The longer I train, the more I marvel at the reality that, the harder we try, quite often, the SLOWER we go, as it relates to physical transformation. It’s an interesting bit of biology and alchemy where the body seems to function like a non-Newtonian fluid: resisting more when we push harder yet giving way when we let off. However, to continue in this trend of irony, it appears that the opposite seems to hold true as well: in our attempt to make things easier IN the course of physical transformation we end up actually making things harder for ourselves. Specifically, it seems when we attempt to employ scientific advances as a means to supplant nature, nature laughs at us like Crom on his mountain and asks “how’s that working out for you?” This is because our biology is hundreds of thousands of years old, whereas our science is still quite new, and when the two meet, age triumphs over beauty. And as is most often the case on this journey of transformation, we perceive this in the realm of training AND nutrition, and most often new trainees commit both of these errors simultaneously, exponentially increasing the difficulty of their journey in their attempt to increase the ease. Let us discuss.
And nature finds a way
In the realm
of training, I’ve discussed previously the topic of training in a state of
emotional arousal (psyched up), but to re-iterate: it’s less than ideal. I know it makes for good social media posts
to get incredibly psyched up, blast heavy music, huff ammonia, slam your head
on the barbell and crush a grindy new PR set, but once the camera stops rolling
and all the likes go away, we’re left having to deal with the SUBSTANTIAL
inroad on our recovery we’ve created.
This is because our brain and biology naturally places governors on our
physical output in typical circumstances as a means of self-preservation. Our bodies all possess INCREDIBLE physical
potential, reference the stories of mothers lifting cars off their infants in a
moment of sheer physical panic, HOWEVER the activation of this potential can be
incredibly destructive on a body that has not been conditioned to produce this
sort of output. Stan Efferding has
discussed the stretching, as an activity, is less about making muscles more
pliable and more about training the body how to RELAX enough to be able to
achieve it’s flexible potential, citing the notion that, if you were to render
a person unconscious, you could most likely get them into a full splits without
an extensive stretching regimen. Where
this relates to a state of emotional arousal is that, in the absence of it, our
bodies are designed to exert a certain degree of output, and it’s only through
the activation of our sympathetic nervous system (entering a state of fight or
flight) wherein we’re able to EXCEED these limitations. HOWEVER, this is a ancient deeply encoded
biological defense mechanism: meant to be employed in EXTREMELY limited
circumstances as a means of survival, the body effectively making the bargain
that it’s worth experiencing a non-lethal amount of damage LATER if it means
saving it from a lethal amount of damage NOW.
Effectively writing a check to be paid off in the future, and the pay is
recovery: we need to dump the flood of cortisol, rest, eat, and recover.
So now,
already, we understand that ALWAYS psyching up for training is putting us in a
bad way…now what if we decide to go BEYOND our biological capability to do so
by means of some sort of chemical assistance?
Pre-workouts and caffeine supplementation prior to training are
incredibly popular among new trainees (AND trainees who SHOULD know better)
because they allow one to rapidly reach levels of emotional arousal that are
BEYOND what one can normally achieve, to the point that it can happen even if
one is not in a state to be ready FOR such arousal. We constantly hear stories of dudes who
“aren’t feeling it” that day, take their pre-workout, and then are ready to
tear the doors off the gym. Folks,
that’s a bug: not a feature. You don’t
WANT to constantly be triggering your fight or flight response just go to lift
some weights: that response is there for a reason, and this ISN’T it. Trainees do this because it allows them to
lift more weights for more reps in training, and think that THIS is the shortcut
to faster gains, but INSTEAD what is happening is their shortchanging
themselves on the part of the process that actually GETS them the gains:
recovery. They’re digging DEEPER into
their recovery well than their body is naturally poised to be able to recover
FROM, and each training session just keeps on digging deeper and deeper. In order to recover from an unnatural degree
of fatigue generated, one would need to employ unnatural means of recovery…and
that’s a game of whack-a-mole to discuss for another time.
In fairness, Rocky was drinking raw eggs, which Gironda said was just LIKE a steroid cycle...
But in the
realm of nutrition we see another interesting manner in which apparent ease has
hoodwinked us into greater difficulty, and it’s a surprising source: protein
supplementation. Protein supplements
have been around since the 60s, once we discovered just how darn awesome
protein is at building muscle, and it seemed like a very logical answer to the
problem of just HOW do we get enough protein in our diets. Interestingly enough though, as more and more
research unfolds, we find that we may not need QUITE as much protein as we
estimated based off those 1960s numbers (quite possibly due to the fact that
the folks that were selling the protein were ALSO telling us how much we
needed…but I digress), but irrespective of that, there’s a long established
tradition of meatheads trying to take down a LOT of protein in the quest for
muscle, and with the recently released new food pyramid here in the states,
we’re ALSO seeing predatory food companies engaging in “protein maxing”. This
is the latest trend where EVERYTHING is labeled “high protein” by shoehorning
some incredibly low quality and cheap protein source into an already chemical
crapstorm of a “food product” (yes, “high protein Pop Tarts” are out there) as
a means of riding the wave of the cultural gestalt for “health”. Needless to say, it’s never been easier to
get in your protein these days…and that’s the problem.
My favorite
bit of nutritional advice is “eat only non-processed foods and try to get 1g of
protein per pound of lean bodymass”, which, if I ever DO release the Chaos is
the Plan training book, that might be what I do instead of “meat and eggs when
hungry”. The reason being is this, if
you try to eat 1g of protein per pound of lean mass using ONLY non-processed
foods (don’t be stupid, I get it that any food found at a grocery store is
“processed” because the butcher had to butcher the meat and the farmer had to
harvest the fruit, but the rest of us on planet Earth understand what this word
means), you end up making a LOT of good nutritional decisions in general,
IRRESPECTIVE of your goal. This is
because we only have SO much stomach space and capacity AND our body’s natural
hormones for regulating hunger and satiety (ghrelin and leptin) will
effectively auto-regulate intake with that protein goal being the northern
star. If you decide you’re going to try
to do this pure vegan, it’s most likely just plain not going to work, as you’ll
run out of room or appetite for beans and rice.
If you decide you’re a living carnivore meme and are going to try to do
it eating 50% fat pork sausages, our gallbladder will tap out before you get to
your protein goals. You effectively
won’t be able to overeat, nor will you truthfully be inclined to, as
unprocessed food isn’t hyperpalatable.
And, unless you specifically go out of your way to ONLY eat the leanest
protein possible (egg whites, chicken breasts, shrimp, etc), you most likely
won’t UNDEReat either, as natural protein sources tend to bring either fats or
carbs along for the ride.
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| You can see the night and day difference in physique outcome |
And through
this explanation, I imagine you’re already understanding how attempting to make
the acquisition of protein EAISER is, in fact, making the whole process more
difficult. For one, let’s consider the
fact that almost ALL protein supplements (to include protein spiked junkfood)
is artificially flavored and sweetened, which is going to bypass the body’s
natural satiety signals and most likely INCREASE hunger rather than satiate
it. We compound this with the reality
that protein supplements tend to be devoid of OTHER macrounutrients, being
PURELY a source of protein. So now we’ve
rapidly achieved our protein goal for the day WITHOUT having come close to
meeting whatever needs we have for other energy sources (fats and carbs) and
are found seeking sources for these IN ISOLATION of protein…a completely alien
way to eat, and who better to help us meet this demand than the processed/junk
food industry that will GLADLY package fats and carbs together with minimal protein
in a means to make their food hyperpalatable and prone to overconsumption. And as Alan Aragon’s protein powder and ice
cream (with whiskey) experiment has demonstrated: attempt to live this way is
depressing and non-sustainable. Our
current food environment is so toxic that, in an attempt to make the process of
nutrition easier by employing a protein supplement to reach our protein goals,
we’ve ended up making the nutritional process FAR more difficult, having to
rely on willpower and white knuckling to get us to “stay on target”, compared
to if we just reached our protein goals by eating real, honest to goodness
food.
There’s an
old saying of “you’ll have plenty of time to do it right the second time”, a
cautionary tale of how, in our attempt to rush the process, we end up spending
EXTRA time fixing our mistakes and then doing it “the hard way” as we should
have done it in the first place, and that continues to hold true here
today. As we attempt to make things
easier, we just make it harder. We’re
not going to outsmart our biology. We
need to, instead, work to understand and appreciate it, because it has a LOT of
cool stuff to teach us, once we’re ready to sit down and listen.
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