YOU CAN’T FORCE WILLPOWER

As a man who finds himself a fan of brute force, as evidenced by my admiration of Marvel Comic’s “The Juggernaut”, alongside my penchant to always play the Half-Orc Barbarian in Dungeons and Dragons, alongside all the ridiculous and absurd sh*t ya’ll have seen me engage in over these decades, there’s a bit of comedy in me acknowledging that willpower itself CANNOT be produced THROUGH sheer force of will.  So many trainees honestly try to force themselves to HAVE willpower, and they attempt to do so through the capacity they tend to have in abundance: intellectualism.  But, of course, if nerds could be jocks then we’d have no nerds or jocks: just the fabled philosopher kings that Plato wrote about from the mouth of Socrates.  No dear reader, willpower is not something you can think your way through, nor can you fake it until you make it, it simply IS, and if you are unwilling to do what is necessary in order to achieve your goals in physical transformation, rather than try to force yourself through, you must analyze WHY you have this absence of willpower.  You can’t force willpower: all you can do is vector it appropriately.

Sadly, not even then

What sparked these thoughts was the idea of how there are SO many successful training programs out there, and many of them have WILDLY different approaches.  Deep Water and GVT’s 10x10 protocol is wildly different from HIT or DoggCrapp, wherein a trainee does ONE big set for each muscle group and calls it a day…but they both have demonstrated success.  Super Squats has produced results for decades, and in Easy Strength you do NO squats whatsoever.  Sheiko and Westside Barbell have both produced champion powerlifters.  Jamie Lewis has expressed outright hatred at the approach of Stuart McRobert, and both individuals have produced training programs that have achieved success in their trainees.  Lists go on and on, and there are authors I’ve never even HEARD of that are out there producing results, and there’s also a chance that, of all the programs and authors I’ve listed above, you’ve also never heard of any of them and have STILL achieved results.  There are SO many avenues for success in the realm of physical transformation…so how do some STILL manage to fail?

Because WILLPOWER is the essential driving element to success.  And I want to be clear that I am saying that in stark contrast to the notion that it’s a matter of discipline.  No: I do NOT agree that it’s simply a question of having the discipline to make the pursuit of physical transformation a “lifestyle”: many people live lifestyles that are wholly unbeneficial and unproductive.  Alongside that, all discipline does is establish a routine.  People equate training to brushing their teeth: something they do simply because it is a part of their daily life.  Their “discipline” has instilled in them the habit of always training.  Well when is the last time you got REALLY fired up about brushing your teeth?  When did you determine that you were going to have the BEST oral hygiene of anyone you knew?  When did you decide to be a paragon of clean, white, perfectly aligned choppers?  Do you want to employ the enthusiasm you dedicate to teeth brushing toward your whole body transformation?

Yes: Schoolhouse Rock beat me to the punch on this

WILLPOWER is essential to the process of physical transformation, for it is the driving force that produces the intensity necessary to actually enact some manner OF physical transformation in the presence of the discipline that got us INTO the training space in the first place.  Sure sure, it took discipline for you to get to the gym every single day: it takes WILLPOWER for you to actually EXERT yourself under the heavy bar on another set of squats when you feel like your soul is escaping through every applicable orifice of your body.  WILLPOWER compels you through those horrific conditioning sessions where you’re pretty sure your lungs are bleeding and you taste copper in your mouth.  WILLPOWER is what allows us to “stick with the diet”, whatever the hell that happens to mean at that exact moment in time.  …but what is it that produces this willpower?

We cannot FORCE ourselves to have willpower: that is self-referential.  That’s like trying to pick yourself up by your ankles to get to a higher point of elevation: you are going to fall flat on your face.  It’s like plugging a surge protector into itself to have “unlimited power”: it doesn’t work.  No, willpower is produced through faith.  And no, I am not referring to believe in the almighty (although, sure, that will actually do just fine for many), but faith in THE SYSTEM: WHATEVER system that may happen to be.  Because I see SO many trainees who operate in a total absence of faith and then wonder WHY they aren’t succeeding despite doing “everything right”.  You aren’t doing everything right, you forgot the one thing that actually matters: work hard.  And you work hard BECAUSE you have the willpower to do so.

Laugh all you want, but you're literally going nowhere on your treadmill

All of the programs I mentioned earlier work.  It’s simply the truth: we’ve OBSERVED these programs working.  We KNOW they work. BUT, we also know they can fail.  And a trainee who believes that the program they are on will fail…will fail.  Irrespective of how well designed the protocol is, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: you believed you would fail, and you did.  Man, what an awesome superpower you have: the ability to predict AND control the future.  WHY are you using this power for self-destruction instead of self-improvement?  One must have unbreakable, unquestionable, unwavering faith in whatever approach it is that they are undertaking, for it is THIS faith that creates the willpower necessary to succeed.  The INSTANT a seed of doubt creeps in, it is time to abandon course and find a new path.  

If you select a way forward simply because it’s “the best”, but you personally do not have the necessary degree of faith in the approach to actually believe that, you will NOT have the necessary degree of willpower to actually create the stimulus for physical transformation.  You will limply pay lip service to the protocol, doing all the required reps and sets with all the required weight and eating all the right foods and completely removing the HUMAN element from the equation.  You will be robotic and mechanical, and reap the rewards of such an existence.  Your vehicle does NOT get better with more repetition: it tends to actually DECLINE with use.  The same is true of most machines: they decline, break down, and become obsolete.  When you undertake a process mechanically, you achieve a mechanical outcome, but when you take on a challenge as a HUMAN, you benefit as humans do.

Don't get me wrong: The Terminator was pretty cool, but Conan got to go on and become a King!

This isn’t a question of motivation: motivation is fleeting, and subject to manipulation easily impacted by current mood, environment, atmosphere and circumstances.  Motivation can carry one through a workout: willpower carries on TO victory.  And again: this is NOT something that you can logic your way through.  Willpower is NOT a reasonable process: willpower is what we employ when reason FAILS us.  When a mom lifts a car off of her child to save their lives, they abandoned ALL reason in that pursuit.  Reason told that mom that there is no way she can lift that vehicle: willpower empowered her to do exactly that.  You thinking your way through a program, dutifully analyzing how the frequency of the movements balanced against the volume and intensity has produced the most optimal outcome simply will NOT give you the necessary force of will to violently execute the training ONCE the time arrives: THIS is from willpower.

In turn, we can make use OF illogical means in order to obtain this willpower.  People are in such a rush to point out when a logical fallacy occurs, as though it’s some sort of secret trump card in the game of life we’re all playing that instantly secures victory.  It could not be further from the truth: when we’re attempting to elicit an emotional outcome, logic is simply holding us back, and appeal to emotion, in and of itself, is a logical fallacy, which ends up proving how inconsequential these tools are.  SEEK OUT confirmation bias: intentionally ignore the failures and focus ONLY on the successes.  When I first discovered Jon Andersen, it was the best thing that had ever happened to my training: FINALLY a guy out there eating low carb and training STUPIDLY intense and getting ALL the results from it: a pro-strongman AND a pro-wrestler AND a pro-bodybuilder, with the strength and physique and crazy conditioning to back all of that up.  Hell yeah: looks like my approach is going to be just fine.  The same is true when you read Super Squats: Randall Strossen cites EVERYTHING in that book, and the academics LOOKING to fail will point out that the citations employed by Randall don’t meet THEIR scientific rigor.  But for those of us looking to turn into monsters?  Those citations are amazing.  NOTHING Mike Mentzer says makes ANY sort of sense…but if you operate off the premise that “doing what everyone else is doing will get you the results that everyone else is getting”, suddenly doing ALL the wrong things is the ONLY right thing to do.

Especially true when you find out he is Odin

You can’t force willpower.  You can’t outthink it.  You can’t produce or create it.  All you can do is channel it.  Find your appropriate channel and use it to your fullest extent possible.  If you find that your current approach is stifling your ability to do so, abandon it and go find something that works.        

SCHEDULED SUFFERING

I have run into this situation SO many times, and it’s happened recently enough that I finally figured it was time to write a post about it.  People read my blog or see my youtube videos or follow me on reddit and decide that I am a guy who knows things about physical transformation, and they end up seeking my advice on things (you fools!)  An individual ended up finding me from youtube, set up a chat with me, and laid out his situation for me to advise on.  He worked a hard physical job that was exhausting him, especially since it involved shift work, and on top of that with the training and being a dad, he was exhausted.  He wanted to know my solution for recovering better.  And I asked the question that I KNOW everyone hates to hear from me, based on the responses that I get: “Do you do any conditioning?”  

How I imagine it feels when I ask this question

Right away, I got the response I tend to always get: “I consider my job to be conditioning”.  So then, I persisted: “That’s cool, but do you DO any conditioning?”  “Aside from the job, no.”  “Ok, so you’re NOT doing conditioning then.”  Which is how I quickly lose friends and alienate people, but it’s ALSO one of the reasons I never accept money for any of this stuff: I’m beholden to no one, I can say whatever I think or feel, and people are free to take it or leave it.  I never need to bend my message to make it easier to hear or prevent cognitive dissonance.  And to this dude’s credit, he told me he would TRY to add some conditioning to his training, primarily because I gave him my whole “conditioning is magic” spiel (which, for shorthand, not ONLY does conditioning help you recover BECAUSE it gets restorative bloodflow through your body, but it ALSO makes it so that you are better, stronger and fitter WHEN you are called upon to perform, do it’s doubly beneficial).  And through that dialog, it dawned on me: we ALL will have to endure the same AMOUNT of suffering: it’s simply a question of WHEN.  So why not schedule your suffering for when YOU want to experience it?

We go back to that dude with the physical job: at his job, he suffers.  The work is hard and it physically exhausts him, and it taxes him OUTSIDE of the job due to the physical demands.  That person has scheduled his suffering to his work hours.  BUT, suppose this individual, instead, decided to engage in some regular and hard conditioning work?  If, for 20 minutes a day, every day, he did some brutal challenge that jumped his heart rate through the roof and made his lungs catch on fire?  Every SINGLE time he did this, he would suffer (at least, if he wanted the effects of the conditioning), BUT…outside of that he would NOT suffer.  When he goes to his physical job, he would be more fit for the tasks before him and better able to handle them.  The job would no longer detract from his recovery: it would simply be ADDITIONAL physical activity, and in that regard, possibly even RESTORATIVE physical activity.  And when he engaged in the conditioning again, it would help recover from the demands previously placed upon him.  

Unlimited power!

…but the suffering doesn’t change.  That’s the takeaway here.  We must be at peace with the reality that there is no ESCAPE from the suffering.  It is our plight as humans to endure suffering.  And I’m not profound in saying that: I’m pretty sure Buddha beat me to that by a few thousand years.  But it STILL holds true.  And once we stop trying to hide from it, we can do the one thing that IS within our power to do: schedule it.  We suffer on OUR terms.  Previously, we were at the whim of the universe: suffering happened as a necessity.  In order to earn our livelihood, we had to suffer.  Like some sort of awful trap from the movie series “Saw”, we endured suffering in order to continue living.  But now, we suffer not to survive, but to THRIVE.  We suffer, on OUR terms, so that we become a BETTER human: a superior member of our species.  We suffer on OUR terms so that, when the universe attempts to MAKE us suffer, it simply cannot conjure up the degree of suffering that matches what we have already inflicted upon ourselves.

I experienced this exact exchange in that grappling competition I wrote about recently.  I showed up without having engaged in any grappling training for 18 years, but I had scheduled MUCH suffering in that time and, in turn, showed up in significantly better shape than my competition.  Those folks were more skilled, but they did NOT schedule their suffering as I had done.  The result?  THEY suffered in the competition: I felt their stamina leave them, their breathing become labored, and their strength fade.  Meanwhile, as they tired, I would find another gear: my stamina INCREASED, my strength improved, I smelled blood and went in for the kill.  I had scheduled my suffering in advance, I ALREADY suffered, and so, when it came time to perform, I was able to perform.  As exhausting as grappling CAN be, it did not match up with the suffering I voluntarily endured,

The conversation my body and brain regularly have with each other

“Cry in the training hall and laugh on the battlefield”, once again: I’m not original for coming up with these observations, but they continue to hold true, and are also apparently STILL worth bringing up because all these thousands of years later folks still think there is some sort of cheat code to avoid the suffering.  That’s what the “fitness industry” is always trying to sell: how to succeed WITHOUT suffering.  How do you lose fat WITHOUT being hungry?  How do you get jacked WITHOUT hard and heavy workouts?  How do you transform without suffering?  The answer?  You don’t!  BUT, we have the freedom to decide WHEN we suffer.  Do we suffer when we go to the beach and have to wear a t-shirt because we look like a beached whale, or do we suffer in the gym with the hard training and in the kitchen with the sound nutritional decisions?  The suffering WILL happen: but WE can decide the when and the how.

THAT is our power, and it is a huge power to wield.  Don’t squander it.

ON SELLOUTS

I’ve become something of a Jim Wendler apologist over the years, which is frustrating, as the man can speak for himself and it’s ultimately a waste of my own time to engage in this habit.  And no, I’m not speaking about being an apologist for how he presents his personality (because he can ESPECIALLY handle himself there: I have zero interest in engaging in that dialog): I’m referring to his 5/3/1 programming methodology.  And, in that regard, TODAY I’m referring to the fact that he has released multiple books ON this methodology (some other day I’ll tackle how people butcher the method), because it appears that lifters are, indeed, a fickle breed and are genuinely upset at being provided with an ABUNDANCE of quality material rather than an absence of it.  Quite frankly, as someone that’s been training (and obsessing) for 24 years, this attitude baffles me to the point of upsetting me, because my transcendent envy comes through and I think to myself “you kids don’t know how good you got it: in MY day, we’d KILL to have SO MUCH quality content from a single author”.  But really, what confuses me is this: do you people ever listen to music?  Play video games?  Eat out?  Why are you so forgiving in THESE situations, yet so strict with those in the sphere of physical transformation?

We spent too much time wondering if we could and not enough wondering if we should

Seriously, consider this: bands (good ones at least) will release MORE than one song.  And we EXPECT them to do that.  There is no reasonable human out there that gets upset, saying “They already made a song: why are they making ANOTHER one?” To say nothing of whole albums full of songs.  To say nothing of MULTIPLE albums with multiple songs.  We CELEBRATE bands that do this.  And, quite often, we seek for these bands to EVOLVE over the era that they’re releasing these albums: to change and grow as culture changes and as the ability of the band changes too.  And yet, when we really break down what music is: it’s just different sounds arranged in a certain order that we (often) find pleasing.  The core principles of music remain the same, but we can EMPLOY these principles to generate a near limitless amount of songs and sounds.  And we EXPECT that from those who call themselves musicians: for them to do otherwise would make them unfit for the task.

You understand how this applies to the other media I mentioned.  Can you imagine if all video gaming ended at Pong?  “You already MADE a video game: why are you making MORE?!”  If all fast food ended at the hamburger?  “What are you doing adding CHEESE to that burger?!  We already HAVE a burger!”  Heck, we tend to enjoy these two things concurrently: smashing the latest Taco Bell monstrosity while we engage in the 7th hour of our Call of Duty binge.  And we cannot WAIT for these latest iterations to come out.  We anxiously anticipate the newest console or latest edition of our current favorite game series, we drool over the commercials of the latest nutritional debauchery to be foisted upon our gullets, we love and DEMAND innovation, newness and creativity.

Ironic for a show that came out in 1999 and keeps getting rebooted

BUT, we also understand that the development of these new things does NOT invalidate our enjoyment of the old stuff.  We can STILL enjoy that first album from our favorite band just as much as we enjoy their 14th.  Sometimes we enjoy it EVEN MORE, because it was that original sound that hooked us.  I STILL have my original Nintendo Entertainment System plugged in, and I regularly find myself playing the original Fallout that was released in 1998.  Sometimes, a regular old Whopper from Burger King hits just right.  Through this, we recognize that the presence of new stuff does not somehow make the old stuff no longer enjoyable or effective at achieving its goals.  We realize that we simply have MORE good stuff now.

Why should it be any different when it comes to lifting programming?  I’m going to use Jim Wendler here in particular, but this applies to MANY authors in the lifting sphere.  People FREQUENTLY bemoan how many books Jim has released on 5/3/1.  “Looks like Jim needed more money: he released another book!”  “I guess I’ll just have to get ANOTHER book to learn that program.”  “How many books do I need to buy to learn how to do 5/3/1?!”  Etc.  Again: how ridiculous.  You’re going to be upset that an author wrote MORE material?  You’d rather he NOT share more information with you on how you can achieve your goals?  That, after he spends time in his lab, trying out new things, tweaking older formulas, finding new ways to succeed he just…do nothing with it?  Why?  For what reason could you possibly be upset that you can now have MORE material from someone that is out there producing results?

As opposed to...

The new material does NOT invalidate the old material!  5/3/1 worked when Jim started writing about it in his training log in 2008 on Elitefts.  If you were to use THAT particular method, you would succeed.  The stuff that was in the first edition book?  It all worked.  Same with second.  Same with beyond, powerlifting, and forever, AND all the stuff on his blog, t-nation articles, and the things he talks about on youtube.  All of these things work, and 1 idea working does NOT make another idea NOT work.  This isn’t a zero sum game: we’re ALL winning here.  And along with that, there is no SHAME to be had in enjoying/preferring the old stuff over the new stuff.  We don’t need to be hipsters or die-hards here: there is no prize to be had for ALWAYS using the latest and greatest.  And just like music, it’s also possible to enjoy A song from an artist and NOT go and purchase their full catalog and listen to every song and become an expert on them, much like we can appreciate A program from AN author, use it and move one.

The biggest bit of comedy here is that Jim IS a musician, and when you hear him speak, his passion really seems to lie IN music rather than training.  Training is a thing he does to stay fit, capable and sane, whereas music is something he does to become fully self-realized as a human.  And, in turn: of COURSE he’s going to have his craft evolve over time…it’s what we EXPECT to happen with his REAL passion.  And I also imagine he finds it just as ridiculous to be held to one standard for one craft and a completely different standard for another.  As should you.

Seen here, giving away all the secrets

It’s fine to enjoy things that are enjoyable and appreciate things that are appreciable.     

WE GOT TO WHERE WE ARE BY DOING WHAT WE’VE BEEN DOING

We humans are a delightfully flawed species, which, if you’re the religious type, you may refer to as “original sin”, or if you’re the philosopher type you may simply think of Nietzsche’s “Human: all too human”, the latter individual also claiming that God is dead showing the unification of two contrasting schools of thought arriving at the same conclusion.  But already I’ve digressed before I’ve started: one of the fun ways we are flawed is how often we seek familiarity as a form of comfort.  This is, most likely, an evolutionary trait that served us QUITE well in an era where we were running from sabretooth tigers and trying to remember which mushrooms we could eat vs which ones killed us dead, but in the modern age this comfort seeking behavior is ultimately one of the many causes of our downfalls.  And even those that believe that they have saved themselves by engaging in the process of physical transformation manage to fall for this trap, for, quite often, these individuals constantly seek the comfort of familiarity WITHIN their process of physical transformation.  But herein we realize the error of that way, for physical transformation IS a process OF transformation, and in order to transform, we must BECOME something different than what we are…whereas we got to where we are by doing what we’ve been doing!

Chewing bubblegum and kicking ass got him this far...let's see what he does without the gum!

 

This STATEMENT seems obvious, but consider how many trainees turn a complete blind eye to it.  Let’s establish a very simple baseline premise: one does NOT engage in physical transformation IF one is satisfied with their current selves.  That seems agreeable, no?  Outside of some sort of situation wherein one engages in physical transformation purely as a lark (exercising Sartre’s “radical freedom”), the vast majority of trainees MUST have some sort of catalyst to drive them.  Perhaps they watched a movie with a training montage and got inspired, perhaps they put on a swimsuit, looked in the mirror and had an “oh sh-t” moment, perhaps they decided they wanted to compete in a physical event and realized they were WOEFULLY underprepared for it, but whatever the case, those seeking to transform are NOT satisfied with what they currently are.  Well how did we get to where we are?  We got there by doing what we’ve been doing!  All decisions and actions up until this point have resulted in THIS outcome.  We understand the equation put in front of us: X+Y=Z.  So now, we look to change either the X or the Y (or both) to arrive at a new answer!

 

We intellectually understand this…but emotionally, we’re a wreck!  Our stupid lizard brains WANT familiarity: it wants things to be the way they’ve ALWAYS been.  But doing what we’ve been doing has gotten us right where are right now…UNSATISFIED!  We need to remember that as we embark on this adventure.  We’re going to have eat differently, we’re going to have to sleep differently, we’re going to have to train differently (or at all, for that matter), we’re going to have to LIVE differently.  None of this even assures that we are going to IMPROVE, but it DOES ensure that we’re going to CHANGE.  So far, we are EXPERTS at being what we are: to become something else, we will need to become amateurs once again.

Although sometimes those previous expertise are STILL pretty useful

 

…Do I hear “noobie gains?”  You bet!  We’re going to experience that rapid change that occurs when you transition from doing a thing you’re good at to doing a thing you’re bad at.  “White belt mentality”: it’s outstanding!  You never move faster than when you start from nothing, as you have nowhere to go BUT up!  THAT, alone, is your insurance policy through this period.  SO many folks are SO afraid to try something new, but what could you possibly have to lose?  You have to face the fear of the unfamiliar, but remember: you didn’t choose to pursue transformation because you were SATSIFIED with what you are: you wanted to be different.  Well here are the keys to that kingdom!  Embrace the weird, the alien, the different: do what you HAVEN’T been doing to get to somewhere else.

 

But this isn’t just about the stat of the journey: those that are in the PROCESS of transformation absolutely need this lesson as well.  BECAUSE we experience that rapid growth the first time we change direction, it’s quite easy to fall victim of the trap of infatuation: we soon become zealots of our new way, because we KNOW it produces the results we seek, and we fall in love…and refuse to change!  THIS is the way that produced the results!  This is the NEW way!  …but, eventually, we find ourselves STILL unsatisfied, STILL seeking transformation, in which case…what do we do?

No

 

We stop doing what we’ve been doing!  The principle STILL applies.  We have to recognize when we’ve wound up in yet another rut: when we’ve EXHAUSTED the new way and must, instead, move on to ANOTHER new way in order to, once again, NOT be where we are.

 

Anyone that has followed me has recognized this exact pattern unfolding.  This very blog started with me espousing what a fan I was of abbreviated training, only to immediately take a HARD pivot into stupidly high volume work, and here I am back to abbreviated training with some recent runs of Super Squats and Mass Made Simple, with all sorts of wild journeys in the middle.  I employed abbreviated training through my second powerlifting meet, was unsatisfied with having failed a 502lb squat AGAIN, and ended up going in a completely different direction and trying 5/3/1, which allowed me to finally get my 502lb squat AND a 601lb deadlift in a meet…all before I completely switched gears and started competing in strongman.  Oh, and that powerlifting phase came AFTER I hung up my gloves after 12 years of martial arts training/focus.  All of these approaches worked…until they didn’t, and then it was time to do something else.

This is what PTSD looks like

 

And, of course, I’ve annoyed so many of you with my nutrition, but once again, I’ve broken out the etch-a-sketch on that SO many times and just completely obliterated all my previous approaches.  I’ve gone from a Gallon of milk a day with copious amounts of PBJs to a paleo style approach to dirty keto to low fat/low carb (THAT was really stupid) to shakes only to carnivore, and in every instance, it was the same situation: I was unsatisfied with what I WAS, so I needed to do something different than what had gotten me there.  And EACH and every time I did that: it worked!  And that’s the feedback loop we need: the re-assurance that, each time we stop doing what we’ve been doing, we WILL get to somewhere else.  Through the repetition of the experiment, we receive consistent confirmation that these changes WILL produce results, and we develop the habits and skills of a being CAPABLE of change, which, in turn, allows us to continue onward in a process of consistent transformation.  A stagnant being never changes, but a being that transforms gets there THROUGH change.

 

Make yourself a being of consistent change.  Find your current paradigms and smash them all to pieces.  Slaughter all of your sacred cows, disavow all your gods, blaspheme and forsake, so that YOU can become something other than what you are.          

“THIS IS THE GREATEST MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE AND YOU’RE MISSING IT!”

The title for this post comes from the movie “Fight Club”, because as my readers know, I was a child of the 90s, and that movie is one of the most 90s movies out there and will always remain iconic for those of us that were “there”, right next to Office Space, for related yet completely different reasons.  For those that have not had the absolute delight of enjoying this film (at least a few dozen times), this line is spoken by Tyler Durden during a moment wherein he is inflicting a severe chemical burn upon the narrator and forcing him to endure the pain of it.  Specifically, he’s chastising the narrator for trying to distract himself from the pain by trying to think of something else: something pleasurable, happy, and absent of pain.  For Tyler, the entire point of the experience IS the experience: to distract yourself from it is to defeat the purpose and miss out on the lesson of it all, which in Tyler’s case is that “You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you.  He never wanted you.  In all probability, he hates you.  This is not the worst thing that can happen…we don’t need him!”  Which, oh my goodness, THAT quote would also make a great post sometime, but today we’ll focus ON the part preceding that, because Tyler was absolutely right: this IS the greatest moment of your life, and you ARE missing it.

And just like that, my blog traffic went up 700%

 

Ok, I had to post a “Brad Pitt in Fight Club” photo, because this is a blog on physical transformation and that’s so incredibly cliché it’d be wrong NOT to.  But allow me to explain myself otherwise.  This applies in a few areas, the first of which I’ll address is how often trainees live so much in the future that they never actually experience what is ACTUALLY happening to them.  They are experiencing the greatest moments of their lives and completely missing them, because they are too busy trying to live in the future.  Examples?  Think of how many trainees engage in an alleged muscle building phase of training, but restrict their caloric intake in some sort of attempt to minimize fat gain. Why?  Because they don’t want to have to cut in the future.  WHAT?  For one: good luck.  Centuries have taught us that the way of physical transformation is a process of gaining and losing, for reasons I have covered extensively in this blog (spoilers: to train hard, you have to eat big, and when you don’t eat big, you don’t train hard).  But beyond that, think of how much this is robbing Peter to pay Paul.  The point of the muscle gaining phase is to GAIN MUSCLE.  This isn’t a “minimize fat gain” phase.  The minimize fat gain phase is known as a MAINTENANCE phase: most humans are simply wanting to minimize their fat gain day to day (and they’re doing that quite poorly in that regard, but I digress).  A muscle gaining phase says it right there: the goal is to gain muscle.  When you shift your nutritional priorities AWAY from that, you waste the entire training phase: this time you were SUPPOSED to be focused on building muscle, you instead focused on minimizing fat gain.  Now, the phase ends…and you barely gained any muscle.  Hey, now you don’t need to cut.  Congrats!  …it’s because you didn’t gain any muscle!  And now while we engage in our follow on phase, all we can think about is how we gotta gain some goddamn muscle during our next muscle gain phase, because right now we’re just spinning our wheels.  That muscle gaining phase was the greatest moment of your life at that point, and you missed it.

 

The same holds true for the trainee that is overly concerned about achieving “optimal”.  This trainee doesn’t want to waste ANY time in their pursuit of physical transformation: every second spent training MUST be the most productive second of training possible.  For this trainee, they need to ensure that, in 2 years time, they’ve reached their “natural potential” (HAH!  If you’ve trained MORE than 2 years, you understand the comedy of that statement), just like all the experts on the internet said they would.  Could you imagine the tragedy if it took 2.5 years to get there because we used “sub-optimal training”?!  Meanwhile, while Johnny Optimal is pouring over tomes and articles (let’s be real: they’re just watching TikTok influencers), Jimmy the Meathead walked into the weight room and maxed out the lat pulldown machine every day and saw their upperbody EXPLODE simply because they were there putting in the effort on a consistent basis.  90% of your potential achieved today is far more impressive than 100% achieved tomorrow if we are actually experiencing the greatest moment of our lives!  But you’re there missing it.  You’re so focused on your future you forgot all about your present.  No matter WHAT we do, time will march on and we will reach the future: there’s no need to try to get there before everyone else.

Doing everything wrong can sometimes still get you pretty damn far

 

Finally, let’s discuss a situation that’s really on the nose as far as the context of this quote and scene goes: so many of you folks out there are actually flat out distracting yourself FROM the pain of training.  Whenever someone tells me they enjoy training, I know they’re out there MISSING the greatest moment of their lives.  I have posted many videos of me accomplishing stupidly high rep sets of exercises: it’s kinda become my “thing”.  I have an annual tradition of doing 300+ reps of high handle trap bar pulls with 135lbs on Thanksgiving (current best is 401 reps), and I’ve posted some recent videos of an 85x185 squat and 101x146.  I am frequently asked how I manage to keep count of all those reps, informed by many people that they easily get distracted and miscount reps in sets up to 20, let alone the 100s.  And upon hearing that, I know that these people are missing out on the greatest moments of their lives.  There is IMMENSE pain during these high rep sets, along with sheer physical exhaustion and just all around soul-crushing suckage…but that’s WHY we do them.  Because it’s the enduring and overcoming of these experience that allow us to grow.  But what ends up happening is a trainee does whatever they can to DISTRACT themselves from this experience WHILE they are experiencing it.  They let their minds wander, distract themselves, blast the music in their earbuds to max volume, hit up the smelling salts, and basically try everything they can to HIDE from the pain.  That psyche up ritual of yours takes on a whole different look when you stop and realize you’re basically trying to scare away the pain because you’re afraid of it, like a housecat that arches its back and raises its hair up to try to look bigger to a predator.  Instead: EXPERIENCE this greatest moment of your life.  Live EVERY rep of it: don’t let a single one go by without your own 100% focus on it.  It’s not about the 20 reps of Super Squats that transform us: it’s about us DOING those 20 reps.  If we check ourselves out and try to wake back up when it's over, it wasn’t US that was doing it.  We are in pursuit of transformation, and we aren’t caterpillars in that pursuit.  We don’t get to wrap ourselves in a cocoon of distraction and wake up one day a butterfly.  Instead, our transformation is the vicious, ugly and brutal transformation of taking a hunk of raw iron, heating it until it’s pliable and beating it until it takes on the shape we desire.  We must experience the searing heat of the flames of the forge and every hammering blow of the mallet beating upon our frames.  The blade that skips the heat or dodges the strike is the blade that breaks in battle.  We will be weapons of legend: masterly forged.

Although we can also be needlessly huge too

 

At least that’s cooler than being a bar of soap.          

LESSONS LEARNED FROM SOVIET ROCKET CLUSTERING: NOT ONLY IS FAILURE AN OPTION: IT’S AN EXPECTATION!

I’ve discussed my rather electric educational upbringing, so it should surprise absolutely no one that, at some point in my life, I was educated on the difference between American and Soviet rocket design theory as it related to space exploration.  The Americans employed a very American approach to the design theory: they would recruit the greatest scientific minds possible (Hello “Operation Paperclip”) in order to perform the most precise and exacting scientific calculations to determine exactly what/how and why to design a rocket to reach its intended destination, then contract out to those companies that could provide the top-of-the-line equipment necessary to build this rocket, ensuring a “zero-failure” scenario such that the goal of the space exploration mission could be reached.  And it was, in fact, “zero-failure”: if anything went wrong in the execution of the plan, typically, the entire plan would be scrubbed.  If it was an unmanned rocket and it went off trajectory, it was exploded before it could possibly harm anyone on U.S. soil.  The Soviets, on the other hand, employed a strategy known as “clustering”.  What is clustering?  Clustering is the idea that some failure is inevitable: so we plan FOR that failure: typically about a 10% rate of expected failure.  Putting that into numbers, if we know it takes 100 rocket boosters for us to reach our target, we’ll put 110 boosters on the rocket, figuring that 10 of them are going to fail, and therefore we’ll get our needed 100!  Compare this with the “no-failure” strategy of the Americans, and you can observe the much greater degree of flexibility allowed in such a plan: you can shed several rocket boosters before you need to start discussing scrubbing the mission.  As much as we love to say “failure is not an option”, the truth is that, not only is failure an option: it’s an expectation!

Someone experienced with rockets AND failure

Many trainees out there are wanting to employ “the American approach” when it comes to training and nutrition in pursuit of physical transformation.  They engage in a “zero failure” campaign, where everything is so tenuously strung together in the most precise of manners that there is absolutely no room for failure…which means, when the inevitable failure DOES occur, the entire thing falls apart.  “If It Fits Your Macros” is a primary example of one of these “no failure” nutritional approaches, which is so funny, because to many this would appear to be the most FORGIVING nutritional approach, but it is the infinite flexibility of this approach that lends to its downfall.  When we already decide “food quality doesn’t matter: all we need to do is meet our macros”, we’ve put ourselves into a “no-failure” situation: now we NEED to meet our macros, because we’ve already abandoned the pursuit of high food QUALITY.  So now, when we fail on IIFYM, we COMPLETELY fail: not only are we eating poor food quality, but we didn’t even meet our macro nutrient goal, so we’re eating a poor quality INEFFECTIVE diet.  Yes yes, the IIFYM apologists will always inform me that you don’t HAVE to eat bad food on IIFYM: I’m just gonna say that, if you WANTED to eat quality food, you wouldn’t pick this strategy.  We do this so we can justify the ice cream and Pop Tarts: let’s be real with ourselves.

And we continue to flip the script when we look at the “super restrictive” nutritional protocols and acknowledge how they fall so well within the notion of clustering and acceptable failure.  Diets like Carnivore or Paleo are both incredibly restrictive: the former saying “eat only animals, no plants” and the latter saying “eat only things paleo man could have eaten, nothing processed/alien”.  Attempting to abide by these protocols 100% by the letter of the law can be impossible for many trainees: these requirements are quite stringent and do not account for when “reality” shows up.  We overslept, the store was out of the food we needed, unscheduled travel, unplanned office luncheon, etc.  But herein we observe clustering: if we’ve been eating the high quality nutrition that is prescriptive of these plans, when we fail to meet them, we’ve now simply entered a realm wherein 90% of our diet was outstanding, and only 10% of it was less than adequate.  For most trainees, a 90% success rate for nutrition is MORE than adequate to accomplish many degrees of physical transformation.  We were eating VERY well for the majority of our journey: we can account for these rocket engine failures.

This failed carnivore meal is a successful vertical diet meal!

 

And along with that, consider where we “land” when we fail on these two different approaches.  For the Americans, when their rockets failed, they were obliterated and landed in pieces and fragments (ideally) across the ocean.  For the Soviets, their “failed” rockets MADE IT TO THE DESTINATION!  It’s similar with these nutritional approaches: when you fail IIFYM, you are REALLY obliterated: you’ve been housing ice cream, Pop Tarts and protein powder, and now you forgot the protein powder, so it’s been an ice cream and Pop Tarts diet.  But you were eating carnivore and you went and ate a vegetable or a piece of fruit?  How awful!  You were eating paleo and you broke down and ended up having a protein shake or a Quest bar?  For shame!  You were on a bro-diet of chicken, rice and broccoli and you had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?  For one: Dan John and Paul Carter approved, but secondly the IIFYM crowd claims that is how it’s “supposed” to be.  When your “failed” diet ends up being the ideal of the majority, you’ve definitely gotten your nutrition sorted out.  

 

Funny enough, one of the sloppier approaches to nutrition ALSO falls under the realm of Soviet clustering: The Gallon of Milk a Day. Now, I’m not going to try to sell you on the idea that a gallon of milk a day is a healthful approach to eating/living (they killed Socrates for sophism, although if I was sentenced to drink a gallon of milk rather than hemlock, I’d appreciate the irony).  GOMAD is an extreme method of achieving extreme results, but with that, it STILL employs clustering.  There’s nothing particularly magical about the amount of “one gallon”: it’s simply a handy way to measure the amount of milk you’re taking in.  If you drink a gallon of it a day along with eating a lot of food, you’re sure to grow.  But say you “fail” and only take in 90% of a gallon one day, or even a few days in a row?  You STILL took in a ton of calories: you’ll be alright.  You forget to buy milk one day and skip a whole day of it?  In a 6 week span, that 1 day won’t really matter.  Once again, even when we fail, we land at our intended destination.

Sometimes it's not worth trying to cram in those last few ounces

 

Wanna walk some Soviet Clustering training?  It ties perfectly into that gallon of milk: SUPER SQUATS!  And again, at face value, you may see Super Squats as a more American approach: either you get the set of 20 or you didn’t.  But look a little deeper: if we FAIL in our pursuit of that set of 20 that one particular day, isn’t that indicative of the amount of effort we put INTO that set?  Is there something particularly special about the number 20, or is it simply a number we utilized because the pursuit of it drives us to push our bodies hard and keep a weight on our back for a LONG time.  Super Squats pushes a VERY aggressive training protocol, paired with an aggressive nutritional protocol, and failure is pretty much a given, simply because we are human and we are flawed.  But when we fail, we obsess about it for the next 47 hours, pound the milk, come back strong, conquer it, and in conquering it prove to ourselves that very workout wherein we failed actually MOVED US FORWARD to our goals.  We have proof of concept right there: a weight that previously defeated us has now been defeated.  We failed on the program, and succeeded toward our goals.

 

The American approach to training would be something more akin to linear periodization (no, not linear progression).  Linear/Western Periodization (already with the American there) hinges on the idea of calculating a max weight we need to lift and then working backwards over the course of many training cycles to determine what weights, for what sets and reps, we will need in order to achieve that lift.  It is VERY precise and demanding, and those sets MUST be hit. …so what happens if we get sick during the training cycle?  Pick up a small injury?  Have to work late one night and miss a workout?  Etc.  How comical that a western approach to training required a real Soviet style approach to execution: like some sort of state sponsored athlete.  There is no wiggleroom: the expectations are set, and we must do so for the Motherland! 

Rocky IV really did it right here

 

Holy cow this is going long, but you can see where this all plays out.  It may seem cool to believe “failure is not an option”, but when you actually put yourself IN those situations, you don’t create the environment that produces perfection: you simply experience the very real and human experience of BEING imperfect, and your perfect plan falls to pieces.  Engage in a little bit of clustering: build failure INTO the plan, so that, when you fail, you end up where you were heading to anyway.  “Shoot for the moon, for if you miss you end up among the stars”?  No, shoot for the moon, plan to miss, for WHEN you miss, you’ll end up on the moon.

 

…yeah, that one probably won’t catch on…but I planned on that. 

     

LESSONS LEARNED FROM FRED DUKES: YOU DON’T NEED TO BE THE HULK

 

I absolutely understand enthusiasm as it relates to the topic of physical transformation.  That should be readily apparent: I’ve been writing a blog for 11+ years now where, once a week, I write at least 1000 words on the very topic, and often time I have to restrict myself from writing MORE or more frequently than that.  I’ve expressed how one of my earliest cognizant memories or thoughts was relating to wanting to be big and strong: how I would watch Popeye cartoons and see the commercials for the Marcy all-in-one fitness machine and would try to frantically copy down the 1-800 number to order it, thinking that they’d just send it to me if I managed the phone call (spoilers: you have to PAY for that).  When given a free moment, I’ll read about physical transformation, or go for a walk while listening to a podcast (2-birds with one stone there).  And, of course, I love ALL media relating to those beings that are big and strong, which meant that growing up with the X-men cartoon, playing cards and comics was like having an IV-drip of pure dopamine (quite the heroine problem, eh?).  And from there, I was introduced to Fred Dukes, aka “The Blob”, and from there I feel like we can all stand to learn a lesson from this portly gentleman: we don’t NEED to be The Hulk.

"Don't worry Hulk: this happens to lots of Superheroes..."

 

Who is “The Hulk”?  For those living under a rock, The “Incredible” Hulk, much to my disdain as a forever Juggernaut fan, is consistently ranked as the physically strongest creature in the Marvel Comics universe.  He is the barometer of which we evaluate all other “heavy hitters” in Marvel Comics.  He’s big, green, angry, and he smashes.  I honestly never cared for him, but credit where credit is due, he’s “the Strongest”.  Who is Fred Dukes?  He is, “The Blob”: a mutant in the X-Men universe, which was a BRILLIANT universe because characters no longer needed an elaborate origin story to explain their superpowers: they simply had a mutated gene responsible for it!  In the case of Fred Dukes, his mutant powers included “superhuman strength, endurance, and great resistance to physical injury”, and whereas Juggernaut claims “nothing stops the Juggernaut”, the Blob’s claim to fame is “nothing moves The Blob”, based off an ability to alter the gravity beneath him (which, fun fact, the Blob HAS been moved by Juggernaut, Hulk and Strong Guy, but that’s another story).  But let’s key in on that superhuman strength.  How strong is The Blob?  Well…

 

In the world of Marvel, strength tends to be divided into classes based off how much the character can lift.  The previously aforementioned Hulk, as “The Strongest”, is in the 100+ tons class.  His strength is considered limitless, so he can lift over 100 tons.  That is, of course, unfathomable.  A “lower tier” heavy hitter, like Strong Guy, was capable of lifting 50 tons at base level, which a potential of getting stronger based on circumstances.  Where does Fred Dukes rank?  5 tons.  10 times “weaker” than Strong Guy, and over 20 times “weaker” than The Hulk.  In the world of heavy hitters, The Blob is a lightweight…but in the world of humanity?...

 

If any of us tried to bitchslap Colossus, we'd have a liquified hand

Can you IMAGINE how you would respond if you woke up one day and could live FIVE TONS?!  For a true blue meathead, this would be like having all 3 of your genie wishes granted at once.  Your prayers have been answered: you are the strongest being to have ever existed.  You quite literally transcended humanity and became “something else”.  And if it meant looking like The Blob to get there, who cares?  You’re quite literally a god amongst humanity now: you can decided if you’ll use your powers for good or for evil.  The Blob may be used as a punchline of a villain in the Marvel Comics universe, because there are SO many more powerful beings out there that can kick sand in his face, but perspective needs to be maintained here: he’s STILL a villain IN a universe full of heroes, primarily because, objectively, he is STILL a superpowered being capable of great accomplishments, either in the realm of good or evil (and if you dig deep into the comics, he HAS worked both sides of that coin).

 

Which ties everything back to the beginning and the title here: I GET that we would all LOVE to be “The Hulk”: the absolute most strongest being there ever was, top of the heap, absolute clear number one.  BUT: we must keep perspective here: simply being in the SPECTRUM of heavy hitters is, in and of itself, an accomplishment.  Fred Dukes may be “only” in the 5 ton class, but in doing so he’s established as having SUPERHUMAN strength.  On any team, he IS the “strong guy”: that’s his role.  Others might have superspeed, projectiles, flying, energy manipulation, control of the weather, etc etc, but Fred Dukes is the strong tank of the team.   He works to HIS maximal capability and is able to leverage those abilities to accomplish his end.

When you rank among these dudes, you've "made it" as far as a heavy hitter goes

 

In turn, we don’t need to worry about being perfect or optimal or the absolute most very best: we can simply be “good enough”.  Because, in truth, when we spend ALL of our time trying to be the absolute most best we can possibly be, we end up spending so much time trying to figure out HOW to be the best that we run out of time to actually enact the plan to get there!  We exist on a definite and finite timeline: eventually, we will simply get too old to continue achieving our goals, and as we march toward that timeline, often our ABILITY to achieve these ends ALSO diminish.  A “good enough” plan violently executed today is SO much more valuable than a perfect plan executed next year, to say nothing of the fact that, as we execute that good enough plan, we can CONTINUE to grow and learn to refine our craft, in much the same way that Fred Dukes actually DID grow stronger from his initial 5 ton capability.

 

And hey, while I’m talking about X-Men, why NOT bring up genetics?  The X-Men serve as a perfect example of just how unfair genetics can be.  Fred Duke’s mutation got him 5 ton class strength, whereas Colossus started off around an 80 ton class and advanced up to the 100 ton class over time.  Both were simply humans that had mutated genes: one simply was “luckier” than the other in terms of how these genes manifested.  But do you ever see The Blob call out Colossus of Strong Guy or Warpath or any of the other heavyhitters for being “unfair” and being genetically blessed?  NOPE!  Fred just does as much as he can with as much as he’s got.  AND he’s given all those dudes trouble in turn: taking the hand he was dealt and playing it for all it’s worth. 

This is seriously an awesome comic

 

If EVERYONE was The Hulk, then the Hulk wouldn’t be special.  There are always going to be outliers out there that are just absolute and total freaks that NO ONE has a chance of ever catching no matter how hard they try.  YOU aren’t that person.  I know that, because you’re reading my blog, and therefore none of this stuff comes naturally to you (because people who are naturally gifted about being big and strong don’t need to read about it: they can just BE it and go do something else).  BUT, you can STILL work as hard as you possibly can for YOU and get yourself to the point that you rank AMONG the heavy hitters.  Do you genuinely imagine you’ll somehow turn out WORSE if you were to invest 100% effort into training and nutrition?  No matter WHAT genetic hand you’ve been dealt, vesting the time and energy into attempting to transform yourself is going to result in you being an objectively BETTER version of your current self.  You won’t look like Cain Marko or Pitor Rasputin, but you ALSO won’t look like Arcade or Mojo if you push yourself in pursuit of transformation.  We need the Hulk out there to be our barometer, sure, but the universe ALSO needs a whole pantheon of heavy hitters so that we can have interesting stories, a variety of teams, different personalities AND so we can sell more merchandise!

 

You don’t need to be The Hulk.  If you can be Fred Dukes: be the best Blob you can be.