I have written about this extensively over my time with this blog, but it’s what I want to write about today, and since it’s my blog I get to do that. The longer I spend training and observing the training and eating of others, the more I realize that there are ultimately a nearly unlimited amount of ways to succeed at the goal of physical transformation that, in turn, it’s somewhat baffling to see just how often people fail in this quest. I’ve deduced the variables of success down to 3: effort, consistency, and time, and ultimately conclude that a failure to achieve physical transformation stems from a failure to meet 1, or not ALL, of these variables. But then, from there, we must ask the question of WHY a trainee is unable to meet these variables. If physical transformation is so simple (which is it), what is it that makes it not EASY? Because, as I’ve written before, and as Dan John has spoken of before I wrote it (because I don’t claim to be original), simple and easy are two different things, and we can intellectually KNOW what it takes to achieve our goals yet still be unable to do so due to some sort of (apparently) insurmountable obstacle. And, like many monster movies, it turns out that WE are the monster: the obstacle is us. Specifically, it is our minds, and specifically within that, it is our psychological PREFERENCES that dictate our success, and our inability to meet these preferences with the appropriate tools that results in our failure. Put simply: you cannot put a square peg in a round hole.
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| Even if you're the smartest man alive |
New trainees
to physical transformation tend to bemoan the same point: they are overwhelmed
by all the information that is out there.
The laundry list of training programs out there include the DeLorme
Method, Conjugate, HIT, Western Periodization, DoggCrapp, Super Squats, Deep
Water, 5/3/1, Juggernaut Method, RTS, Tactical Barbell Cube Method, NeverSate,
and then programming styles without names that just belong to authors like Matt
Wenning, Paul Kelso, Stuart McRobert, John McCallum, Alex Bromely, etc etc. Go to nutrition and you run into the same
issue: flexible dieting/IFFYM, primal paleo, whole foods keto, vegan,
carnivore, Mediterranean diet, Dukan Diet, Atkins Diet, Warrior Diet, Vertical
Diet, Velocity Diet, Apex Predator Diet, ABCDE Diet, etc etc. And here’s the thing: all of these things
WORK. You WILL find someone, somewhere,
that has succeeded with these methods.
That’s just simply the nature of this field: only the successful methods
survive to the point of being in the gestalt.
A program or diet that 100% of the time fails will, eventually, fade
out, because NO ONE will be able to point to someone that succeeded with it,
and eventually people are gonna wanna see results before they buy off on
it. All of these programs work!
…but they
don’t ALWAYS work. Which is to say: they
don’t work for EVERYONE. All of these
programs and diets HAVE produced failures, and those zealots deeply imbedded in
their respective camps will always say the same thing: “they did it
wrong.” Well let’s say that’s true: the
only reason the diet or program failed is because the trainee did it
wrong. WHY did they do it wrong? It’s because the program and diet DID NOT FIT
THE TRAINEE! Specifically: it did not
fit their psychology! Something about
the approach did NOT resonate with the trainee for some reason: they did not
care for the movement selection, the progression model, the frequency, the
split, or for the diet, it was made up of food they didn’t like, meal
frequencies they didn’t care for, foods that they had experienced trauma with
in the past, was too boring, etc etc.
Something about the approach resulted in non-compliance, which, in turn,
resulted in failure.
This dates back to when we thought milkshakes were healthy AND the Simpsons was amazing
Which is
ultimately HOW programs and diets matter: they MUST be something that the
trainee can and will actually FOLLOW! My
second paragraph of this post wasn’t just mindless filibustering: it was me
rattling off, from the top of my head, dozens of successful programs and diets
that exist out there, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s out
there. What this indicates is that there
are a near limitless amount of ways to succeed in physical transformation,
because, ultimately, all these programs and diets are simply manners of
ensuring some manner of achieving effort, consistency and time in the pursuit
of physical transformation. The 1s and
0s OF these methods are genuinely inconsequential: there is no magic to be
found in their combination. Instead,
these are arranged in the manner that they are arranged in because they are
looking to appeal to a certain type of individual. And when that individual DISCOVERS this
method and gets locked in, they WILL invest that necessary degree of effort, consistency
and time to be able to achieve their goal of physical transformation. But if they’re NOT locked in? They pay lip service, go through the motions,
invest no passion whatsoever into the process, and ultimately fail.
This is why
the pursuit of the optimal approach completely misses the point: it operates
off the premise that it is the method ITSELF that matters most, and it is
incumbent upon the trainee to psychologically bend THEMSELVES to the
method. To make the analogy even more
incestuous, that’s the Bulgarian training method put into practice on a macro
level. The Bulgarians basically made the
hardest program on Earth and figured that any athlete that could SURIVE to the
end of it must have the necessary genetic chops to become a world class
athlete. It’s a SELECTION process. The program picked the lifter: not the other
way around. But we, AS the individual,
must go about the from the other end: WE must pick the program that suits
US. And, in turn, it’s not about taking
a program and BENDING it to our will: when we do that, we simply make a program
that WAS effective for someone else now ineffective for two people: that person
AND us. Much like my post about “quit
making it taste like ketchup”, we don’t need to find the perfect program and
diet and then try to find a way for us to like it: let’s just pick the program
and diet that we like from the get go and do THAT!
I mean...you DO get to eat PBJs...
Because we
cannot escape the power of our own minds.
Ultimately, the heart wants what it wants, and it will do what it takes
to secure that. When we select a way of
training and eating that does not align with who we are, which is to say, as
per Sartre, we live “inauthentically”, we experience the necessary existential
cognitive dissonance and ennui that transpires from that, and ultimately end up
listless and unaccomplished. When we
force ourselves to act against our true will and desire, we simply exhaust our
own willpower in the pursuit of achieving excellence. We work AGAINST ourselves, and our outcome
reflects as such. My father always told
me “you can swim further downstream in one hour than you can upstream in
three”, and too many folks are attempting to be upstream swimmers.
This is
where the value of introspection manifests: find out WHO you are and what
drives you. I KNOW that I can NOT stand
to count, measure, weigh or track anything when it comes to nutrition: it’s why
I vector toward nutritional protocols that are based on nutrient and time
restriction vs energy restriction. Other
folks live and die by their spreadsheets: they CRAVE data, and if left alone
without it, they’ll have a breakdown.
When I first discovered Deep Water, it was like the heavens opened up
for me, as I found a program that pacified my desire at the time to train
psychotically hard and eat a meat based diet and grow, and grow I DID! Meanwhile, other folks have taken on that
same approach and completely failed to physically transform, because it did not
resonate with their psychology in the slightest, and they were living a life
AGAINST themselves the entire time. When
I tried to address my health by following a low fat AND low carb diet, I got
the leanest I’d ever been in my life and absolutely destroyed myself physically
and my drive to train. I was not eating
in the manner that suited my psychology, and it took it’s toll, compared to the
first time I ran Super Squats, where Randall Strossen’s PhD in psychology got
into my head so well that I never felt more “authentic” in my life than I did
between squats 17 and 18, knowing I had a full gallon of milk waiting for me in
my fridge back home. Meanwhile, other
folks think there’s nothing special about a 20 rep set of squats.
What could Jesse Marunde have possibly known about getting big and strong?
…they’re
wrong, but that’s ok: we can enjoy being wrong!
As long as we get results, it doesn’t matter what program or diet we’re
following. We need to follow the one
that gets us to comply! We need to fit
the square peg with the square hole. We
need to make the obvious successful match ups that will ensure we are able to
fully invest ourselves with effort, consistency and time toward our goal of
transformation. When we try to go about
it backwards, carefully selecting the optimal diet and program in a vacuum,
completely ignoring the very real element that is US and our humanity, we force
ourselves to act against our nature, and in doing so work AGAINST ourselves in
our pursuit to better ourselves. When
all parts of us are aligned, mind, body and soul, we work as one toward one
goal, and our strength is all the more multiplied in that pursuit.
