1. Believe everything the PR hype claims.
2. Assume that being tired is a sign that it worked.
3. Assume that being sore the day afterwards is a sign that it really worked.
NOT AT LIVE HARD. In this episode, we talk through a few of the fitness classes we’ve been doing recently (including BarreCorre, Pure Cycle, and a few others) from a more-or-less informed perspective, and the conclusions will surprise you. Plus! We discuss your nominations for Hardest Workout Ever, you get a chance to make Joel do the consensus absolute worst one, and everyone goes absolutely nuts about Krav Maga. It’s a stone cold banger. Listen below.
Show notes!
Last Man Standing on AirDynes will make you glad you’re not there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hlOGZ5N6a8
BarreCore is better than you’d expect: http://www.coachmag.co.uk/fitness/5278/hit-the-barre-we-learn-a-thing-or-two-at-barrecore
You really should watch the spin class episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSexyQeD_vA
Have a look at F45 here: https://f45training.co.uk/londonbridge/
We’re not being mean, Jon Jones really has poked quite a few people in the eyes: https://twitter.com/SoozieCuzie/status/751234573137305600
Here’s Geoff Thompson’s ‘Fence’, technique, which seems to be almost universally well-regarded by self-defence types: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6OJnZG3joA
…and here’s a good example of how learning a couple of straight punches will get you out of trouble: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdM3Pa3cSsM
]]>They say you should never meet your heroes. Maybe this is true, if your heroes are embittered rockstars or reclusive authors or just really good sportsmen who’ve spent more time on their game than on their philosophy and social skills. On the other hand, maybe it isn’t.
When I look back, certain things that I now take for granted about my life seem faintly ridiculous – like, for instance, just how many people I’ve respected or admired from afar I’ve eventually been able to talk to. Some (Jet Li, Reinhold Messner, Mark Twight) I’ve talked to through work, where having a ‘brand’ behind you can help – but certainly doesn’t offer any guarantees. Others (Andrew WK, Georges St Pierre) I’ve organised through avenues that are open to almost anyone. A few (adventurer Alastair Humphreys, UFC veteran Rosi Sexton and the like), I’ve ended up chatting to through the sort of osmosis that happens when you have similar interests and ideas of what constitutes ‘fun.’ Probably none of these people would be comfortable with the ‘hero’ tag (except for possibly Mr Messner) but they’re definitely people worth listening to. The main point is: you’d probably be very surprised how easy it is to meet/interview/get advice from people you respect. Here are two simple rules I’d suggest for actually doing that:
1. Be sincere
2. Don’t be a dick
Not helpful? Okay, let’s break it down a bit further.
1. Be sincere
Most people who genuinely care passionately about a thing: be it training, fighting, writing, or self-improvement (that last one covers a lot of things) will respond well to other people who care passionately about the same thing. ‘Passion’ is a misused word thanks to reality TV and job interviews, so to clarify: this probably means you’ve already invested time and effort (if not money) in whatever the ‘thing’ is already. If, when you approach someone, you can say, ‘Look, this is what I’ve already done, on my own,’ they’ll know you aren’t just some dude who’s got into the thing in the last ten minutes, looking for a quick fix. Show that you’re inquisitive and committed and not just looking for a handout, and you improve your chances enormously. Or, to steal a quote from Ravi Mohan (which I was introduced to via the aforementioned Mark Twight):
“If you claim to be “very passionate about X” but have never done anything concrete in X I find it difficult to take you seriously. People who are really passionate about anything don’t wait for “leaders” or “mentors” before doing *concrete* work in the area of their passion, however limited.”
How do you apply this? Well, when I first met Mark Twight, for example, I’d already spent three months training and working on the Gym Jones methodology, so that I wouldn’t embarrass myself – and so that I’d be able to discuss it effectively. Or, by way of an example that isn’t about training, here’s a chunk of the email I sent to Andrew WK. Let’s be honest: this website doesn’t do the kind of traffic that would make it worth his while to talk to me, and he didn’t have an album to plug, so something about this worked, and led to one of the most interesting conversations I’ve ever had.
Maybe Andrew’s just a nice guy, and wanted to help. But anyway, this leads us nicely on to:
2. Don’t be a dick
This is really a continuation of point one, but it is still pretty hard for some people to grasp. To flip things around for a minute, I am no kind of celebrity, and even I get an unbelievable amount of questions/requests from people that basically amount to: ‘Please give up your time and mental energy, to me, a man you have never met before, for no reason that I’m prepared to outline, and for free.’ I can only imagine how much that gets amplified if you’re a guy who is actually even semi-famous.
There’s a better way to approach this.
First, recognise that there are basically three ways you can approach people you haven’t met before, whether they’re world-renowned, moderately well-known or just someone you’d like to talk to – for the sake of clarity and because I’ve already got a numbered list going, let’s call them A, B and C:
A) Please give me what I want (time/advice/expertise/quotes) for basically nothing in return.
B) Here’s why you should give me what I want: this could be ‘I’ve already done this much on my own and now I need help’ or ‘I can help you in return’ or something similar.
C) I don’t want anything: but here’s something that might help you out.
Obviously, your approach should be either B or C – and the internet has made C far, far easier. If you want to chat to someone, then chat to them – don’t ask them for stuff straight out of the gate, just interact with them like you would (hopefully) any other human. This could be anything: from a link to something they might find interesting (not your stuff, unless it’s super-relevant) to an area of expertise you can help them with (for instance, a well known-ish adventurer recently asked me for some bench-press tips). You aren’t Hannibal Lecter, and not everything has to be quid-pro-quo. This can be simple, or complicated: comment on someone’s blogposts, letting them know which ones you like (and why). Drop them a Tweet about something they might find interesting. Be sincere – people can (in my experience) tell when you’re doing it.
Here’s Ravi again:
‘Once upon a time I was in a situation where I thought I could contribute to something one of the best programmers in the world was working on so I sent an email (I got the address from his webpage) and said something to the effect of ” you say on this webpage you need this code and I have been working on something similair in my spare time and I could write the rest for you over the next few months because I am interested in what you are doing” and I got a 2 line reply which said (paraphrased) ” A lot of people write to me saying they’ll do this , but I’ve never seen any code yet so I am a little skeptical. Don’t take it personally. Thanks. bye.”.
So in the next email I sent him a zipped file of code with an explanation that “this is what I’ve done so far which is about 70% of what you want” and he immediately replied saying “Whoa you are serious. That is refreshing .. ‘ and opened up completely, giving me a lot of useful feedback and very specific advice. He is a (very valued) mentor to this day.’
How do you talk to people you respect? The same as you (hopefully) talk to anyone else: be friendly, and helpful, and non-dickish and anyone decent will do the same.
]]>Six months later, you are fatter, slower and weaker than before. You are injured and sore, demotivated and overtrained. You are, by any standard, worse than you were to start with.
Now, here’s the important question:
What the hell happened?
This is a technique that research psychologist Gary Klein, a specialist in naturalistic decision-making, uses with businesses. Klein calls it a ‘Pre-Mortem’, and advises clients to imagine everything that could go wrong with their plans before they even start them. Instead of waiting for disaster to strike, he suggests, you should look at it as though it’s already happened.
How can you apply this to your attempts to get in shape? Here’s the system I’ve come up with:
1. Spend 10 minutes listing everything you think could go wrong
Be honest: and include every single thing. Don’t worry if it’s unlikely, and don’t exclude anything because you think you can avoid it. If something relies solely on willpower, look at it as a huge red flag. Examples? Personally, I love biscuits and hate slow-paced recovery efforts: I have a tendency to get overexcited and pile too much weight on the bar, and I sometimes have to blow off training sessions because of work commitments. I don’t have a huge amount of family commitments, and I’m fortunate that my wife is more into training than me (more on this in a second). Your problems will be different. Just list them: don’t worry about solutions at this stage.
2. Ask two people you respect what they think could go wrong
Ideally, you’ll know people who know you well enough to be honest about your workout-related shortcomings. Ask their opinions: and tell them to be ruthless. If this isn’t practical, just consulting an imaginary figurehead might be enough: in the excellent Dream On, author John Richardson uses a spectral Seve Ballesteros to keep him grounded in his effort to break par on a golf course. I asked my wife (who’s a personal trainer) and a fictional version of Rob MacDonald, the general manager of Gym Jones (who I’ve met IRL three times, and been humbled by every time). As it turns out, pretend-MacDonald is meaner than the real thing, because he knows all my secrets and weaknesses. ‘You like doing strength stuff, but you don’t do enough long-distance cardio, or single-leg work,’ was his (imagined) advice. ‘Sometimes you don’t go hard enough on endurance efforts. And you don’t drink enough water.’ My wife’s advice? ‘You drink too much beer, and you stress-eat when you’re working too hard, which you’re going to be doing a lot in the next few months.’ Solid.
3. Triage your problems
There’s no point worrying about everything. At this stage, take your list of problems and get rid of the ones that are a) Unlikely or b) Impossible to do anything about. If you get hit by a bus or fired from your job, your priorities are going to shift away from your front squat: that’s unavoidable. Pick mission-critical problems that are actually likely to make a difference: the stuff that you were secretly worried about that’s now out out in the open. Cut it down to a Top 10.
4. Spend 30 minutes creating solutions
This is worth more than any 30 minutes you’ll ever spend in the gym. If it helps, divide these into proactive solutions (ie, things you can do now) and backup plans. A proactive solution, for instance, might be buying a jar of natural peanut butter to stave off terrible on-the-go snack choices, or (for me) committing to posting all my endurance efforts online to keep them honest. A backup plan might be ‘If I can’t manage an hour in the gym four days a week, I’ll do [X] bodyweight circuit at home to replace a session.’ Plan that session and buy that peanut butter now, not when you’re low on willpower. This is what’s going to keep you on track.
Einstein once said: ‘If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.’ Before you next commit to a three-month stint in the gym, spend an hour making sure you’ll succeed there.
]]>Examples? Sure thing. In mythology, for instance, the Phoenix is robust – it dies, but comes back unchanged. The Hydra is Antifragile – chop off its head, and it grows two more. Become an entrepreneur instead of working for a large, unwieldy company, Taleb says, and you’re like the Hydra – more able to adapt and change when bad things happen. Chase after status, and you’re at the mercy of trends – develop social capital, and you’ll be well-prepared for most problems. When chaos comes, you’ll adapt better than most, and end up ahead.
It’s sensible thinking, and the book’s worth reading. But how does this relate to your training plan?
Taleb does make some suggestions about fitness in his book – he does some powerlifting, and suggests switching between diets on a near-daily basis – but, with respect to him, it’s not really his area of expertise. And it’s true to say that the point of any sort of training plan is to take advantage of the human body’s natural antifragility, since adapting to the stress of lifting weights or running is how your body gets stronger. But can you go further? Yes, you can.
Here’s the thing: it can actually be quite difficult to plan to introduce some chaos into your workout, but by embracing it when it happens you can better prepare yourself for the randomness of life: now and in the future. Unless you’re a professional sportsperson or you’re training for a competition, you want your training and nutrition to be sustainable pretty much forever – which means making it adaptable without making it into a completely random mess. Here’s how you do that.
Introduce disorder
Really, this means having a workout that will force your body to adapt. When you start training, this is simple: that’s why P90X and Crossfit get such miraculous results in the early going. As you get fitter, it’s harder to introduce the right kind of stress to your body – which means keeping track of your gym numbers, and aiming to improve them.
Think upside vs downside
Taleb’s books are all about this. If your investment strategy makes a steady stream of income but can see you lose all your money in an unpredictable (but likely) random event, that’s a lot of downside. If it minimises risk while giving you the chance of making a fortune, that’s a lot of upside. Exercise is the same: every move or training protocol you can pick has risks and rewards. If rowing and sprinting will both get you to the bodyfat percentage you want, is it worth risking a blown hamstring with the latter? If snatches will make you 10% more explosive than a similar frequency of trap-bar jumps but could wreck your shoulders, which do you do? For non-athletes, the answer is almost always to pick the exercise that will get the most results with the least possible risk of injury.
Throw things out
The Romans, Taleb notes, called this via negativa. Yes, having a cable-cross is nice, but do you really need it when you can get similar results with a set of go-anywhere gymnastics rings? Strip out the unnecessary from your training plan and you’ll have more time to concentrate on the important. If in doubt, consider Gym Jones’ classic SMMF – 1,000 lunges, or 100 handstand pressups, done over an hour or so. Simple and nasty.
Add to your workout ‘quiver’
If you’re lost without the gym’s only E-Z bar, workout time is always going to be frustrating. Conversely, if you can train with whatever’s to hand then you’ll never have to wait for kit – and your body will benefit from the variety. Bare minimum, you should aim to learn, by heart, a workout you can do with no kit at all, then ones that use a single piece of kit: a pull up bar, a barbell, some dumbbells, and a TRX…and expand from there. Nobody likes the guy curling in the squat rack, but if you have six different leg workouts in the clip, you won’t have to deal with him.
Train through the day
Ignore the false dichotomy between ‘gym time’ and the rest of your day – activity is activity. Pavel calls it Greasing The Groove, while anyone preparing for the SEAL’s notorious Hell Week knows the value of doing dozens of pressups, spaced out through the day. Make doing a set of pull ups, pressups or squats during downtime instinctive, and you’ll increase your work capacity with barely any effort.
Learn to ‘fast’
Eating six small meals a day works great – right up until life makes it impossible. Learn when your body does (and doesn’t) need fuel, and a day without tupperware won’t send you into a panic. The rule of thumb? More carbs around training sessions, less on rest days, and no meltdowns if you have to skip a meal entirely. Part of the benefit of fasting is that you’ll learn that it’s okay to be a bit hungry. A green tea will be fine. Maybe have an apple.
Learn to cook
Obvious, but underrated. Crucially, learn to cook meals that use leftovers, different cuts of meat, and things that are available in your local 24-hour garage – no cardamom pods required. Learning six ways to make eggs and leftovers palatable is more important than perfecting a coq au vin, and easier. Start here.
Plan, but be adaptable
This is what it all comes down to. Funnily enough, most athletes’ training plans are very ‘fragile’ – if your plan relies on six training days a week, a tailored nutrition programme and 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep and you aren’t a paid professional athlete, you are probably going to fuck up somewhere. Strip it back to the basics: three hard sessions a week, more walks to the shops and pressups whenever you’re at a loose end, your workout plan should be near-bulletproof.
]]>These days, it’s not even close. According to the search traffic, people are Googling ‘Henry Cavill workout plan’ something like 14,800 times a month – compared with a paltry 2,900 or so looking for similar phrasing around Brad Pitt. Stick the W-word next to ‘Man Of Steel’ and ‘Fight Club’ and it’s a similar story. When you get down to Superman vs Tyler Durden? Well, that’s not even a fair fight. Whatever you think about their relative cinematic merits, the evidence is in – more people want Kal-El’s abs than (spoilers!) a photogenic-but-imaginary anarchist’s. But what does this mean?
Dozens of cultural commentators think they can tell you. They think it means that the body standards that plague women have finally caught up with men, or that images of sportsmen are being hypersexualised by advertisers and the media. Mark Simpson, who’s presumably looking to recapture the brief it-commentator status he enjoyed when he came up with the word ‘metrosexual’, has decided to dub whatever’s happening as the much-less-catchy ‘spornosexuality’. Everyone else is moaning about pressures on young men, calling it vanity, thinking it’s about being jacked, or pumped, or whatever. And almost nobody is getting it.
Here’s the thing: you can’t compare Tyler Durden’s abs to Superman’s. Pitt, yes, looks pretty good in Fight Club – especially in that one shot you’re picturing right now, where he’s angled like a model with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, abs glinting in the light – but he’d probably be the first to tell you that look isn’t sustainable. He’s supposed to be the aspirational embodiment of Jack’s confused fin-de-siecle masculinity – it’s not a coincidence that Norton sneers ‘is that what a man’s supposed to look like?’ at a Calvin Klein model that looks almost exactly the same as shirtless Durden. Because Pitt, at his ab-tastic best, probably weighed 160lbs at 5’11. Yes, his arms are big, but otherwise that’s near-malnourished. He probably trained quite a lot, and he certainly dieted hard, but – look at it again if you like – he’s not really in enviable physical shape.
You cannot say the same of Cavill as Superman. During training, he went from a 300lb deadlift to 435. He could push-press 245, and front squat 305 for four. Those are good numbers, but they’re not insane. That’s basically a big, strong dude who’s now more physically capable, less at risk of osteoperosis, Alzheimer’s, and a whole host of cardiovascular diseases. Maybe just as importantly, it’s also a man who knows what it’s like to feel superhuman.
Gym Jones founder Mark Twight, the man who trained Cavill, understands this better than almost anyone. ‘Fitness is strength and conditioning, but also strength of character,’ he notes in one interview. ‘Cheating and shortcuts produce visible insecurity. Genuine accomplishment looks and feels different. It cannot be faked. By doing physically difficult things, by changing his body of his own will, Henry changed his attitude and his bearing. He looked huge. He walked huge. His attitude broadcast his physical capability.’
This is not something you can say of every guy who does hundreds of flyes and curls and gets gym-jacked, without ever doing anything really hard – as hard, say, as grinding out 10 sets of 10 with a 225 front squat, or deadlifting so much you feel like your face might explode, or cranking on a rowing machine when you genuinely think you might faint. Just eating less for a few weeks isn’t going to give you the confidence or carriage you get from believing in your own physical capacity. When you look at it like this, Cavill has less in common with most gym-bros than with, say, Robert Mitchum – the one-time bare-knuckle boxer and railroad worker who always looks like he could throw you through a wall. This, though, is difficult to explain to online columnists who’ve never done a double-bodyweight deadlift.
So here’s the simple version: not all ‘transformations’ are created equal, just like not all of them are sustainable or healthy. It’s relatively easy to get in what passes for ‘shape’, but much harder to develop the physical capacity that will actually change your own ideas about what you’re capable of. And while some people are probably feeling the pressure of modern society, or trying to get jacked, being ‘spornolized’ (whatever the hell that means), it’s not really cool to lump them all together, because some people are just trying to get better. And Tyler Durden is cool, but he’s no Superman.
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From time to time, someone devises a videogame that promises to get you in shape. They almost always fail. This happens for a number of reasons:
The solution? Simple. Keep playing the videogames you already like playing. Just tweak the experience so that it gets you fitter. How? Here’s how.
Beginner difficulty: Sit on the floor
Yes, it’s as simple as that. I’ve stolen this from Dan John, who likes to tell people that they can watch as much TV as they like – but only if they’re on the floor. The secret? It’s virtually impossible for a grown adult human to find one comfortable spot on the floor – as opposed to, say, burrowing into a cocoon on the couch – and so doing this means you’ll roll around, move your hips, and generally make up for some of the time you already spend sitting at your desk.
Normal difficulty: Play standing up
Why do you have to sit down anyway? When you sit, your metabolism slows, connective tissues tighten, muscles shut off and circulation’s constricted. Standing burns roughly 1.36 calories a minute more than sitting. And according to the nice people at Precision Nutrition: “Uninterrupted sedentary time is strongly associated with cardio-metabolic and inflammatory risk biomarkers” — regardless of age, gender or ethnicity.” To combat this, more and more people are turning to standing desks – but if that isn’t an option, whether because of office politics or workplace derision, stand up while you play games. Not the likes of The Last Of Us, obviously – you probably want to concentrate on that – but if you’re logging in for, say, a three-hour stint of CoD online, why not stand? There’s even evidence that standing improves cognitive function, so you might finally get a big enough killstreak to use the tactical nuke.
Advanced difficulty: Play for press-ups
I’ve got this one from Gym Jones’ Rob MacDonald, who once told me that he and his son do 10 pressups every time they die while playing God Of War. Oh, and did I mention that they play on the ‘Titan’ difficulty setting? In case you aren’t familiar with God Of War, please let me assure you – that is a fuckload of pressups. What I suggest for you, dear reader, is that you set a press-up penalty for death depending on how many times you’re likely to die. In solo GTA V, where deaths are few and far between but loading pauses are long, you’ve probably got time for a max set every time you get Wasted. In two-player Street Fighter Ultra, it’s simple: the loser does 10 (winner’s choice of style, natch). If you’re already hunched over from hours of sitting at a desk, get a band and do pull-aparts instead. Don’t just sit there watching the screen.
Mega difficulty: Play in a squat
Kelly Starrett, creator of Mobility WOD, suggests that you should try to ‘accumulate’ 10 minutes of squat time a day – details here. The problem? Sitting in a squat is tedious and – in the early going – painful. The solution: get your ten minutes while you play Resogun or Bulletstorm, and thank me when you feel spritelier and look awesome. You’re welcome.
HOMEWORK: Do one of these – or all of these – this week. Don’t play games? Do them while watching TV. Don’t watch TV? Well, aren’t you just the best – do them while reading instead. Don’t read books? GET OFF MY WEBSITE. And live hard!
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