I’m not going to do that: that’s stupid”…and now we find ourselves starving, opened up the pantry, and all that remains is stupid.  All of my great breakthroughs have been going off the reservation to do stupid things: drinking a gallon of milk a day while following Super Squats, my initial foray into Deep Water, my first exposure to Pavel in “Beyond Bodybuilding” and abbreviated training with Stuart McRobert, all the stupid things from Westside Barbell, my current indulgence in DoggCrapp training, my attempts at being an athlete on low carb and carnivore eating contrasted with my Dave Tate inspired “Body by Fast Food” living: all of these things were SO stupid compared to the conventional norms and approaches out there, and ALL of them were game changers.  And, of course, in all instances, I initially thought they were stupid ideas…and, in turn, they took hold in my brain.

Once he's in your head, there's no getting him out

We have to understand and appreciate our biases whenever we observe new information.  We always view them through a lens that’s been clouded by our previous experiences and “knowledge” accumulated over time.  In turn, we can become our own echo chamber: we can just keep consuming the things we find agreeable and discarding the things we find disagreeable.  This is fantastic for preventing cognitive dissonance, but it is VERY poor approach for creating the kind of growth that will make us different from average.  Instead, we must employ our cognitive powers to be able to recognize and deduce that something is “stupid” by our own criteria AND be willing to CHOOSE stupidity in the instance where intellect has failed us.  When we hear some influencer out there spout an idea that runs completely counter to everything else we’ve ever experienced, we should absolutely consider it stupid AND absolutely consider it as well.  It should be stored away for the day when being smart is no longer working out for us.  As my Grandfather used to say: “If you’re so dang smart, how come you’re not rich?”  If being smart has only gotten us THIS far, it may be time to employ some intentional stupidity.  

      

STAY TUNED

For my readers out there that aren’t parents, allow me to expose you to a pitfall modern parents will experience that did not exist when I was growing up: you can accidentally let your kid watch 8 hours of television.  Its true!  One minute, it’s Saturday morning and your kid is watching cartoons, and suddenly you turn around and it’s Saturday night and your kid…is STILL watching cartoons.  How?!  Because television is STREAMING these days: it’s on demand!  What does that mean?  It means your kid can pick a show and bingewatch it, just like any degenerate adult can do.  As opposed to?  As opposed to when so many other of us grew up, when there were Saturday MORNING cartoons that ran for about 2 hours (WITH commercial interruptions) and then it transitioned onto terrible infomercials for the Chuck Norris TotalGym and the Flowbee (look that up).  Sure, you COULD sit there for the rest of your Saturday and watch that awful programming…but why would you?  At that point, the cartoons were over and you moved on to something ELSE on Saturday: playing some sports outside, reading comic books, playing video games, arts, crafts, just plain ANYTHING else.  But now?  Now, the cartoons NEVER end, and if you let your attention slip, when your kid asks “can I watch some cartoons” and you say “sure”, you created a Saturday television zombie.  Why do I even bring any of this up?  Well, for one: it’s legit something to watch out for as a parent (don’t be fooled: EVERY parent is just winging it, there is no book, and just like lifting, it’s often good to learn from the bros that have “been there/done that”), but additionally, this streaming on demand access can absolutely negatively impact your training and nutrition.

Granted, THIS particular show definitely helped me find some training intensity (RIP Akira Toriyama)

 

I started this by going back to the past, so allow me to continue that approach in discussing what physical transformation USED to be like: the information was controlled.  And not controlled in the sense that there was some sort of conspiratorial elite mastergroup out there that was hoarding all the knowledge on lifting and nutrition and parsing it how they saw fit: the FLOW of the information was controlled.  Much like old television, information was released episodically, typically in the form of a monthly muscle-magazine (Muscle and Fitness, Flex and Powerlifting USA if you wanna talk the 90s, Hardgainer for the 80s, and Strength and Healthy for the golden era, and I’ll give a shout to Mark Bell’s “Power” magazine, which was pretty awesome when it was out) and a select few books (EVERY lifter owns a copy of Arnold’s Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, and you had Fred Hatfield’s “Power: A Scientific Approach” and Bill Pearl’s “Getting Stronger”, or perhaps something from the HIT crowd).  In both cases, you, the consumer, had to WAIT until the next installment of information was released.  You’d read every article in your magazine, tear out the routines and bring them to the gym, go to the grocery store to buy the food for the diet du jour, and THAT was what you had to work with for that month.  You poured over Arnold or Fred or Art Jones’ book and THAT was all the information you had until the next book got released.  There was a DELAY between chunks of information…which meant you had time to digest it all (whether you chose to use that time or not was entirely up to you).

 

 

Now?  Information is streaming: it’s ON DEMAND.  At any point you can plug in to nearly LIMITLESS information on the realm of physical transformation: irrespective of if any of it is of value.  On that last bit: at least these magazines and books had editors, I say FULLY aware that I’ve written a blog rife with typos and grammatical errors for well over a decade now, because I’m part of the problem (but at least you have to wait a week between my posts!)  And you can absolutely literally bingewatch lifting media if you so choose: you can lose 8 hours on youtube sifting through various channels and talking heads and still not even SCRATCH the surface of all available content.  And that’s just LIFTING: if we wanna discuss nutrition, that world is SO diverse and rife with varying opinions that it’s effectively endless.  No one human will ever consume all of the media that is out there: we simply don’t live that long, and in the process of ATTEMPTING to consume it, MORE will come out.  It’s a truly Sisyphusian task.

 

At least rolling a big rock up a hill will get you pretty jacked...

 

And what’s the consequence of all this?  Aside from the fact that you can lose a whole day to what is effectively brain poison, we’ve once again lost the opportunity to actually think, digest and marinade on the information we’ve received.  Much like economics, when you increase the supply, you decrease the VALUE of the supply.  We’ve created information inflation, and now we the consumers don’t actually take the time to appreciate anything of value: we just immediately move on to the next bit of information.  “Everything contradicts everything else” cries to babe in the woods of physical transformation, who finds themselves swamped with information from a variety of sources, not able to understand or appreciate how the words of a 1000lb squatter turned coach or the words of an elite track athlete that has COACHED elite athletes SHOULD hold more weight than some dude on TikTok with a set of abs.  No different than how you can equally choose to watch “Casino” or “The Human Centipede” on your streaming service: it’s on you, the consumer, to make wise choices.

 

 

But this binge watching also points to another interesting bit of duality: we have an attention span willing to sit down for 8 hours and consume media, yet too short to actually see anything through!  In an era where information and entertainment was released episodically, we HAD to be patient.  “Stay tuned!” we were told, as the commercial breaks interrupted our programming, and “tune in next time!” as the show concluded and we had to wait a whole WEEK before the next episode.  To say nothing of waiting for next month’s muscle mag to come out, or YEARS for the new book to come out.  We waited because we HAD to.  Which is to say, we weren’t necessarily BETTER at waiting, we didn’t necessarily have a longer attention span: we simply had no other choice.  But the IMPACT of not having that choice was profound, as we were forced to engage in de facto periodization: we changed in accordance to the rate that information was received.

 

When demand attempts to meet supply...and yes, this is SUPER old school television

 

You see this play out perfectly in John McCallum’s “The Complete Keys to Progress”.  John was fully aware that his articles were released monthly, in accordance with the rate that “Strength and Health” was published, so he would WRITE programs to be followed for a month, tell the trainee to stick with the program, and in the next month he would release the next phase.  When you read the book, the sections end telling the reader something to the effect of “Focus on this for now, and next month we’ll move on to the next phase”.  And after 3-6 months, an entire training block would be accomplished.  He had a similar approach with nutrition too: slowly adjusting and phasing things over time.  The irony of all this being that my only exposure to John’s work was a book that had compiled all the articles into one spot, which I, in turn, absolutely bingeread, further demonstrating the very problem we have with wanting to consume everything all at once rather than taking the time to digest it and appreciate it. …which is, in fact, where we are today.

 

 

There is a complete absence of patience as it relates to periodization BECAUSE we exist in a state where “the next phase” is already there for us.  Trainees of the heyday understood the value of phasic training and nutritional approaches: there were off seasons and in seasons, various times to emphasize certain qualities depending on the specific demands we had.  Now?  Trainees want to be good at everything all the time, and getting them to stay with one program for a week is already a significant ask, and they’ll be 2 weeks into a half-hearted cut before they decide they got too small and need to add size OR they’ll watch a slight degree of blur happen to their abs on a bulk and decide it’s time to pull all the carbs out and try to get shredded.  And let’s talk about THAT for a second now, shall we?

 

It's not as though you actually get a vote on the matter

 

Another interesting byproduct we see from information being available instantly on demand is that WE are, in turn, available instantly and on demand.  What do I mean?  Once again, in the past era, lifters, even famous ones, like top level bodybuilders, were NOT visible 100% of the time.  Not every single training session was documented, people weren’t taking photos of their meals and sharing them with the world, there was not a daily selfie update: we’d have month long stretches where we would not see or hear from these folks.  During THESE times, these trainees tended to make the MOST growth: it was the off season, where they could focus on bringing up weaknesses and letting their physiques soften up a little while they focused on growing some size.  What does that sound like to a modern trainee?  That sounds like a period of time where you AREN’T setting a PR every time you step in the gym (doing something you’re WEAK at?  Why would you ever do that?!) and it sounds like NOT looking your absolute best for your adoring fanbase.  How horrifying!  If I can’t always be at my most absolute best while everyone is watching me ALL the time, why bother? 

 

 

Because sometimes, in order to make a giant leap forward, we need to take a few steps back for a running start.  If you’re already AT your peak, you can’t “peak more”: really, all you can do is just get slowly and gradually worse.  But if we take a strategic pause to come down from our best, rest, recover, soften up and shore up some weak points, we’ll have recovered and grown enough that we can easily blast forward and surpass our previous best.  We just needed to “stay tuned” for a moment there.  We needed to be patient enough to wait for “the next episode” of our own lives.  If we try to bingewatch our lives, we end up going nowhere, but when we take an episode, pause, wait, reflect, contemplate, and grow, we get SO much more out of the experience. 

 

Because even the greats knew to let their abs go away every once in a while

 

Don’t hit that “next episode” button on your physical transformation: stay tuned and take it one episode at a time.  You’ll enjoy the show more, and being on the couch for so long isn’t good for you.