Training Truths, Part 2 - Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

This post is inspired by some recent lessons that I've re-re-re-relearned about training, life, training life, life training, etc.

Truth #2 - Be patient. 

Honestly, all of this could be lumped under the general heading, "things that bear repeating." If you don't know that patience is a good thing, then you've likely been living under a rock and you've definitely never watched Star Wars. But our attitudes and beliefs don't always line up with our actions. Sometimes we need a swift kick in shins as a reminder that we should do what we know we're supposed to do. We can be stupid creatures sometimes.

Of course, "be patient" applies to life in general; but here I'll be focusing on patience as it applies to training (and transitively, as it applies to becoming a better human being). 

Half of the world is trying to sell you the quickest and easiest way to wealth and health, and they're making a pretty penny because people are falling for it. "6 Minute Six-pack," "Fat to Fit in Forty Minutes per Fortnight," "Butt Firming and Thigh Slimming Shoes"--this garbage is everywhere. We all want the quick-and-easy road to success so we can retire, rich and beautiful, at age 25. We want it so bad that we often delude ourselves into thinking that whatever is being sold to us, despite the painful gimmicky-ness and preposterous claims, might just work. Guess what. It won't. There is no quick and easy way. If there was, we would all look like Brad Pitt (before he tried the Castaway look) and Scarlett Johansson. Despite humanity's best efforts, hard work and patience remain the path to fitness. 

(By LokkoRobson (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
The only kind of easy 6-pack.

So why patience? Well, to put it simply, the body adapts slowly. For the same reasons that you don't go from athletic to obese after one day of laziness and bad eating, you don't go from weak and fat to strong and beautiful after one day of working out and eating right. The body does not adapt in hours and days. It adapts in weeks, months, years. When you build muscle, your body is undergoing a complex adaptation to a stressor and preparing itself to handle that stressor more easily and efficiently the next time you may encounter it. This adaptation takes time. Your body must recognize and respond to the stress, receive the proper nutrients and release the right hormones, and recover and rebuild. It's a fact that your body can only repair itself so quickly. One may certainly expedite or hamper this adaptation, but there is a limit on how much one can do to change the nature of the adaptation process. 

I could leave it at that: you have to be patient because the body adapts slower than you want it to. But I think there's more to patience than just saying, "it is what it is." Patience is an attitude as well as a necessity. Jim Wendler, a powerlifter, strength coach, and creator of a great strength program, is a huge advocate of the idea that strength (and fitness in general) is a long-term thing. It's not an endeavor in which you race to the finish, but a long-haul commitment in which you progress consistently over the span of months and years. This patience and mentality of slow-and-steady progress over the long-term is one of the greatest training lessons I've learned. 

With a lack of patience comes a tendency to jump from one program to another, abandon goals, lose motivation, stagnate, and give up too easily. When you're losing patience, feeling like maybe you should try a different program, change your goals, take up knitting instead of lifting, whatever, you need to tell yourself to suck it up and stick with it. It doesn't matter as much what the "it" is, as long as there is an it and you are sticking with it. 

Sometimes the life-train picks up a bit too much steam and things get crazy and you forget to eat and sleep, and maybe your squat suffers for it. Sometimes you're just not mentally there and things don't go the way you'd like them to. Sometimes you just don't have time to get to the gym. Life happens. And if you remain patient, remind yourself that this isn't a matter of today and tomorrow, but a matter of this year and next year and next decade, you'll be able to handle the bad days. The great thing about having a crappy day in the gym is that, unless you blew out your ACL or ripped the butt-seam of your shorts in front of a crowd of on-lookers, you're probably going to be just fine. If you have the right approach and attitude, even the worst days in the gym can make you stronger, faster, fitter. And of course, there's always tomorrow, next week, next month, etc.

Swole is 4ever.

Training Truths, Part 1 - Gooooaaaaal!

This begins a series of posts introducing, addressing and elucidating a number of what I believe to be fundamental "training truths" (because we all know that alliteration means good writing).

Truth #1 - You need to have specific goals.

(By U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Lance Cheung [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Everyone has heard the "goal" speech a few times in their life (especially in sales and soccer), and when it comes to training, it's a pretty obvious principle. But sometimes the most obvious things are the things that need to be said over and over and over again. So here goes...

Have specific goals. 

Let's face it, everyone wants to be strong and fast and beautiful, and look where it's gotten them: most people are fat and out of shape. (Sorry everyone.) Setting a goal of "looking good" is like pissing in the ocean: it doesn't really change anything, and nobody will know about it unless they're really close to you. 

One huge difference between the average listless gym-goer and a driven, successful athlete is the goals they set (we'll leave genetics and years of training to be discussed in another post). No matter where you are in your training or where you want to be, one of the first steps to getting there is to set specific goals. This means goals which are, first and foremost, quantitative and time-bound. So instead of deciding that you'd like to be "in better shape" within "a few years," you need to stop, think reasonably and decide on a specific, attainable goal. This involves taking the time and thought to figure out where exactly you are in your training, and to do some thought and perhaps even research to figure out where you can and would like to be within a reasonable time-frame. 

Specific goal-setting means focusing and being decisive. 

Decide what you want to improve (example: you want to get stronger); set specific and pertinent goals which can be reasonably reached (squat 400lbs and bench 275lbs by May 2013); commit to these goals; and decide how you will reach them (proper training regimen, recovery).

1. Decide what you want to improve.

Depending on who you are, step one may be the hardest. Deciding what aspect of your fitness you'd like to focus on often means deciding what other aspects you'd like to not focus on for a while. We all want it all, but no one can improve everything all at once (that merits a post all its own). Fortunately, however, most aspects of fitness do consequently improve at least some other aspects of fitness. But being decisive is key.

2. Set specific goals.

Once you have step one down, step two is a matter of funneling your goals a bit further, and deciding what quantitative (use numbers) and time-bound (somewhere between 3 months and 1 year) goals pertain to your more general goal. For example: instead of "being better looking," decide on "having a 32 inch waist and 12% body-fat 6 months from today"; instead of "having better medium-distance endurance," decide on "running a 5k in 21 minutes by August"; instead of "being stronger and faster," decide on "running a 4.9s 40yd dash, power cleaning 275lbs, and benching 315lbs by January 1, 2014." Of course, your goals must be attainable as well. Figuring out what is, in-fact, attainable may take some research, trial and error, conversation with an experienced trainer/coach, etc. But setting absurd or unattainable goals for yourself does no good. It's also beneficial to set "sub-goals"--smaller, incremental goals to keep you on track and to give incremental benchmarks of achievement (for example, if setting a goal to be reached eight months from now, set three sub-goals to be reached every two months). 

3. Do what you need to commit.

Step three is probably the simplest, but also probably the most important. If you don't commit to your specific goals, you're not going to succeed. Do whatever it takes to commit to your goals--write them on your bathroom mirror, set them as a daily reminder on your phone, write them in the margin of every page of your training log, tattoo them on your forehead (don't actually do that)--only you know what will keep you committed. 

Commit, and allow your goals to be a driving force behind your training.  If you truly want to reach your goals, the energy and focus will follow.

4. Make a plan and execute.

The final step, deciding how you will reach your specific goals, will vary for every person. You will either need to get a coach, have/procure some knowledge about training, programming, periodization, nutrition, recovery, etc., or be incredibly lucky. In addition to books and scholarly research on training, there is a practically infinite number of training resources on the internet, many of which actually have good information. There is also a whole heap of mis-leading garbage out there, so be armed with discernment. A knowledgeable trainer or coach is almost always the best resource for personalized programming and specific training advice; but, if a personal trainer/coach is not in your budget, some self-education would serve you well. 

To summarize:

Set goals, be specific, and put hard, intelligent work in, and you will excel.

Swole is indeed the goal.