NORTHERN STARS

I go on a lot of cruises, so travel by sea is something I’m familiar with insomuch as one can be familiar with when traveling on a mobile buffet (which, I most accurately heard cruises summed up as taking the city of Reno Nevada and floating in the ocean with it, which isn’t too far off).  But because of my frequent nautical exposure, I’ve been made aware of the romanticized image of traveling by way of the “northern star”: a guiding star in the field of stars in the night sky that one can rely on to orient themselves when they are in the vast expanse of the ocean with no reliable landmarks or other indications.  When you’re out in the middle of the ocean, everything around you just looks like…ocean, and the sun and moon are going to be in constant flux, but in the field of stars, you can find that ONE star to help guide you along your path, give you a vector, and ensure you’re actually traveling in the direction that you WANT to go, rather than just going in circles (a tragedy that occurs far too often for those that get stranded out at sea).  And, observing the population that exists in the physical transformation sphere, and even from my own follies, I can see that MANY of us are those folks stranded out at sea, with no northern stars to guide us.  Much like how the Vikings have provided so much inspiration in the realm of physical transformation (hello Viking press…and rowing), let us default once again to these mighty sea nuisances and learn their nautical ways so that we, too, can find our northern stars and not lose our way.

Or else we'll end up like them!

The primary way I see the manifestation of losing our northern star comes by way of reversing the intention of nutrition and training.  What’s unique about this is, as far as physical transformation goes, I’ll flat out say that I do believe that nutrition is the greater PRIORITY compared to training.  And, again, I recognize who I am when I write that, and how I have a reputation for performing the most absolute bonkers training there is and pushing myself into the redline, but the reality is, as far as actually transforming ourselves goes, what we put through ourselves has significantly greater impact than what we put ourselves through.  Professional bodybuilding is pursuing this reality to it’s most logical conclusion, demonstration how, with the right genetics, drugs, and food, the training becomes something of an afterthought, as the body is just so completely primed to achieve greatness that it has no other choice.  All that said, though, when it comes to what is to be our northern star, training 100% trumps nutrition, to the point that to even attempt to do the opposite quite often results in, well, the opposite of intended outcomes.  Failure.

 

When we make training our northern star, we create a vector to strive toward.  And we can do this even more concretely by having a “SMART” goal to stive toward: I need to add 70lbs to my overhead press in 12 weeks, I need to run a marathon in 8 weeks, etc.  But in either capacity, we’re pursuing an outcome that’s measurable by, well: outcome.  Each week, we check in with ourselves and see if we are actually following our northern star.  We need to add weight to our overhead press: did we?  “Well, my biceps grew 1/8 of an inch, and I got my Fran time down by 4 seconds, and I think I saw a quad vein”…dude, you’re drowning!  Get the ship back on course!  Once we reach the island and dig up the treasure we’ll plot a new course, but until then, keeping following the northern star (yeah, I switched in pirates with the Vikings).

While real OGs know that it's the ninja we fear the most

 

The cool thing is: when we make training the northern star, the nutrition piece sorts itself out.  When we decide that we need to enter a mass gaining phase of training, and we make it a goal that, each training cycle, we lift more weight than the previous one, the ONLY way this is going to happen is if we’re eating enough to grow from cycle to cycle.  We see the weights in the gym go up and we KNOW we are getting more muscular.  The northern star is guiding us along our way.  And when that training phase is over and we move onto the next one, we’re going to KNOW if we’re overeating because we won’t be getting faster in our conditioning nor will our bodyweight exercises improve.  The only way to make that happen is to stay strong while getting lighter.  And that’s only going to happen if we have less fat.

 

Attempting to make nutrition be the northern star is reminiscent of a Ron White joke.  While traveling by airplane, they were informed that one of the engines had failed, but thankfully there was enough fuel in the remaining engines that they’d be able to make it to their next destination.  When queried by his fellow passenger of how far the plane could get if another engine failed, Ron replied “All the way to the crash site, and we’re going to make great time too!  I bet we beat the rescue team by about 30 minutes!”  THIS is what happens when we try to make the nutrition the northern star.  If we say “Ok, it’s mass building time: I’m going to make sure I always eat 3000 calories every day, get in my 200g of protein, time my carbs around training, and HOPE this all turns into muscle by the time I’m done”, all we’re doing is throwing fuel into the engine of the ship without giving it a direction to actually go in!  Which means we’re just going to make EXCELLENT time on our way to the crash site.  And, similarly, when we say it’s fat loss time, and all we do is cut food intake and don’t actually change the training in a meaningful way to facilitate fat loss, we’re going to reach that crash site quickly as well: a crash of our hormones and metabolism, so that we’re absolutely wrecked and simply a smaller and weaker version of what we were: not leaner.  Food is fuel: that idea has been espoused before, and it fits the metaphor SO well here, as it’s fueling us in the direction of our goals.  But if the ONLY goal we have is “more fuel/less fuel” without any actual DIRECTION to travel toward, all we’re doing is getting nowhere faster or slower depending on fuel load, but no matter what: we’ll get there.

But hey, Doc Brown will be there

 

You can’t know how to get to where you’re going if you don’t know WHERE you’re going.  Having a northern star to guide you along your path on physical transformation provides you an opportunity to check in on yourself and ensure you’re actually making the progress you need to make.  I’ve trained without a northern star before, and I had fun doing it, but that’s all I had.  These past 2ish years, I’ve re-oriented myself to a northern star, and cycle after cycle I make small, incremental progress toward an overall larger goal and see myself achieve the outcomes I intend to achieve.  Don’t let yourself drift aimlessly out at sea, and don’t focus on how much fuel you’re putting in the engine: figure out where you’re going FIRST and then you can figure out how much fuel you’ll need to get there.