NEW GAME+

One of the most iconic video games I ever played which had deep reaching impacts on my childhood, adolescence and upbringing in general is the Super Nintendo Classic “Chrono Trigger”: a game which is often brought up in contention as “the greatest came of all time” to this day: 30 years after it’s release (and writing that just made me feel incredibly old).  This game was put together by the dream team of Japanese gaming and culture: a combination of the geniuses behind Final Fantasy AND Dragon Quest, which at the time were the rival companies of Squaresoft and Enix (before the two companies merged into Squarenix), the two biggest Japanese RPG giants in the industry, with art helmed by the creator of Dragonball Z.  This was like if “The Expendables” was a videogame…and actually good.  It had incredibly sharp visuals, an amazing soundtrack (pick it up sometime for some awesome training music), a mindbending story, incredible characters, a great combat system, over 10 different endings based upon your actions in the game (giving it incredible replay value for an RPG): anything you could ever want in a game.  However, for me, the most incredible part of the Chrono Trigger experience was the inclusion of a concept that I had never seen before in any videogame outside of employing some sort of cheating device ala a Game Genie: the “New Game+” feature.

Those of you in the know just got hit with a huge nostalgia bomb

 

What was New Game+?  For my audience that grew up playing sports rather than video games, in role playing games, the entire premise is built around the idea that you start the game off weak, and you face weak enemies.  You’re level 1, and you’re fighting rats, goblins, slimes, etc.  You beat enough of these weak enemies that you grow stronger, and then you fight stronger enemies in turn, until you reach the end of the game at your strongest and are fighting the strongest enemies.  You’re level 99, and you’re fighting dragons and demons and eventually the end game boss.  You don’t fight dragons at level 1 and get obliterated, nor do you fight goblins at level 99 and absolutely destroy them…UNLESS you’re using New Game+.  What New Game+ did was allow you to restart Chrono Trigger from the beginning BUT you got to start at the level that your save file was from a previous game, and you got to keep all of your equipment as well.  So if you had a save file at level 99 with all the best equipment in the game, congrats: you’re starting a brand new game, fighting the weakest enemies in the game while you are at your absolute strongest.  The game is an absolute and total cakewalk, and you get to just completely blitz through it all toward the end.  For a young kid who wasn’t terribly great at video games, this was totally mind-blowing for me: I could START off strong, rather than having to spend so much time grinding levels, and I could just enjoy the parts of the game I liked as I effortlessly cut down enemies.

 

Ok, how am I tying this into physical transformation?  I was reflecting on this idea this morning, and realized that New Game+ is, once again, a metaphor for the notion of periodization in our training and nutrition.  There are a few premises at play here.  First, we must appreciate the application that New Game+ demonstrates the notion that our previous training cycles set us up for success with our future cycles.  In order to obtain the benefits of New Game+, you DID have to play through an original run of the game first.  It was based off of your previous save file, so if you didn’t get that far in your first game, you weren’t going to get much out of a New Game+ file.   This, of course, speaks to the premise that we need to give these training cycles their due diligence.  If we are too quick to abandon a training cycle because we’re terrified of “losing our gains”, we’re just going to spin our wheels and never get anywhere due to perpetual program hopping.  The trainee that abandons the GPP cycle in week 2 because they noticed their biceps reduced 1/16 of an inch, only to then abandon the hypertrophy cycle at week 2 because they feel like they’re getting too fat, only to abandon the cutting cycle at week 2 because they feel lightheaded and low on energy, is going to have a really crummy New Game+ file to use, whereas the trainee that gives each cycle it’s allocated time to actually work is going to accumulate enough cool stuff that, when they hit “New Game+”, they’re going to absolutely terrorize the enemy.  Each training cycle improves some physical quality that lends itself toward the improvement of ANOTHER physical quality, like how being in better condition means being able to recover better between sets AND between workouts, which means working harder, resulting in better outcomes in either the strength or hypertrophy block, meaning being able to move more weight in the hypertrophy block OR have the potential to build more strength in the strength block, which means being able to have higher output in the conditioning block, which just continues to self-perpetuate awesomeness in a positive feedback loop.

The opposite of this basically

But along with that, one of the blessings of New Game+ was that it gave us “permission” to beat the game.  Some of you non-ultra nerds may not appreciate the bit of ennui that comes when you’ve invested 50 hours into a videogame and reach the end of it…because you don’t WANT to beat it…because that means the game is over.  If we don’t beat the game, we can just keep playing it forever and ever, but once we beat it, the game is over…and now what are we going to do?  But with New Game+, we RACED to beat the game, because it meant we could hit that New Game+ button and start the game over again, and this time we’ll be even MORE powerful than we were before.

 

And this is the same permission we need to give ourselves WITH periodization.  Opposite of the program hopper is the trainee that will NOT move on from a program when the time has finally come to do so.  We’ve seen these dudes before: those folks running STARTING Strength for 2 years (dude: it says “starting” for a reason) because they want to make ABSOLUTELY sure that they have “milked their beginner gains”, which means just starting and restarting the program over and over again while reaching the same plateau each time because they haven’t improved any other physical qualities to overcome that.  This is also true with those that are married to a method because it’s easier to buy the party line vs think critically about programming.  And it’s true for those that are simply afraid to allow some physical qualities to take a step or 2 back in the pursuit of other qualities, failing to understand that we often need to take a few steps back to get a running start for a giant leap forward.  With periodization, we give ourselves permission to “beat the game” of our current phase of training, knowing that, once we start the game over, we’re going to be even STRONGER than the last time we started the game.

Yeah, it's kinda unfair

 

Because that was what was cool about New Game+: unless you WERE the absolute strongest you could possibly be, you STILL got stronger with your playthroughs.  You didn’t see the exponential growth that occurred when you started a brand new game for the first time and were leveling up practically every 3rd fight, but even at level 50, when you got through the game again, you’d be level 55 or so, a little bit stronger, some more gear and gold in your pocket, and ready for ANOTHER New Game+.  In that regard, Chrono Trigger reflected the lifecycle of a trainee as well, with newbie gains resulting in rapid growth and adaptation, while the longer we stayed on the timeline, the less significant the growth occurs from cycle to cycle.  But growth does STILL occur with each playthrough, and we continue to build upon our successes with each playthrough in turn.  It’s only when we put down the game and stop playing that we stop growing.

 

Chrono Trigger still rates as one of the greatest games of all time to this day.  If you haven’t played it, go do so.  The fact that, 30 years later, it’s still teaching me lessons is testament to just how outstanding of a product it is.  And absorb it’s lessons: embrace the time you spend growing, allow yourself the time to experience the necessary adaptations to set yourself up for success on future cycles, but also allow yourself the grace to beat the game and move on to the next playthrough.