I ran a 5K last weekend.  It felt good to know I could do it.  But it’s just not my thing.  I respect those who run.  But deep down I’m a strength athlete, plain and simple.  I respect raw, brute strength, and the insanity required to achieve the strength.

I remember the first time I lifted 500lbs off the floor, no straps, just my hands caked in chalk and wrapped around the knurl of the bar.  And I remember the 550lbs.  And I remember the 585lbs conquering me.  But mostly, I remember smiling to my wife Nikki like a small boy, proud of my feeble accomplishment– knowing that the amount of weight I could place on the bar was theoretically infinite, that I just had to keep coming back and watching it rise over time, and that this feeling of strength, efficacy, accomplishment, could be replicated indefinitely.

There is a long-standing, and needlessly stupid, rivalry between bodybuilders and powerlifters.  Powerlifters don’t train to look a certain way, just perform a certain way.  Bodyfat levels tend to be higher, and there is no emphasis on the aesthetics of one’s physique.  Bodybuilders tend to castigate powerlifters for being “fat”, “out of shape”, and “lazy”.  Bodybuilders, by contrast, do not lift weights for the sake of maximum strength, but to break down muscle tissue and sculpt the body.  As such, bodybuilders are not as strong, pound-for-pound, as powerlifters, and tend to obsess over symmetry, balance, and their overall look, rather than the sheer intensity of their workout.  Powerlifters have been known to laugh at bodybuilders for being “pretty boys”, “all show and no go”, and– in a nutshell– fake.

So which is harder, bodybuilding or powerlifting?  Bodybuilding is definitely harder in the sense that it requires discipline and attention to detail over time.  But powerlifting is harder– or at least, more hardcore– in the sense that it is the true epitome of intensity and will.

The bodybuilder’s exertion meter is measured over time– not a single workout, but weeks, months, and years of discipline, dieting, weighing, measuring, planning, training and improving.  Yes, this is difficult, but it is difficulty spread out.  Bodybuilding is a sport consisting of thousands upon thousands of moments that all create a sum total, to stand as a trophy or statue at end of days proudly presenting one’s physique to the world.

Then there is powerlifting.  Powerlifting is true calculated insanity.  It is about taking everything you have within you– every single micron of energy, rage, fury, fire, will, strength, exertion– and applying it against a cold steel bar for less than 5 seconds.  Motivation, as an abstraction, is always about switching to the next gear.  In most sports, that gear has to be shifted into, slowly, time after time after time, until the event is over.  Even with football, you’re looking at 60 minutes of play, and you have numerous chances and plays and quarters to shift into your highest gear, to try to make up the distance at the end, to finally turn the shock meter to a thousand percent and bury the needle.

Powerlifting is a different, and scarier, animal.  You have to bury the needle all at once.  There are no second chances, third legs to the race, or fourth downs.  There is just this one moment, this one lift, this one attempt.  The bar goes up, or it doesn’t.  You insanity conquers gravity, or you are conquered and destroyed, all in the blink of an eye.

Watch the pre-lifting rituals of a powerlifter, and you will see insanity on a different level.  They slap themselves in the face prior to a big lift, simply to increase adrenaline, often drawing blood:

The athletes are not the long and lean frames seen on athletes of other ilk.  There is nothing “esthetic” or “beautiful” about the prototypical powerlifting physique.  And that’s the point.  These men and women are pure animal, beasts and bulls and bears with bulging necks and bald heads, traps that sit high upon their shoulders and bear witness to the thousands upon thousands of pounds pressed, pulled or dropped down to the floor, into the bucket, supported by thighs thick like oak trees:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo1tU1YqPp0

Powerlifters do not like creature comforts.  They do not like air conditioned gyms and well-lit areas.  They are monsters that lurk in the recesses, hidden in the basement, amongst chalk on the floor and ammonia in the air, waiting to unleash everything all at once, a nuclear explosion and meltdown, a supernova of energy.

The mindset required to step underneath 500, 600, 700lbs is not possessed by many.  But they go bigger.  They step under 800, 900, 1000lbs.  A few elite individuals step under 1100lbs or more. Or press it off their chests. Or rip if off the ground:

They practice, they train, and they build their bodies through the torture of moving mountains, to the point where, one day, at an official meet, they will step up against a bar weighing more than they have ever moved, and make it move.  They will channel all of those training sessions into this one moment, this payoff, trying to drain everything all at once, the great compression before the Big Bang, shoving it into a funnel and condensing it into one moment of calculated insanity.  There will be no “recorded race time” at the end of the event, as there is with a 5K.  The powerlifting event does not occur over time.  It occurs in the blink of an eye, genesis, like the instantaneous creation of force within the cosmos.

And that, is power. That, is calculated insanity.
-David A. Johnston

Note: If you missed yesterdays post regarding bodybuilding diet and meal planning you can read it on the Facebook page here…   Bodybuilding Meal Plan

While prepping for bodybuilding competition I generally keep training very simple, as I am an advocate of fairly low-volume, high-intensity training. Throughout the entire prep, I would train back and shoulders on Monday; quads and hams on Wednesday; and chest, biceps and triceps on Friday. Occasionally, I would train calves and abs on the weekend, but for the most part, stuck only with major body parts throughout my prep, focusing on compound movements, good form, and strength increase.

During the first half of the prep, I essentially stuck to the DC training template, but split the days up a little different to save on time. During the second half of the prep, I went to a slightly more “traditional” bodybuilding split (same body part split, more exercises and more volume); the exact exercises would change somewhat from week to week, but would typically follow a pattern like this:

Note: One week start with back, one week start with shoulders.

Day 1: Back/Shoulders

* Wide Lat Pulldown: 4 add sets of 15,12,10,8 reps
* Barbell Rows: 4 add sets of 12,10,8,6 reps
* Cable Row or Machine Row: 4 add sets of 15,12,10,8 reps
* Butterfly: 3 sets of 20,15,12 reps
* Dumbbell Lateral Raise: 4 sets of 15,12,10,15 reps
* Smith or Dumbbell Overhead Press: 4 sets of 12,10,8,4-6 reps

One week start with quads, one week start with hamstrings.

Day 2: Rest

Day 3: Quads/Hamstrings

* Leg Extension (Pre-Exhaust): 4 add sets holding the peak contraction at the top for a 2-count for 12-15 reps
* Squats or Front Squats: 4 sets of 12,8,6,3-5 reps
* Hack Squats or Leg Press: 4 sets of 20,15,12,20 reps
* Seated Leg Curl: 1 warmup set of 12-15 reps, 2 working sets of 50-70 reps (blood volume)
* Romanian Deadlifts: 4 add sets of 15,12,8,4 reps
* Lunges or Lying Leg Curl: 3-4 sets of 12-15 reps

Day 4: Rest

Day 5: Chest/Biceps/Triceps

* Smith Machine Incline Press or Flat Bench Press: 4 sets of 12,8,4-5,8 reps
* Dumbbell Incline Press or Flat Bench Press: 3 sets of 10,8,6 reps
* Dumbbell Incline Flyes or Butterfly: 3 sets of 15,12,8 reps
* Alternate Dumbbell Curl or Barbell Curl: 3 sets of 12,10,6-8 reps
* Machine Curl: 2 drop sets of 15,12 reps
* Skull Crushers: 3 sets of 15,12,8
* Cable Pushdown: 2 drop sets of 15,12 reps

Days 6 and 7: Rest

Cardio:

Throughout the course of the diet, I slowly increased my cardio output, starting with fairly low-intensity walking, and increasing the frequency, the duration, and the intensity over the course of the 32 weeks.

During the first 4 weeks of the diet, I only performed 3 30-minute sessions per week, typically walking on the Treadmill around 3mph, working the incline higher over the course of the 30 minutes, usually to a peak of 11% (no holding on). I tried to increase my intensity slightly every two weeks, but tried to not take my heart rate much over 150BPM, on average, since I was doing cardio in a fasted state and wanted to avoid burning muscle tissue.

Having a treadmill at home, I used incline treadmill as my main cardio aparatus throughout most of my prep (usually about 4 days per week), but whenever possible, I would use the stair mill at the gym (usually 2-3 days per week), as it is my prefered and favorite method of cardio. (I think it actually helps you keep size in your legs, especially your glutes and quads).

The next 4 weeks of the diet, I increased cardio to 4 days per week, 40 minutes. Then two weeks of 5 days per week, 40 minutes. Then two weeks of 5 days per week, 50 minutes. Then up to 6 days per week, 60 minutes, which was my max cardio throughout the majority of my prep. I did 60 minutes every morning, fasted, throughout the majority of my prep.

During the last 6 weeks leading up to the Philly, and the 8 weeks in between the Philly and the Maryland, my conditioning had improved so much from all of the cardio that I had to start doing much harder intervals in order to increase heart rate. I am truly not a fan of running, so I would normally just keep the treadmill at a 15% incline, 3mph, for the whole session.

At this point, I tried doing the stairs whenever possible, and would normally start on level 4 to warm up, and interval up to roughly level 9 or 10 for 5 minute blocks, or until my legs gave out. I never truly attempted HIIT cardio, but towards the end of my prep, it was approaching that.

In previous parts of this series we talked about weight training and diet.  What about cardio and diet?

The rules for cardio and diet are the same as weight training– do everything you can to put the body into a caloric deficit, while simultaneously doing everything possible to keep the metabolism high. If you achieve this, you’ll achieve your health and fitness goals.

The body has two basic fuel sources, fat and carbohydrate (or sugars). Sugars come from the foods that we eat, and act as a short-term energy source in the body. If you do not use up your sugars within a certain amount of time, or you take in more than you can use, they will store as fat.

Whenever you are doing any activity, you are burning from a combination of your fat energy source and your sugar energy source. As a general rule, higher exertion levels are going to burn a higher percentage of sugar, while lower exertion levels are going to burn a higher percentage of fat. While doing your cardio, we want to find the rate where you are burning the highest possible amount of fat, so that you spend your time in the gym and on the treadmill being efficient at pursuing your weight-loss goals, rather than just spinning your wheels. Burn the fat, not the time.

Because of this, Lifetime Fitness promotes Heart Rate Zone Training. Everything we do in terms of our cardio programming is based on doing your cardio within the proper heart rate zone. Work too hard, and your burn nothing but sugars, or worse yet, muscle tissue. Work not hard enough, you waste your time and don’t burn enough fat. Work out just right, and see success.

Finally, there is the nutrition component. I already covered that you have to be in a caloric deficit in order to see your weight loss results. However, there are more rules than that. First of all, you want to do everything in your power to keep your metabolism high while in this caloric deficit. The first thing to mention here is switching from eating 1-2 large meals per day, to eating several small meals and snacks throughout the day. This alone will help to keep your metabolism high.

However, the main thing you’re going to find with the nutrition component is the same thing as the cardio component. If you overeat, you obviously won’t be in the caloric deficit that is needed to lose body fat. However, if you <em>undereat</em>, you will put your body into starvation mode. Again, remember, the body is efficient and will adapt to the circumstances you find it in. If you try to drop your calories too low and starve yourself to success, you will ultimately fail– you will slow your metabolism, you will lose muscle tissue in addition to the body fat you had hoped to lose, you will probably get sick, and the minute you start eating somewhat normal again, you will regain every pound you lost (because of the slowed metabolism), plus interest. Fun, right? So again, the thing to look for is the <em>proper</em> caloric level in order to achieve your goals.

If you missed Part 2 you can find it here…

As we discussed in Part 2 of this series, diet alone will typically not lead to success for individuals looking to lose and keep off weight.

You need to positively try to raise your metabolism while simultaneously being in the caloric deficit necessary for weight loss. This is only possible by watching both your nutrition program and by exercising properly!

So you’re convinced now that you need the right diet and you need to exercise. Given that we’re looking to lose weight, what type of exercise should we do? Well, cardio is what burns fat, right? To some degree, yes. But if done the wrong way, it’s only going to slow your metabolism down and set you up for failure in the long run. Let’s look at why.

Let’s say you’re trying to lose weight and you go on a reduced-calorie diet. You also know that exercise will help, so you add in some cardio. What’s going to happen? Well, remember, your body is getting the signal that it’s not getting enough external fuel from food, so it’s going to turn to its own body tissues as a fuel source. We’re hoping that the body will turn to stored fat as a fuel source, right? And to some degree, it will. However, it will also start to burn up its own muscle stores as a fuel source.

You may have heard that muscle mass burns a lot of calories, and this is true. Muscle is what we call metabolically active. A lot of muscle on a body is like a big engine in a car– it burns a lot of gas, or food. Fat, on the other hand, is metabolically passive. It’s like a real efficient 4-cylinder– great gas mileage. So what happens when you put the body into a caloric deficit for an extended period of time? It gets the signal that its not getting enough food, and thus turns to its own body tissues for fuel; and given that the muscle mass of the body is putting such a big demand on its system for calories, it will get rid of what it considers needless fat stores.

In other words, if you’re in a caloric deficit over time and just doing cardio, you are probably going to burn up a decent amount of muscle mass. When this happens, your metabolism will drop, because you no longer have as much muscle as you once did. Thus, in order to keep losing the rest of the fat, you need to reduce your calories ever more and do even more cardio. This leads to more muscle loss, and thus a slower metabolism, etc., etc., etc. It’s a downward spiral. Where are you in 6 months? You’ve hit a “plateau,” where you can’t lose the last ten pounds, and you can’t figure out why.

This is precisely why you need to weight train if you’re looking to lose fat. Don’t think of the weight training so much as a means of building muscle mass, as much as a means of retaining current levels of muscle mass while in a reduced caloric state. You need to give a certain stimulus to your body in order to force it to preserve muscle stores while in a reduced caloric state. This is why you weight-train for fat loss. Don’t worry about getting “excessively bulky”– you don’t have the calories to do so! Worrying about building huge muscles without taking in enough calories is like worrying about building a ten-story building without having enough bricks for a one-bedroom house. The bricks– and the calories– are the physical materials that allow for the building, or the body, to be built in the first place. Granted, you might be able to build a little amount of muscle while in a reduced caloric state, but you’re not going to look like a bodybuilder.

So now you understand why you need to weight train in order to lose, and keep off, body fat. What about cardio and diet?      Continue on to part 4 of our series for the answer… (look for it tomorrow)

If you missed Part 1 you can find it here…

Let’s look specifically at an individual trying to lose weight, or better yet, looking to lose body fat. How do the three aspects mentioned above– nutrition, cardio and weights– tie together in order to help the individual lose body fat?

Well, the only way to truly lose any kind of weight and/or body tissue is by being in a caloric deficit. This is a fancy way of saying that you are burning more calories throughout the day than you’re eating, or conversely, you’re eating less calories throughout the day than you are burning.

If you do this for an extended period of time– put yourself into a caloric deficit– you will notice that you start to lose weight. Clothes will start to fit more loosely. However, how you go about losing that weight will dictate the end product of what you look like, what you feel like, and whether you are successful in keeping the weight off.

There’s a very fancy buzz word that you hear all of the time nowadays– metabolism. Everybody talks about how important it is to have a high metabolism, but nobody seems to really know exactly what the metabolism is.

What Is Metabolism

Structure of the coenzyme adenosine triphosphate, a central intermediate in energy metabolism

Your metabolism is basically the total rate at which your body burns calories throughout the day, simply due to your body composition, your eating and exercise habits, and your genetics. Your resting metabolism accounts for anywhere from 60-75% of your total daily caloric needs (excluding exercise).

Think about that number for a minute. All the stuff that you do throughout the day– waking up, taking a shower, walking to the car, walking around throughout the day, picking up the kids at school, preparing and eating your food, etc., etc., etc.– really only accounts for about 25-40% of your caloric needs. The vast majority of your caloric needs are represented by your resting metabolism, which, again, is going to be a reflection of your eating and training habits, along with your body composition. Looking at it this way, it should be obvious why it is so important to have a high metabolism.

If you have a sluggish metabolism, that hour of cardio per day– where you might burn 500 calories if you are lucky– is not going to make up for that extra slice of pizza here and there. When it comes to successfully managing body composition, metabolism is everything!!!

How To Slow Down Your Metabolism

So let’s go back for a moment to the individual looking to lose weight. They are going to have to be in a caloric deficit. However, the human body is very efficient and will find a way to adjust to almost any circumstances. The human body has built-in mechanisms that strive to keep everything on an even keel. Think about it– if you are in a caloric deficit for an extended period of time, what you are literally doing is not giving your body the calories it needs to sustain its current state. In other words, if you are in a caloric deficit over an extended period of time, you are literally starving yourself, just at a very slow pace. As such, your body will find a way to preserve itself and survive. How? Well, the main way it’s going to achieve this– it will slow down its metabolism!

Stay Tuned For Part 3 in the Series tomorrow…

“Don’t eat past 6pm!” “You have to circuit train to get skinny– heavy weights just lead to bulk!” “Cardio burns fat, weights build muscle!” “I’m only eating off of the ‘super food’ list these days– you know, blueberries, oatmeal, and broccoli!”

Oprah Winfrey Is Wrong!

Have you ever heard any of these statements? In my years as a trainer, I’ve encountered so many half-truths (and complete falsehoods) about exercise and healthy diet that my head starts to spin every time I hear “I heard that.” Oprah Winfrey alone should be made to pay for all of your gym memberships for all of the disinformation she has spread on her show during the past year. Remember, it always comes down to a “thyroid problem.”

The fact is, exercise science is both simple and complex, depending on the angle you approach it from. It’s complex in the sense that you can’t just listen to any source out there and hope they are accurate in their “fact giving.” Any scientific field is going to have broad principles guiding the field as a whole, as well as a slew of smaller-scale facts that comprise the intricate details of that particular discipline.

With exercise science specifically, if you get too caught up in focusing on the intricate details– like the merits of some particular food, or how many reps and how many sets of a particular exercise you should do– then chances are you’re going to be confused, especially as a beginner. However, if you focus on the big picture– the broad principles underlying and defining the field of health and fitness as a whole– then you should have a relatively easy time achieving your goals.

Integration

The field of exercise science breaks down into three basic segments– nutrition, cardiovascular exercise, and resistance exercise (or simply “weight training”).  Lifetime Fitness as a company subscribes to the philosophy that you need the appropriate balance between these three elements in order to achieve your health and fitness goals.

Let’s sidetrack for a moment and talk about goals. What are the goals of most of the new members joining up here are Lifetime Fitness? The vast majority of people using this club are striving to achieve general health. As a personal trainer, I can tell you that the majority of members I speak with are looking primarily to lose body fat, and secondarily, to build muscle tone.

Continue to Part 2 here…

I have a second personal training client who has Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s disease, or PD, is a central nervous system disorder that affects the patient’s motor skills, speech skills, and other functions of the body. The symptoms of Parkinson’s disease are expected to worsen the longer you have it. There is no known cure, simply different methods of trying to manage and deal with the lifestyle associated with the disease. In this sense, it is very similar to MS.

My client with MS is a bit younger, and definitely more “functional” overall than my Parkinson’s client. Upon meeting her, most people would never suspect there was anything at all “wrong” with her. In fact, before I trained her, she trained for a long time with another trainer, and I distinctly remember walking over and making fun of her form as being “terrible” and “imbalanced”, only to later on find out that she did, in fact, have certain physical imbalances due to the MS! I felt a little guilty for a while afterwards. However, we ended up becoming great friends, and when she would no longer fit into the other trainer’s schedule, I took her on as my own client. The client with Parkinson’s, by contrast, is a bit older, and has been battling her disease a bit longer. Upon observing her movement and walking patterns, it becomes readily apparent that she has certain difficulties walking and moving in a “normal” manner. She does not have noticeable tremors, but she definitely shuffles.

In the year and a half I have trained my client with Parkinson’s, I have rarely seen the effects of the disease affect her personality or workouts very much. To put it bluntly, I don’t see the disease beating her, I see her beating the disease. She doesn’t wallow in misery, or get bitter, or blame the world for her condition. I think maybe once, maybe twice total, have I seen her focus specifically on the issue of her own mortality. Rather, this client– and friend– of mine comes in twice a week, and works her butt off. There are many exercises we cannot do that I would do with a “normal” client. She lacks certain types of coordination, balance, proprioception, strength, flexibility, and range of motion. But she still comes in and battles for every rep, and does so, generally, with a smile on her face.

The Parkinson’s client leads what I would call a “big life”. She takes numerous trips and vacations to locales she is intrigued with, and loves. She pursues ridiculous clothes and shopping binges, indulging in outfits others might think odd. She does things in a manner that makes one think, “This woman loves life, and is living it to its fullest”.

Somewhere down deep, I’m sure her awareness of her Parkinson’s disease colors nearly every moment of every waking day. I imagine she is rarely unaware of the fact that she is “different”, both from others, and from how she used to be. But she doesn’t show it. She doesn’t dwell on it. She accepts it, states it, and moves on. She has no control over having Parkinson’s disease. It’s the “given”, that which is out of her control. So instead, she focuses on what she knows she can control, and makes the most of it. In this sense, she is inspiring.

It’s important to differentiate here between two things: my client with PD is in no way evading the fact that she has Parkinson’s, or suppressing, or being a Pollyanna. Rather, she doesn’t use it as a central, defining factor of her day-to-day existence. It’s merely an unfortunate aspect of life, and she accepts it for what it is, and she moves on.

Now, this is not to set up my client with MS as being miserable. She’s not. She’s a wonderful woman, and an incredibly hard worker. She is a proud mother, and sports a great physique. When she comes to the gym, she busts her ass on every rep of every set. She makes constant strides to improve her diet and her behavior patterns to achieve her health and fitness goals.

HOWEVER, that being said, there is definitely a different approach to life, or mindset, between my client with Parkinson’s and my client with MS. My client with MS definitely lets it affect her quite a bit. At least once every few weeks, it becomes apparent that she is upset about her inability to do “normal” stuff, and she lets it positively depress her to the point of affecting her performance.

At first, I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with this. I have a tendency to be a bit callous and tell the individual to “Suck it up”. But how do you look at somebody with a chronic disease– somebody who has physical problems the likes of which you will probably never know– and tell them, “Too bad, suck it up”? Even for the non-empathetic individual such as myself, such a statement would be a bit harsh.

But then I started thinking: in a broader sense, realistically, we all have a “chronic disease”. It’s called life, and it happens to the best of us.

I first noticed the phenomenon with my wife, Nikki. Nikki played collegiate volleyball, and was a monster on the court. From the ages of 10 until the age of 21, being awesome at volleyball was the singular defining criterion of Nikki’s life. Insofar as she received gratification and joy from this world, it was from being great at volleyball. And obviously, this involved a huge physical component. After college, Nikki would still (and does still) play with a league of other girls that grew up playing. When she plays, you can see she still loves it and enjoys it, yet is torn– she knows she is past her prime, and can’t hit like she used to hit. As she gets older, this will probably run in one of two directions: she will either become bitter at her inability to play like she used to, or she will become somewhat accepting of her limitations and continue to enjoy the sport she always loved, in whatever capacity she is able to play.

This same phenomenon occurs frequently with athletes. Many will describe watching an older athlete as somewhat “pathetic”, seeing them trying to recapture glory past their prime. This leads to endless debate– did it make sense for George Foreman to keep coming back after the title? How about Michael Jordan– wasn’t he going to tarnish his legacy by coming out of retirement and playing for the Wizards after leaving the Bulls?

I faced a similar situation a few years back. My left shoulder was injured, and severely limiting how well I could pursue my bodybuilding goals. Most of the time my workouts were pretty good, but for two years straight, about a third of the time, my left shoulder would act up badly and make it so that I had a terrible workout. I would get pissed off. Pissed off at who? Well, at the world, I guess. There was no direct object for my anger to attach to. I was simply mad. It felt unfair, like I shouldn’t have to experience this pain for no reason at all.

Yet I persisted in trying to find new exercises and new angles to stimulate muscular growth until I had my surgery. Sometimes I was successful, and sometimes I just grew even more frustrated by the lack of progress. Overall, however, I tried to retain a positive outlook and figure it out like a problem to be solved. I knew my shoulder was injured, and no amount of bitching about it or being upset was going to fix it– or, was going to allow me to win a bodybuilding competition, even if I gained the empathy of others.

Watching the differences between my MS client and my client with Parkinson’s is telling and educational. It lets me know how I want to face my life as I get older and my body breaks down. I know it is inevitable that my body will begin to rebel against me. With the intensity with which I train, it is only a matter of time before I have significant chronic injuries and overuse patterns. I will train intelligently to fight them as long as possible, but realistically, it’s still part-and-parcel of being a bodybuilder. It’s a price I’m willing to pay right now in pursuit of my goals.

But how about afterwards? Once I’m older, and I have, say, chronic back pain, or knee problems, or shoulder pain, or whatever, will I look back disgruntled at what I did? Will I be angry about my lot in life? Or will I smile and accept it, relegating it to the backburner of the unimportant, and instead try to focus my efforts and attention on that which I can now control?

Life is a constant process of oscillating back and forth between looking at the past, looking at the future, and assessing the present. You can’t dwell exclusively on any one of the three to the exclusion of the others. Your past experiences define your present situation, and hopefully, inform how you will make decisions in the future.

But in the future, when my body is beat up and I am older and can no longer perform like I currently do, I hope a few things hold true. I hope I look back on this time period and, rather than regret it, I embrace it– I embrace it as defining who I am, and what got me to my end goal. I hope I smile at all the times I did stupid stuff, even if it lead to disaster and injury. I also hope that I think back to my Parkinson’s client, and how she faced the world. She might have been slightly afraid, or in pain, but she never showed it. She always smiled and looked at all the awesome things she was accomplishing, and talked about the future things she would accomplish.

We come to find, in this world, that there are very few things we have full control over. Most aspects of the universe are out of our hands, from our genetics, to the chronic diseases we encounter, to certain natural catastrophes. But we can control a few things.

First of all, we can control what we focus on. We can focus on the negative aspects that are out of our control, and dwell on the bullshit that is ultimately a part of everybody’s life, or we can turn our attention to the triumphant and heroic aspects that define our days. I would rather spend my time laughing ridiculously, and training like a ferocious beast, than worrying about injuries or pain or remorse or future-regret My time on this planet is too limited to define it according to negatives. I want to be wheeled to the grave knowing I couldn’t have given any more than I gave. Knowing you left something in the tank– that, to me, is the definition of “regret”.

Second of all, we can control how we face our adversities, which is a slightly different issue. Cliché, yes, but there is a great line from the movie Gladiator, spoken by Proximo: “Ultimately, we’re all dead men. Sadly, we cannot choose how but, what we can decide is how we meet that end, in order that we are remembered, as men”. When life deals you something less than ideal, how do you face it? Are you afraid, or bitter, or upset, or angry? Or, by contrast, do you find a way to overcome it, to rise over it, to smash it and conquer it? And even then, when all is said and done– given that nobody will overcome and rise and smash and conquer indefinitely– are you able to proudly stare death in the eye and say you fought as hard as possible? Are you able to find acceptance deep down within?

It’s a delicate balance between the two. “Acceptance” of something less-than-ideal is often the consequence of quitting prematurely– “Well, I’m never going to get there anyways, so why bother? I’ll just stop now and save myself the pain”.

The balance is achieved by fighting your struggle on a daily basis– to achieve your physique goals, your health goals, your career goals, your spiritual and emotional goals, your intellectual goals– and then, once the evidence becomes overwhelming that you can no longer achieve your goal realistically in this world, wiping the sweat from your brow and smiling. The accomplishment of your goal is more in the satisfaction of knowing you fought as hard as you possibly could, than it is in having the tangible end by itself. Learning to take the least ideal situation, and make the most of it, is what defines success in this world.