RACING TO REDLIGHTS

Driving is when I tend to do most of my thinking, and when a vast majority of my blog post ideas tend to populate in my head.  I’ll actually have to get my phone out once I reach the parking lot and send myself a quick summary of what I came up with before the thought fleets away.  Amazingly enough, it’s not the actual DRIVING that tends to inspire my thoughts: it’s just a time when I am by myself and my brain can ruminate.  However, today’s post is different, for it is inspired by observing driving behavior, and understanding how much it maps on to what we see in the world of physical transformation.  Because one of the silliest things I observe when driving is people racing toward a redlight.  The light is blatantly red, yet the motorist shows no sign of yielding, and, instead, slams on their breaks at the last possible second upon reaching the light.  Aside from the fact this is very distressing for fellow motorists, as it appears the driver does not recognize the light and is going to run it, it’s also just flat out not good for your vehicle to drive it like that.  You exhaust your break pads and put needless wear and tear on it.  The more prudent action upon seeing a redlight is to ease off the accelerator early in hopes that, by the time you arrive, the light changes and you never even need to apply your breaks in the first place.  And much as life imitates art, so often trainees, in turn, find themselves racing toward a redlight of physical transformation, blunting their progress and causing damage that could easily be prevented by easing off the accelerator a little.

A video game about a cartoon about a commercial about crash test dummies...the 90s were a trip

 

We see this so frequently in the world of training, with 5/3/1 being the easiest example to go do.  SO many trainees absolutely refuse to even ENTERTAIN the idea of employing 5/3/1 for the same trite reason: “it’s progresses too slowly”.  I’ve written numerous posts on how this is a silly critique, but for today’s focus, let’s go examine what the alternative is.  What is the BENEFIT of progressing quickly compared to slowly?  What do we achieve, aside from simply arriving at the stall EARLIER?  What is the benefit of racing toward this redlight?  If we just slap 5lbs on the bar every workout irrespective of how the last one went, how we’re feeling today, how we’re eating, what our workload is, etc, we’re simply going to reach a point where it’s unsustainable, we stall, most likely regress, and we are simply DONE with this protocol.  As Dan John famously asks: “Now what?”  But if we employ something like 5/3/1, with an intelligent and nuanced progression scheme, we ease off the accelerator of progress and more slowly approach this impending stall.  And what is the benefit of THAT?  By approaching it SLOWLY, we actually have the time and opportunity to get STRONGER before we get there: meaning that the stall won’t actually happen!  We see it coming on the horizon, decide to ease off and allow ourselves a chance to get strong enough to overcome it, and we get to keep on cruising through, getting stronger and better, compared to our compatriot in the other lane that is now just hitting the reset button an in attempt to generate another running start at this stall.

 

We see this same redlight racing in the world of nutrition as well, with fat loss is the biggest culprit, and that’s because everyone is totally fine taking a long time to GET fat, but no one is willing to do the same when it comes to fat LOSS.  Once the decision is made to lose fat, it’s a crisis event, and it’s attacked with that level of ferocity.  DRASTIC calorie restriction is employed, and training is doubled in terms of frequency, duration and intensity.  And in one week, 5 pounds are lost…and then a stall.  And for the next 3 weeks, a stall.  And maybe even a little jump up in weight.  What happened?  The body ADAPTED, because that’s what bodies do.  And it’s that adaptation that one is supposed to FIGHT during fat loss.  They’re supposed to bamboozle the body into giving up the fat by HIDING the fact that we’re losing fat.  It’s going to be a slow, gradual process where we sneak a few calories away and do a little more walking than usual and save harder interventions for when the body displays some stubbornness.  But if we try to race to the redlight of adaptation, we achieve exactly that, and, once again “now what?”  We WERE eating 800 calories of lettuce and water while running a marathon a day: do we now eat 400 calories and run 2 marathons?

The IIFYM crowd double checking their calorie counting apps

 

I was going to write that we see this in muscle gaining as well, but in truth, we’ve moved SO far away from THAT issue due to everyone being so afraid of losing their abs in pursuit of building muscle that, instead, we have people that have been sitting at the greenlight for 4 full cycles and STILL refuse to hit the accelerator, so perhaps a discussion for another time.  So instead let’s talk about the dreaded “deload” and how this is a prime example of easing off the accelerator BEFORE we hit the redlight.  There’s some sort of bizarre stigma against employing deloads right now, hinging on the premise that needing a deload is a sign that you’re improperly managing intensity and volume in the first place.  But let’s go back with that traffic metaphor again.  Sure, in theory, if you drive your car at exactly the right speed with lights that are perfectly timed, you’ll never need to hit the breaks: you’ll always hit greenlights and just coast right through.  But what can happen?   An animal can dart out into the middle of the street and force you to slowdown or swerve, or a car can pull out in front of you and start going slower than you intended, or you miscalculated the size of your bladder and suddenly you need to arrive at your next destination with a little more urgency.  What happened?  Life.  It’s a full contact sport: wear a helmet.  And we encounter that same entropy when we train as well.  Illnesses happen, unexpected social obligations, late nights, minor tweaks, etc.  Sometimes, a planned and scheduled deload IS properly managing volume and intensity, because it’s like a training slush fund, set aside to deal with those less than desirable elements that impact our recovery.  We budget a necessary degree of “oops” into our planning, so that we don’t find ourselves racing toward a redlight of a stall.  The deload lets us take our foot off the accelerator for a minute so we can keep on cruising through greenlights.

 

For all of our sakes, please be a good driver out there.