If I can be credited for giving any “gift” to the world of physical transformation, it would be the identification of my 3 keys to success: effort (what I would like to call “intensity”, but that, unfortunately, is equated to mean percentage of 1rm, so I say effort), consistency, and time. And, of course, I’m not the first to have identified this, as Dan John quotes “little and often over the long haul”, which he himself attributes to a coaching mentor, and, of course, all thought originates from the Greeks anyway. Plus the Simpsons already did it. But all that aside, in the discussion of effort, consistency and time, it’s worth appreciating that I phrase “AND time”, rather than “OR time”, indicating that all 3 of these variables are important. The absence of one negates the value of the other two. If you consistently put in minimal effort over a long time, you will achieve minimal results, and if you inconsistently kill yourself in the weight room over a long time (like those folks that get charged up at New Years and right before spring break, and then fall off for the rest of the year), you’ll forever spin your wheels and stay in some sort of skinnyfat limbo. And, of course, when we remove time from the equation, we find that killing ourselves in the gym consistently grants little in the way of results…because we haven’t WAITED long enough yet. But this is the LEAST satisfying prospect of the 3, because we can always train harder, we can always be more consistent, but try as we might: we cannot compensate for a deficit of time with a surplus of effort.
Remember deer antler velvet?
I was first
exposed to this reality when I was recovering from ACL reconstruction. My regular readers (the few, the proud at
this point) recall what happened: in my attempt to carry a 775lb yoke 30’, I
made it 29.5, went for a quick pick up to secure the distance, and ended up
rupturing my ACL, tearing my meniscus and fracturing my patella all in one
shot. I ended up getting a hamstring
graft after waiting 6 weeks for my patella to heal up enough to have some
screws put in, at which point I began what would boil down to 5 months and 22
days of recovery before being cleared to return to regular training. I had heard of the 6 month recovery time for
ACL reconstruction, but I was different: I was going to be EXTRA diligent with
my recovery. I was going to do
EVERYTHING in my power to heal faster. I
was going do train my uninjured side as hard as possible, push the limits, and
lick this thing in no time. I shared all
of this with my surgeon and my physical therapy team…who went on to inform me
that ligaments DON’T get much blood flow in the body, compared to muscles. They take a long time to recover because
that’s how LONG they take to recover.
It’s not a matter of doing your physical therapy harder than everyone
else, it’s not a matter of taking the right drugs or using the right protocols,
it’s not a matter of nutrition: you simply can’t rush the healing process. But you CAN absolutely set yourself back in
your progress by pushing too hard too soon and compromising the recovery of the
healing ligament. And I certainly came
close to doing just that in pursuit to prove them all wrong, and for my effort,
I managed to shave a whole EIGHT DAYS off my recovery time…go me.
We see this
same thing whenever people find themselves with an abundance of free time. “Guys, for the next 3 months, I have no
obligations whatsoever. I can LIVE
training. How can I maximize this
opportunity? 2 a day training every
day?” The answer is, sadly, so very very
pedestrian. There is very little one can
accomplish in such a short window, and, most likely, the best thing this person
can do is use this opportunity to maximize RECOVERY rather than training. Because the body can simply only grow SO much
in a given time, and once we’ve flipped the growth switch, we cannot “flip it
harder” to make it grow more. But,
comically enough, quite often, the very things that ARE suggested to do during
this time are flatly ignored, because they’re not “sexy” enough for the
trainee. Use these 3 months to rest as
much as possible, eat as well as possible, and learn as much as possible, so
that, when you find yourself ABSENT the time to do all these things, you’re so
much further ahead.
Lee Priest setting the example
Make no
mistake: effort IS the driver OF the progress, but time is to governor of it’s
distribution. Yes, it is true that many
trainees ARE undertraining as far as the necessary degree of effort goes in
order to drive a stimulus and, in turn, these trainees will see “faster”
progress once they learn how to properly up the effort, but this isn’t a
demonstration of how more effort equates to faster progress universally: it
demonstrates WHAT the necessary base level of effort is in order to maximize
the benefits OF consistency and time.
It’s why I say all trainees should run Super Squats at least once in
their lives: just to learn what effort FEELS like. But what I DON’T say is that these trainees
should run Super Squats 7 days a week in order to get twice the results,
because it just plain doesn’t work that way.
In point of
fact, quite often, our attempts to speed up time with effort have the opposite
of intended effect: they REDUCE our results and slow us down. Dan John related a story about his brother,
who did no training for a marathon and ran it cold. Typically, the prep phase for a marathon is 3
months. By skipping these 3 months of
training, his brother “saved” himself 3 months!...except, after the marathon,
it took a full 3 months for him to regrow all of his toenails and heal his feet
enough to be able to walk normally again.
Which meant, not only did he lose the same 3 months he would have lost
before, but he lost even MORE training time, because a normal marathon runner
is able to actually TRAIN in those 3 months leading up to the marathon, whereas
his brother was sidelined the entire time.
All that time you saved skipping out on boxing lessons is going to get spent re-learning how to tie your shoes
We see this
same thing when it comes with diet: those that are on the quest to drop fat and
improve their physiques want to do it as fast as possible, and in doing so,
engage in some sort of crash diet that rapidly jettisons their lean tissue and
puts them in a terrible hormonal state, setting them BACK significantly further
than they would have been had they simply taken a more sane path, even if it
“took longer”. And we even see this
among those who THINK they’re “taking the long road”, by attempting the ever
famous “long slow lean bulk” in an attempt to avoid ever having to have a fat
loss phase. Because they’re trying to
save themselves the time of the cutting phase by investing heavily in the
effort of the bulking phase via precision nutrition, they end up spinning their
wheels for months, putting on minimal, if any, new lean tissue, and squandering
a LOT of hard training hours in the gym.
Had they simply been willing to invest the necessary TIME into the
second phase of the nutritional protocol, they would have actually come out
ahead.
None of this
is doom and gloom: it’s quite the opposite.
Physical transformation is one of the few guaranteed returns on
investment out there in life. If you go
to any gym, you will find a ton of jacked dudes who are training in all sorts
of ridiculous manners, simply because they’ve put in enough TIME under the bar
that the results happened. And not only
does interest generate on your investment: it compounds! The longer you do this, the better you get at
it, which improves your ability to engage in physical transformation, which
allows you to get better at GETTING better.
That speaks to the value of “consistency” in the “effort, consistency
and time” equation. All it requires is
patience, which is, of course, in short supply in a world of literal instant
gratification. But, in turn, think about
how ridiculous of an X-men power that is to have: the ability to WAIT. That’s a super power you can pick TODAY
without any need for genetic mutation or exposure to radiation, and it will put
you SO far ahead of everyone else who is simply unwilling to wait for the
results to come their way. Put your head
down, dig in, wait, and you will see the results of your effort.
