Gym Zen - The Will to Truth

I don't remember the exact time that I started to stop lying to myself about sport, but I have a pretty good idea. I had just gotten back from a very successful dryland bobsled camp in Park City. I made all the qualifying times for the combine and actually scored relatively well (numbers translated to "World Cup brakeman", whatever that means). One of coaches had said I should stick with it and keep working because I had great potential. Surely my invite to winter camp in Lake Placid was just a phone call or email away.

I checked my email religiously. Nothing.

I checked voicemails like it was my job. I "star-69'd" three telemarketers in the hopes that one of them was the head coach of USA Bobsled, extending a heartfelt congratulations and asking when I could move into the OTC.  Nothing.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that this wasn't a communication breakdown. I think it was somewhere around the time that summer combine dates were announced in the following spring. Yes, I have a very thick noggin from rugby.

I can, however, tell you when I finally stopped lying to myself about sport. It was about twenty minutes after I finished an awful Olympic meet (see "How to go 2/6 in an Olympic Meet") last December. I spent that summer/fall training as Ivan Abadjiev had trained his Bulgarian champions. I trained every day, twice on the weekends, and did the classic exercises daily. I also squatted daily. For some variety, I did a max jerk and some chins to give the legs a "day off". I also managed through a new job working in derivative trading. There was only work, training and sleep. My body felt great and set PRs for the first eight weeks, then went to hell in a hand basket right before the meet. My results speak volumes.

Where does this incredibly long-winded example get us to? Shobogenzo! Dogen believed that the Will to the Truth is a vital aspect of Zen Buddhist study. And it sounds great, right? So easy; just seek the truth and accept the truth as it is. Everyone seeks the truth, right? Everyone wants the truth and everyone wants to accept the truth, right?

Can I handle the truth?

Everyone thinks that they seek the truth and they will accept it, but do we really?

I think most people see "Seek the truth and accept it for what it is" as a call to identify all of your faults and all of the shitty things that you've been glossing over. This is FALSE. Well, it's sort of false. It's true that we should fully realize and accept the faults or things that we have been lying to ourselves about, because this is the first step in addressing them or at least the first step in reducing their power over you.

One of the biggest issues as it relates to acceptance of the truth is the need to compare ourselves to one another. We measure our success by creating an imaginary battle in our minds between ourselves and some we classify as a "measuring stick". Conversely, we find someone at the top of the sport (Klokov, the strong guy in the gym, etc) and logic dictates that, if we train as this person trains, we will have comparable results. We "know" that these methods aren't rational and untrue, but we haven't accepted it.   

I think that I'm starting to seek the truth. Well, I think I've always looked for the truth, so it might be more accurate to say that I'm starting to accept the truth. The main thing I'm starting to wrap my head around is as follows:

"I am no longer qualified to train myself as a competitive athlete"

This stings, as I have what you'd consider to be decent credentials and previous experiences. I've held CSCS and USAW certs, an undergrad in sports medicine, two years spent as an intern and as an assistant strength coach at a Division I university, a couple Top 3 finishes in lightweight strongman, an All-American year of collegiate rugby and some close calls with the US National rugby team plus the previous brush with bobsled glory. I troll EliteFTS and I consider Michael Keck, Jen Comas Keck and Jen Sinkler to be friends. Surely I'm qualified to train myself for athletic endeavors, right?

No, I am not. That is the truth. I am qualified to make adjustments specific to my body. I'm ok at coaching other people as far as technique and making suggestions, but not in writing any sort of full training program. In no way, shape or form am I qualified to be giving myself a full program. I also have too many biases to previous training experience and certain methodologies. Upon full realizing this, I made some decisions and reached out to some coaches to provide higher level guidance. This has lead to some PRs and a nice reduction in BF from 14%-sub 11% through some nutrition coaching from Michael Keck. Yes, I mentioned Mike twice (now three times), because he knows his shit.

So what can I say? Find some truths (positive AND negative) and fully realize them for what they are. In realizing and accepting the truths, they cease to have power over you and you can either address them or simply move on from them. As with most things (especially as it relates to the gym and sport) this is a very simple endeavor, but it is not easy. Fully realizing truths, whether they are positive or negative, will lead to making good choices. As the below scientific diagram shows, good choices = awesomeness.

Thanks to Steve Pulcinella for the above graphic as well as his help writing my training program and providing some coaching for Highland Games. Steve's lifting program as well as throw coaching has yielded mucho PRs. Some slow-motion throwing breakdowns here, but be warned: I practice in Rehbands and they do not leave much to the imagination.

3 Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful for the kiddos at Judi's House, where I volunteer a couple nights a month. This house is full of some of the most joyful kids you will ever meet, as well as some stories that absolutely break your heart. You want to learn about being joyful and full of life in the face of adversity? These kids have cornered the market.

2. I'm grateful that I've had the means to hire people to write me training and nutrition programs. The productivity and time gains from this (not to mention the big improvements I'm already feeling in body comp and performance) have definitely already paid for themselves. I've written about this in previous blog posts and I HIGHLY encourage anyone to look into online coaching. It is affordabe and easy to seek out the best trainers online so as to avoid ending up with Timmy the Trainer from your local 24 Hr.

3. I'm incredible grateful that the biggest concern on my mind, as I sit and type this, is "What the hell else am I grateful for?". 

On Personal Outsourcing

So it’s a New Year, 2012, full of promise and potential. Rather than resolutions, the beginning of the year bring some purging and donating of clothing and other unnecessary things I’ve accrued throughout the previous year. I’m a minimalist guy in the first place, so it isn’t a huge load of stuff. It gives me a sense of renewal and rejuvenation, as well as some extra distance from that Sword of Damocles that always feels just a little too close. 

Along those lines, I’ve taken this a step further by outsourcing my training programming as well as my nutrition. For those who are curious, I’m turning training over to Chad Smith and my nutrition to Michael Keck. This allows me to take two items off my plate and redirect that time and energy towards actual performance, as well as other aspects of my life. With very few exceptions, you get what you pay for. And by “pay”, I don’t necessarily mean monetary. 

Indulge me in a quick,"back of the envelope" math lesson: Let’s say your time is worth $20/hour; this is 33.3333 cents per minute. You spend 5 hours per week reading, researching and writing out your training program and another 10 hours per week training and commuting to/from the gym (no need to factor in vehicle depreciation or gas). In one week, you’ve spent $100 planning to train and another $200 actually training. To extrapolate this further: $100 per week=$400 per month=$5,200 per year in planning alone. Hiring someone sure seems cheap as hell now, doesn’t it?  Spending fewer actual dollars and doing something yourself can get expensive.

One of the greatest aspects of online coaching is your ability to vet the person you are hiring. How many horror stories have you heard about people who hired "personal trainers" from their local gym. The Internet really allows you to do a great bit of research on coaching and find people who are truly top class in their profession. I'll write more on this specific topic in the future but let me say this: this is NOT purely related to athletic training and nutrition.

To expand the idea of outsourcing to other parts of your life, have a look at this blog on Living in the Cloud. These are all fantastic examples of outsourcing aspects of your life and collaborative consumption. Changes in social mood and technological advances are creating what Edward Norton in Fight Club called "Single serving friends", but on a global level and across different services and mediums. Ironically, while embracing the impermanence of possessing "things", this turn in social mood has caused us to emphasize personal networks and communities. Never before in history have the people that we truly want to interact with and build meaningful relationships with been so readily available.

I had to nerd out on that for a minute as it has really been at the front of my cerebral cortex for awhile. I'll write more about collaborative consumption in the future; I only hope I'm not late to that party.

Questions that I've been asking myself as we roll into 2012: What else can I take off my plate and outsource? What can outsourcing and collaborative consumption do for me and my life? And more importantly: what can I do for outsourcing and collaborative consumption?