HIT ROCK BOTTOM SO HARD THAT YOU BOUNCE

The title for this blog comes from a rant I heard Dennis Miller make one time on “Dennis Miller Live”, which, once again, significantly shows my age, but perhaps you’ll mistakenly confuse that with wisdom, so let’s go with it.  All that said, I am a big fan and supporter of the notion of “hitting rock bottom so hard that you bounce”, because aside from the hilarious visual imagery, it’s a VERY true experience for those that have actually experienced it.  Society presents to us the idea that hitting rock bottom is the absolute worst experience we can have: that it is something to be avoided and fought against with as much resistance as possible, but this is binary thinking.  The notion being presupposed is that, if one is not at rock bottom, they are in a superior space…but between the peak of the mountain and rock bottom lies SO many other levels of elevation that many, in their attempts to AVOID rock bottom, find themselves mere millimeters above the surface, just barely subsisting off of whatever scraps they can obtain at such a meager existence.  Would it not be much more preferable for these individuals to, instead, allow themselves the necessary degree of free fall to actually STRIKE rock bottom and, in doing so, bounce and begin to progress UPWARD?  Rather than to float idly above the surface, to actually me sailing skyward once more?  Rock bottom is not to be avoided: when it is in our sights, we must instead endeavor to hit rock bottom so hard that we bounce!

Speaking of Dennis Miller and hitting rock bottom...but this movie DID have an awesome soundtrack

 

“No half measures”, if I’m going to quote a slightly more current television program there with “Breaking Bad”, because that’s ultimately what this is a rallying call for.  In order to ACTUALLY hit rock bottom, you have to be committed to SOMETHING, even if it IS the “wrong thing”.  No one hits rock bottom from part time drug use: they are there from constant benders and spiraling out of control.  You don’t get there from penny-slots: you get there from a completely out of control gambling addiction.  And when it comes to physical transformation, you’re not going to hit rock bottom with moderate intensity, 3 reps in reserve, frequent rest breaks, perfect form, etc etc.  No dear reader: you get there by going absolutely and totally completely off the rails, using way too much volume, intensity, frequency, variety, etc etc.  You do too much, or you do it too often, or you do it for too long, or a combination of the 3, or all 3 at once, but you OVERdo.  And the same of diet: you don’t get there with moderation: you get there by going STUPIDLY extreme in one direction or the other.  You Bruce Randall your way to 400lbs, or you find the limits of the body by going on a 32lb Kroc cut in 36 hours.  You decide to give the Gironda 36 eggs a day diet a go, or the gallon of milk a day…or both!  Here we are FINDING the limits: here we are hitting rock bottom HARD!

 

Why?  Because rock bottom is the absolute BEST place to be.  Oh my goodness yes.  Much like how the Art of War says to never cut off all avenue of escape from your enemy, because it means they will now fight as though they have nothing left to lose, OR the old joke about how “we’ve got the enemy in front of us, behind us, to the left and to the right: they can’t escape us now!”, once you are at rock bottom, the only place you have to go is UP!  Could you imagine   a better scenario for someone seeking physical transformation?  If the goal is simply TO transform, it means you’re at a place now where ANY decision you make is the right one, so long as that decision ISN’T “keep doing what I’m doing”.  What you were doing MAY have been working (as I imagine it’s why you selected it in the first place), and now you’ve so completely exhausted any potential good out of it that you’re at a point where ANY decision you make now is “the right one”.  You could not BE more empowered.

Yeah pretty much

 

And THAT decision that you make IS the “bounce” from hitting rock bottom.  It’s why you MUST hit it so hard, because the alternative IS stagnation, and we observe that so much.  So many trainees are so afraid of deviating from a “working” protocol that they will just stretch it out WELL past the point of usefulness.  How many times have we seen the trainee on their THIRD year of “Starting Strength”?  “Starting” is in the name: this isn’t supposed to be forever!  The trainee that is running the same bro diet, despite the fact that every single time they eat oatmeal their guts blow up, because they refuse to learn how to cook any other foods.  The warrior diet zealots, the HIT Jedis, “Westside or Die”, etc etc.  These folks are just hovering over rock bottom: maintaining stagnation and mediocrity year round.  They achieve NO transformation because they are unable to bounce: their trajectory toward rock bottom is glacial in speed. 

 

We must have no fear in attempting to find out limits, for in the pursuit of them we WILL grow and transform, and once we actually DO discover these limits, we open ourselves up to the opportunity to grow in ANOTHER direction once we make the pivot necessary to capitalize ON discovering these limits.  If we live in fear of accidentally achieving something, we’ll constantly be hovering above the surface of rock bottom: barely scraping by and achieving nothing.  But if we hurl ourselves perilously toward the floor in a lunatic pursuit for progress, we may find ourselves striking it with such force that we propel ourselves to our very peak.  Shoot for the moon, for if you miss you’ll land along the stars?  No dear friend: aim for the floor, aim true, shoot hard and hit them with the ricochet!

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