What is the ‘perfect program’? Could any of us, educated and experienced, define perfection? What does ‘perfect’ mean in the first place?

The thinkers among us might be able to cobble together a definition based on abstract concepts, maybe a little handwaving about goals and efficiency and other assorted trinkets of philosophical pontifications. In the concrete world of the gym, where the barbell trumps the abstract, there can be no ‘perfect’.

So why do so many people spend their time looking for perfection in training?

Consider the phenomenon of program-hopping. Every last one of us either knows a person who does this — or is that person. Training ADD is the eternal quest for something better, the greener grass we can see just over there. The program-hopper continually second-guesses and always wants something more.

This is perfectionism, and it’s a kind of disordered thinking born out of insecurity.

The remedy to perfectionism is Doing, instead of Thinking.

Analysis Paralysis

A lot of us — especially those who would be attracted to my viewpoint — come from a very rationalist, science-influenced background. We like, and expect, hard answers. When we don’t find those, we shut down. Uncertainty leads to paralysis. We need quantifiable values or else we can’t function.

Spreadsheets are cause for relief. The percentages that dominate periodized workout plans are sweet comfort, saving us from the unknowns that hide in the power rack.

Each and every week, new programs come out. Every year, there are new fads: supplements, training programs, diets. And there are always hundreds, thousands, lined up to go — abandoning what they’re doing right now, which is usually last year’s bandwagon, in favor of the new hotness.

That’s not productive behavior; that’s a fashion trend. Graphic design and professional photography ensure that there’s scarcely a superficial difference between the two fields.

Not-Doing

Beginners always ask the same questions. They’re interested in the same broad set of issues: What exercises? How many for this part or that part? How do I split my workouts? How much should I eat?

Beginners never ask the important questions. Beginners never want to know how to train. Beginners never want to know how to succeed.

When the wise man points at the moon, the beginner focuses on his finger. The program, the written-down details of a training schedule, is not wisdom. What is the program pointing towards?

The beginner asks questions which have no meaningful answer. Details. Trivia. Unimportant. Unask the question.

The essence of success is mastery. Productive training is an internal mindset, not a list of exercises and reps. A program is a signpost, an outward sign of the real training process.

How do you train with, and who do you talk training with? Do you train with successful lifters, or do you sit on forums and complain about ‘overtraining’? Do you lift in a gym with a charged, vibrant atmosphere, or do you exercise in a neon-and-chrome ‘fitness center’? Do you show up for your workouts? Do you get enough sleep?

These are the things that matter. Not SuperPump XLS 5000, not exact diet macros, not a precisely-crafted program that you’ll change in two weeks.

Uncertainty

Biology, at the macro-level of weight training and adaptation, is not an easily-modeled system. You cannot introduce Variable X and expect Outcome Y with predictable regularity. The system is nonlinear. Alter X and 100 different elements change in response.

Last week, I linked to Nick Horton’s excellent article The Death of Heavy Days. Nick describes the ability to let go, to stop stressing over what happens. You can come into a workout knowing only the exercise to work on. The workout can evolve organically from that. No stress. No targets, no goals. Only the doing-without-doing.

Effortless effort.

In training there are no well-defined inputs that lead to well-defined outputs. The essence of training is uncertainty. How you deal with uncertainty dictates how far you can go.

This is not to say that there is no need for programming. Far from it. There are mostly-rights and mostly-wrongs in program design. I concede that these days, I’m far more forgiving than I once was regarding diversity in training approaches. So long as a program isn’t explicitly injurious, and as long as it motivates you to show up, then enjoy yourself.

Put another way, Do What Works.

Humans are wired to label and categorize. We look for patterns even when there are none. Programs are an illusion of meaning, based on our assumptions and biases. We assume that everything can be mechanized and systematized. We assume that we can copy the outward and mimic the inward.

Realize that, as a program-hopper, no matter what you do you will always be questioning your results. Could I be getting stronger? Could I lose this fat a little faster? The less experienced you are, the more likely your questions will be off the mark: Could I do barbell curls instead of dumbbell curls?

Don’t simply resist temptation. Relax. Unask the question. Your logical mind seeks answers and meaning where there is none.

The finger is not the wisdom. Look at the moon.

I’m a bit short on time (read: behind) this week, so this won’t be a big update.

I highly suggest a look at The Death of Heavy Days: How To Do More Work with Less Obsession by Nick Horton of PDX Weightlifting.

I’ve recently become aware of Nick through Glenn Pendlay’s forum, and we are very much in agreement on the mindfulness or — pardon the somewhat overused expression — ‘Zen’ of training.

Speaking of Glenn’s forum, there have been quite a few interesting threads popping up recently. This one on specificity vs. variation in training is worth a read, as is this one on the current popularity of “Bulgarian” training (pay special attention to post #53 /shamelessplug).

I started back on a full John Broz-influenced powerlifting routine this previous week, based on this post of John’s. As of this writing I’ve squatted to a max six days in a row, pulled three times, and pressed three times (alternating push presses and incline benches, as I’ve completely dropped the bench press) — and I’m ready to do more.

The deadlift was my bane last time I tried this method. I could not figure out how to fit it in, so I’m giving his suggestion a try — lots of doubles at reasonable percentages and varied mechanics (all off the floor for now). I’m rotating between clean pulls, snatch pulls (using straps when the hook gives out), and then one day of more traditional roundbacking. Hook gripping is mandatory, as another way of ‘training weak’ to compete strong.

There’s a sweet-spot with this kind of training. You want to get enough to stimulate the nervous system, to get the potentiation effect, without going overboard and leaving yourself exhausted. There is a learning curve (though I suspect most anyone with a year or two of ‘serious’ training could pick it up quickly). Once you hit that zone, you go on cruise-control. Training makes you feel better, almost like you need to squat to a max to feel right.

Which is, of course, the desired effect. You want the extraordinary to become normal. When maximum lifts become as casual as getting out of bed, you’re in shape to do some amazing things. Like this lifter of Broz’s, lifting in a completely raw AAU meet:

Also worth reading: Broz on dealing with injuries. There is much truth in what he says about, effectively, hardening up and going to lift. Popular forum wisdom says that training more often will lead to greater injury rate. Yet I’ve noticed exactly the opposite — the more often I train, the less my old injuries bother me. Sure you get the floating Mystery Pain that changes from day to day and is more an annoyance than a real injury. What has yet to happen is the larger muscle tears or joint kinks that have always happened when I was only training a lift once or twice a week. There’s another piece of forum wisdom to disregard.

We like fast progress. All of us do. I like it. When poundages aren’t going up on the regular, I start second guessing. I wonder where I’m screwing it up. I need that regular feedback. I know it doesn’t work that way. I know in the sense that I’m aware of the facts. As we realize now, knowing is only part of the issue.

I know that muscle tissue can only synthesize so fast and there are limits to how much can be added on a given body without chemical intervention. I know that neural factors adapt on an asymptotal curve, increasing strength rapidly before leveling off in a new plateau as neurons rewire themselves. I know these things, and yet, it’s the psychological rush, the hit of mesolimbic pleasure-reward, of hitting new levels and new PRs that motivates most of us.

Without that quick feedback of success, the signpost on the road to tell us we’re heading in the right direction, it’s easy to start second guessing. Once that happens, you’ve lost.
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Awhile back, when I was talking about heavy daily training, I wrote a post about inflammation and how this contributes to the common feeling of ‘overtraining’ (which is probably better termed ‘staleness’). There’s a lot to be said about this topic. I’ve said a lot already, and there’s still plenty more to go.

Overtraining, overreaching, and the interaction between training and the stress response is a blurry area. Relating wider biological concepts, like stress, to specific instances, like workouts and training schedules, is no easy task. Contrary to popular belief, research doesn’t do that. Virtually all of our knowledge on ‘overtraining’ comes from observations in athletes or inference from neurological or biochemical effects.
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Sports are highly competitive. I know, I get the Nobel Prize for Obvious Statements, but we take it on faith that we must push to be the best. And why not? Why go into a sport, or any activity, if you don’t plan to win? Winning is the whole point, no?

I’m being sensationalist with the title, as I don’t think goals are intrinsically harmful. With no goals, we’d have nowhere to aim. We need direction. My concerns about harm relate to how we perceive goals and the importance we attach to them.

Consider how you approach a goal in training, whether you’ve got an upcoming bodybuilding show or powerlifting meet, or a lift you really want to hit. Is it only the outcome — the trophy, the number — that matters to you? If you lose, what will your behavior say about you? When you fail, do you take it personally?

Goals, in themselves, are neither good nor bad. How you treat your goals can make or break you. We tend to measure ourselves by our ability to achieve, transforming failure into a character flaw. Focus on the number means defining yourself by your ability to achieve.

Hearkening back to Carol Dweck’s Mindset, we see that status-driven, fixed-talent mindsets revel in their natural abilities — until they come across a genuine challenge. When that happens, and it always does, the fixed thinker collapses. Convinced they can’t change, they implode. They have tantrums. They get jealous, or spiteful, or hateful. They lie about their successes and hide their failures. They quit applying themselves and stop trying.

The goal is everything. The journey is an afterthought, an annoyance, or a burden. This is the same person that wants to be lean, or strong, or rich, but doesn’t care about eating right, or lifting weights, or doing well in finance. The activity, doing for the sake of doing, is secondary to the outcome.

Psychologist Jeremy Dean of PsyBlog writes of how fantasies of future success can blind us. Positive fantasies emphasize the feeling of achievement while leaving out the work required to get there (called the planning fallacy).

Dean suggests that visualization strategies should focus on the effort require to achieve — the process, rather than the outcome. Concentrating on the process — the doing — focuses your attention on the right actions, while reducing anxiety.

Finding value in your training, training because you enjoy it, training for the sake of training, will more likely lead you to success than focusing on the achievement.

Very Zen.

We should think of goals as signposts, not yardsticks. Direction, not label. Even in competitive world of sports, there’s more of value than winning. The effort — the process of doing for doing’s sake — should drive us. We lift weights because lifting weights improves our bodies and minds. We compete in sports because playing sports is fun. Invest yourself in the activity, enjoy the activity, and focus on what you can become, rather than what you are.

I’ve had this conflict with myself over the years. When I was younger, the goal meant everything. Being big and strong meant everything. What’s the price of getting as big and strong as possible? You eat yourself fat. You experiment with chemicals. You train until you hurt and then train more, until muscles tear and joints give out. And when you get there, it’s never what you thought it would be. Humans are generally horrible at predicting our future happiness.

People who do for the sake of doing are far happier and lead far more fulfilling lives.

How important is that goal, really? So important that you no longer enjoy what you’re doing?

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
-Albert Einstein*

Every time I go to a store with a large parking lot, I always see cars hovering around the front waiting for a space near to open up. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of spots to be had just a few rows back. By taking the far spot and making the sacrifice of an embarrassingly short walk, you can be on your way in a fraction of the time. The parking space vultures, in search of an easy quick-fix solution, wind up sitting there wasting time.

Taking shortcuts and always looking for a new angle — whether it’s corporate cost-cutting or a new diet pill that will melt off the 50 pounds you need to lose — has a way of backfiring. What’s startling is how people apply this kind of thinking to their health, always looking for the easy way out when it comes to exercising or eating.

The whole point of exercise is to get up and move around. Physical activity activates otherwise dormant genes, with plenty of research indicating that our minds and bodies alike require at least modest amounts of activity for optimal health. We’re not meant to be sedentary creatures.

And yet there are entire fields and sub-fields of pop-culture fitness that promote the quick ‘n easy solution. Abs in eight minutes. A shapely body with just 10 minutes of weight training three times a week.

If only I’d known it would be so easy.

I’ve always operated on the understanding that the body needs stimulus to adapt. The stronger you become — the more ‘adapted’ you are — the more stimulus you need. The trend, then, is towards doing more.

The minimalists don’t see it that way. Instead, they suggest that plateaus happen due to ‘overtraining’. You’re simply doing too much work; by cutting back workloads and encouraging recovery, you’d see far better results.

Like any mostly-scientific proposition, this hypothesis is testable, and proponents of infrequent, slow-tempo, machine-based training simply don’t have support for their position. The preponderance of scientific research doesn’t agree, and if you need empirical Bro-wisdom, there are no top athletes that (successfully) train this way.

Exercise and results relate on an inverted-U-shaped dose-response curve. As the amount of exercise, your dose, increases, so do results — up to a point. Past that plateau, further increases lead to decreased performance. The sweet spot is in the middle of the curve, where the dose maximizes the result. Doing too little, by clinging to the absolute minimum, short-changes results as much as ‘overtraining’. You need to up the dose for best results.

Time-efficient machine workouts with extreme tempos are certainly better than sitting on the couch eating Cheetos, but you will not find a world-class physique or Olympian athleticism at the end of that path. Minimalism says do less; science and practice say do the right amount.

You don’t have to think hard to see how this mentality came to be, or why it’s so popular. The Western world takes pride in efficiency, in outcomes over processes, in getting the most done in the least amount of time. Modern life is encapsulated in equations measuring productivity and time-efficiency and maximum utility.

Why should nutrition and fitness be exempt from the trend towards cultural industrialization? These are just processes to integrate into the daily time-table, commodities to exchange at market rates.

With an obesity epidemic on the rise and no solutions in sight, is it really the best idea to continue the same policies of quick-fix thinking?

You have people like Gary Taubes claiming that exercise doesn’t help manage your weight, but you can eat as much as you want as long as you cut out the scapegoat foods. You have people like Fred Hahn telling you that you can get in the best possible shape using ultra-minimalist workouts based on discredited science.

Simplistic, fast-food solutions. Satisfying solutions. Solutions that feed the need for self-esteem-building, not-my-fault validation. All the same thoughts that got us to this point. Are they enough to get us out?

Probably not.

* For some totally unrelated trivia: this often-cited quote is commonly attributed to Einstein, and yet it may be the result of the whisper game. The original quote was “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.”

In The New Quotable Einstein (2005), editor Alice Calaprice suggests that two quotes attributed to Einstein which she could not find sources for, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them” and “The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them,” may both be paraphrases of the 1946 quote above.

Heavy is always better, right? That’s the going mantra. Lift heavy things and you’ll grow and get stronger. I push this position myself, because I think it’s mostly right. If you want to reap gains from a strength training workout, you focus on the basics. Anything involving a barbell, picking it up, putting it overhead, or squatting it — or any combination thereof. Low reps, as few as one and as many as six, allow you to use challenging weights.

That’s the time-tested recipe, whether you’re trying to get big, build muscle, or get strong. I don’t think that ever changes. If you’re after strength or big muscles, the bulk of your training should revolve around that foundation of heavy, simple lifts. This is proven by the practices of strength athletes and by scientific research.

Lifting heavy weights teaches you how to lift heavy weights. The training is as much neurological as muscular; indeed, most of the adaptations to heavy lifting happen in the nervous system. When you load up enough weight and lift it, you produce very high tension in the working muscles, which in turn activates all your available fibers. High tension, which is usually cited as roughly 80-85% of the maximum voluntary contraction, is sufficient to bring all the motor units into the movement.

The heavy lifting mindset suggests that heavy, slow, and strenuous is enough to build a great physique. And I largely agree. Lifters following the minimalist approach inevitably build impressive bodies. The evidence is all there.

Bodies are built with heavy weights. Science validates the idea. You’d think there’s no reason to do higher reps if you’re concerned with maximizing the growth stimulus.

Those tidbits of information aside, bodybuilders all do it. Bodybuilders train with higher volume, if you measure total tonnage and muscular work done in a workout, and on average use higher reps, and more diversity in their rep ranges, than strength-focused athletes. Bodybuilders may focus their attention on work sets from single reps to 20 (or even more), with 10 being the unspoken average.
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Years ago in one of my criminology classes, the professor introduced us to various theories on social deviance. Criminologists want to know what makes people act up and steal, or rob you in the street for crack, or stab their neighbors in the face. That’s social deviance. Lots of theories have come and gone over the years, thanks to the mysterious wiles and real difficulties of doing quality sociological research.

Lots of ideas came out of the literature, ideas on social strife, class struggle, even plain old boredom. One of these in particular stuck with me over the years, thanks to my budding interest in cognitive neuroscience. The theory goes that some people are natural stimulus-seekers. For whatever reason, this group lacks something in their brains, or they have some dysfunction that leaves them feeling under-stimulated, and this leaves them with an itch. These people are always in search of a fix, always looking for the next hit of neurochemical reward, and as a consequence they’re more likely to go out and get mixed up in naughty things like drugs, sex, and, you guessed it, crime.

At the time, I didn’t think much of the idea. Not because I don’t agree with it, but I didn’t have nearly the interest in behavioral psychology and neuroscience back then. With my current investigations into the neurological factors behind exercise performance, the concept of the stimulus-seeker brain-type stands out. To understand why, we need to look at how neurological activity creates behavior.

I recently finished Jonathan Haidt’s book The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. I found it a brilliant read, but I didn’t wind up doing a full review on it because I didn’t have a clear way to relate it to exercise or performance. As you could imagine from the title, the book examines the concept of happiness–where does it arise in the brain, what causes it, and what are the circumstances that maximize that feeling of ambiguous bliss? An interesting topic, but there was no direct application to exercise, minus the vague connection to neuropsychology.
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I think that perhaps the worst thing we can do, not only as fitness professional type or athletes, but in all aspects of life, is to become stale. We lock ourselves into ruts of habit and comfortable familiarity, walling ourselves off from people and places and ideas that threaten our worldviews. We convince ourselves that we’re right, wrap ourselves up in a filter of certainty, and ignore, dismiss, or explain away any factoid or data point that challenges our established thoughts.

Politics and religion, the two time-tested hotspots of interpersonal conflict, are obvious symptoms of mental rigidity. Bring up either, or both, and your company quickly becomes impolite. Why does this happen? What is it about people that make them so absolutely certain they’re right — even if evidence to the contrary is right in front of them?

That’s what Robert A. Burton, MD, sets out to answer in On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not.
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I often find myself describing science as a limiting factor. The typical lay-view, reinforced by Hollywood, stereotypes scientists as mysterious figures in labcoats handing down edicts the same way a king would hand down laws to his peasants. But it doesn’t quite work that way.

Most fields relevant to us — falling under the considerable umbrella of biology — are descriptive sciences: variable X causes event A, under circumstance Y. We watch it, write it up, and try to figure out what’s going on based on what we already know.

Rayleigh scattering causes the sky to appear blue on cloudless days. That’s the process of descriptive science. Watch a thing happen, and then explain the immediate causes and the circumstances in which it happened. Descriptive science leads to an ever-greater level of detail as causes and effects are established, leading us down the rabbit hole as more questions arise from each answer.

In these fields, published research establishes boundaries. Very rarely do you run into any kind of prescriptive knowledge, the What To Do, step-by-step user-manual kind of knowledge that seems expected by a considerable fraction of gym-goers. You can imagine how these conflicting views create friction between science and practice.

In the softer domains of personal training and S&C coaching, you run into real and very valid criticisms of exercise science research. While there are good points to make regarding validity and generalization — points I often agree with — dismissing research without consideration isn’t helping anyone. I find that to be as unhelpful as the crowd that can’t make any decisions without a Pubmed abstract.
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