SQUARE PEGS AND ROUND HOLES

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.

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.