Getting in the Zone (The flow series)

So many people underestimate just how much getting strong is a mental challenge. They certainly underestimate how you head affects your results.

Or, when they do recognize it, as some strength coaches claim too, they simply latch on to the most convenient dogmatic views and think that it is all about “motivation”.  Which, quite frankly, when repeated over and over becomes just a word at best, and simple noise at worst.

When I started writing the Getting in the Zone series my blog at GUS, I didn’t know exactly how I would approach it. Now, five posts and five associated articles later, it’s still not finished but I finally feel that I have it to a point where readers can really do something with it. I also think, in all, it’s the most useful work I’ve ever done.

So far, I am practicing a bit of amateur psychology.  But let me point out that all psychology is amateur psychology. Because for any person to claim that they are an “expert” on the human mind…well that would be hubris.

Suffice it to say I am not qualified in psychology, despite a lot of knowledge. But I AM qualified when it comes to getting the mind in a good place for the best performance. What that ultimately means is getting the self in a good place. Mind and body. This is called being in the “zone”. Or, as I prefer to say being in “flow” or “flowing”.

From the first post:

During athletic events you’ve probably heard people say things like “he’s in the zone”. That is when an athlete is completely centered and everything seems focused and effortless. Many times there is a sense of quietness and calmness about them even though they are in the midst of a highly charged situation.

You know what I’m talking about, probably, and when you are at the gym trying to get that big PR, feeling all anxious about it, you’ve probably wondered how to get in that ZONE and if it’s possible to learn.

The purpose of all the posts and articles is therefore to help you achieve that. However, I believe that each individual entry is useful in it’s own right. I hope it helps you succeed in your lifting, or whatever you hope to achieve:

Ground Up Strength: Getting in the Zone (FLOW) Series.

Ground Up Strength: Why Programs Work

I’ve never seen a strength training or bodybuilding program developed for a mass audience that didn’t  “work”.  No matter how ridiculous the program is and how unfounded it’s principles all such programs tend to be seen as largely successful.

Once upon a time the world did not need specialists to the degree it does now.  Most every human being had the basic skills of survival.  Sure there were still “roles” that certain members of a group would be given by convention but the roles were simple and there weren’t so many of them….

Continue Reading >> Ground Up Strength: Why Programs Work.

Attitudes, Personality, and Balance

Attitudes is probably the most recurring subject in this blog.  I tend to just harp on it again and again.

For instance these two posts, as well as many others:

Attitudes about health and fitness

More on attitudes about health and fitness

Sometimes I don’t even know myself why I do the things I do and I cannot be sure in this case.  I do know,  however,  that one reason I revisit this subject so often is because it is so vital and so misunderstood.

The most learned, logical, and scientifically oriented individuals are influenced by their particular attitudes, which themselves are influenced by a myriad of other complicated psychological processes.  Nobody is immune to attitude and nobody can escape it without turning into a drone.

Fight Or Flight: Lift or Die?

Have You ever heard someone say that in order to lift a very heavy load they imagine they are “doing battle” with the bar? Of course the real hardcore lifters don’t say the word bar, they say “iron”. “It’s just me and the iron in a battle to the death,” they say, or some such similar nonsense.

Well they verbalize this thinking and, indeed, it can be somewhat contrived but the truth is we DO respond to situations that are NOT life-threatening as if they ARE.

The fitness industry in general is caught up in this attitude. The phrase “survival of the fittest” is a big favorite among “fitness” experts. Clearly, someone who thinks running a mile or lifting a bell is about “survival” has yet to have their survival threatened. But it goes deeper than that into our responses to training and how our attitude and thinking influences these responses. Does approaching your training as if it is a matter of “life or death” really improve your performance? Let’s examine the fight or flight response (fight-flight) to see if it may shed some light.

Continue Reading >> Ground Up Strength: Fight Or Flight: Lift or Die?

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Get over the Time Magazine Article, Seriously

Because it’s beside the point. The fitness industry will not lose a buck because of an article…even in Time. So really, all you fitness professionals can stop being so very precious.

Isn’t this about helping people and not your own self concept?

I was content to link a post by Michelle May that aligns with my attitude about the article “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin“.

How about I rename the article? Why Details Won’t Make You Thin. Because that is all anybody is arguing. Details. Physiological details quoted from research studies won’t make you thin. Hello.

Everybody says, to succeed you must make “fitness” a part of your lifestyle.  Yet nobody seems to know what the term lifestyle means any more than there can be any clear definition of fitness. Just words.  It’s just vague psycho-babble. And since there is no where else to go they dwell on details.

Which is the problem. Too many people are starting with the details because they are being led to believe that is where perfection lies.  Starting with the specific is just so very wrong, folks. You will never see the big picture.  Always start with the general before proceeding to the specifics.

Because if you think you can succeed in such a goal as fatloss with compulsively detail oriented thinking just think about where COMPULSIVE behaviours have gotten you.

Let me be clear here. I am NOT saying that the answer is to start with the big picture and slowly move toward obsessing about tiny details. Obsession is obsession and no matter how long it takes you to arrive at it’s still an unhealthy grasping.

I actually just read a post in a “health” blog about dwelling on details the message of which seemed to be “most of you better not be obsessing over details. There’s only a few of us purists who can handle it!

Hey, exercise won’t make you thin. A hammer won’t make you thin. I typed it in and nothing exploded. Tools don’t make you thin. It’s the work you do with them that produces results. And it is possible to do good work with the latest computer driven woodworking tools OR the most primitive chisel as long as you KNOW HOW TO USE THE  TOOL…and you have a steady vision of that which you wish to accomplish.

Exercise can be one key to long term body weight maintenance. Exercise can be the key to long term failure to maintain healthy body weight.

But if anyone thinks that a Time magazine article is going to empty out the mile long row of treadmills at the local YMCA then I ask, where have you been?

Instead of getting defensive perhaps the fitness industry should be asking why there is a mile long row of treadmills at the local YMCA and why there are people obsessively pounding away on them in the face of NO results. Perhaps the fitness industry should worry about it’s clients and not about itself.

I have developed a rule that I use everyday. I simply ask myself a question and answer it as honestly as I can. With no judgement. I just look at it and give the the first natural answer that comes.

“Did the things I did today have more value to others than they did to me?”

That is what I want to accomplish. I don’t ask myself that because I think it is a moral obligation or because it “sets me above”.  I ask myself that because that will mean that I do MORE rather than less. Self profit means that we seek to do that which is most expedient. It’s a cost benefit analysis. That one simple rule guarantees that I do not seek the expedient route and thus what I do has more value in general, including to myself. But I am not as interested in building a career as I am in growing a human being.

As long as I do that, why should I care about a Time magazine article?

As far as my reaction to it I don’t need to rebut it because I have been writing about my opinions on this all along. I’ll start with the reference to Michelle May’s post:

• Why I don’t care about the Time article – Michelle May
• What is Training People? (EricTroy’s Blog at GUS)
• Misconceptions Abound (EricTroy’s Blog at GUS)
• Its A War Not A Battle (EricTroy’s Blog at GUS)
• Fitness: All-Encompassing Means Paralyzing?
• Fitness as a Goal (gustrength.com)
• Attitudes about Health and Fitness
• More on Attitudes about Health and Fitness
• The Paradox of Choice
• So Many Gyms, So Many Programs (gustrength.com)
• Guilt and Exercise Don’t Mix
• Self Control:  Not all it’s Cracked up to be
• It’s a Process

When the fitness industry gets all upset about an article in a magazine that they feel differs or contradicts them, from my perspective, it seems as if they are operating under the delusion that people care, ultimately about their knowledge of science or obscure physiological facts. Their self perception about their “knowledge” is a big part of their self concept. Threaten someone’s self concept and you will get piss and vinegar every time.

Many people will listen to you based on their perception of your knowledge base.  For a while at least until that knowledge fails them.

Knowledge in that way is a double edged sword because in today’s fitness world many individuals use knowledge before experience.

On the other hand others dwell on experience and undermine the importance of knowledge.

There would not be a question of the relative value of each if the fitness industry instead focused on THE most important part of the equation. HOW MUCH YOU CARE.

In the end, what keeps people coming back to you is showing them that you give a shit. That it is not about YOU.

Why I don’t care about the Time article “Why exercise won’t make you thin” | Michelle May

Once again Michelle May and I are on the same page:

Why I don’t care about the Time article “Why exercise won’t make you thin”.

Related GUStrength’s Blog posts:

Guilt and Exercise Don’t Mix

Self-Control:  Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be

It’s a Process

Are you a task oriented or outcome oriented individual?

Chances are that’s not a question you’ve ever asked yourself. Well, you should because it has everything to do with your success in whatever you do and especially things like strength training, fatloss, and “fitness”.

I wrote some about this in my post, Getting in the Zone. You may have heard task versus outcome orientation referred to as results versus action oriented. Same thing.

Most everything to me is a “process”.  I tend to fall heavily on the task oriented side of things even when it would be perfectly feasible and suitable to “focus on results”. And I suspect that most people will tend to be mixed in their approach but lean more heavily one way or the other.

An example of this in my personal (domestic) life has to do with laundry. My wife often gets annoyed at what she sees as bad laundry habits.

Our laundry is done in the basement. Our bedroom is on the second floor. When my wife takes off clothing she places it in the hamper upstairs. When I take off clothing I throw it down the stairs to the first landing (I aim for the corner so nobody trips).

Then, at some point, when I am passing that way I take the discarded clothing to the basement. Pretty simple. It’s a two step process that results in the laundry accumulating in the most convenient location – next to the washer. The stair landing is the ‘in between’ part of the process and in all I think it is pretty efficient.

My wife thinks it is a bad habit. To her there is no ‘in between’. The laundry is either upstairs or in the basement. In this way she is a outcome oriented person. I use little, convenient habits to get the laundry to it’s destination without ever really thinking about it.

This is a little thing and either way, it gets done.

But consider just a bit more, if your willing, for there is a point to this.

With my wife’s way the laundry, invariably, doesn’t just fill the hamper -it overflows from it. When it finally gets carried down (in two trips) it is because the overflowing pile of laundry FORCES one of us to do it. The laundry is done in a fit of action.

For my wife this means that the process requires a whole lot of her attention and energy. More, from my perspective, than laundry deserves. She must drag two or three loads from the second floor to our decidedly non-functional basement and then spend a bunch of time sorting it and putting on a load. And she will spend a whole evening trying to ‘catch up’ on it.

Since she thinks I don’t know how to wash clothes, this usually means the laundry is never ‘caught up’.

All this parallels the typical fitness failure. We wait until our weight, lack of conditioning, weakness, etc. “piles up” and becomes impossible to ignore and then we GET MOTIVATED and launch into a fit, no a FRENZY, of action focusing on a result. Being thin. Being “in shape”. Deadlifting like we did in college.

Except with one major difference. Doing laundry is a simple thing with very quick results. Laundry piles up. We get to it. A couple of hours later…results.

So let’s equate the state of your body to your house. If, in general, you are pretty neat and you are able to keep on top of the cleaning, then, the process you use for laundry is no big deal. Just one thing in a system that, for the most part, works. But add to laundry piles of dirty dishes, papers and books everywhere, accumulated ’stuff’ that should have been discarded, dirt, dust, filth…you get the picture.

You’ve got a problem and one big fit of cleaning ain’t gonna solve it. Your house will get sort of cleaner but you will ultimately FAIL to keep a clean house. The process of cleaning (getting in shape) becomes overwhelming, requiring too much energy and focus. And what’s more, you don’t succeed! It’s more than you can do in a fit of spring cleaning and you are left LESS motivated and more depressed about your cleaning habits than before.

If I could venture a guess, I’d say that many people who are both critical of physically fit people and also unwilling to change their own fitness think that this is how successful people operate – in a constant frenzy of obsessive fitness activity.

Remember, fatloss, strength, fitness: these are not “events” these are PROCESSES.

Guilt and Exercise Don’t Mix

I just read a blog post in which someone talked about a 30 day gym goal. I won’t link to it or embarrass the person I’ll just talk about the very typical thought process that was at work.

Basically this person “guilted” himself into going to the gym. He didn’t express any compulsion to be active or to exercise at all. He simply felt that he “had better make the gym a habit” because “they” say it is important.

So he set for himself the goal of going to the gym every day for 30 days and just went for it. He didn’t quite make that goal but he did establish, so he says, a “habit” of going to the gym.

Now I don’t know what would possess someone to think they need to go to a gym EVERY day but before you ask..no, he wasn’t going to over-train. He was basically just “showing up” and doing the same thing for the most part. There was no particularly novel challenge, so basically after the first week or so he would have begun establishing a baseline and then would have maintained that. No chance of even “over-reaching” let alone over-training.

It’s the under-lying attitude I want to talk about.

Fitness: All-Encompassing Means Paralyzing?

Cover of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

So in the last post I presented the talk by Dr. Barry Schwartz regarding “The Paradox of Choice”.

Also of late I have been speaking about having  specific goals in our training and making specific choices about the direction our training should take.

If you read my piece on the concept of fitness you’ll see that I don’t think much of the word. Yes, I use it on occasion for brevity or convenience but depending on your perspective it’s either to vague or too all-encompassing.

The Paradox of Choice by Dr. Barry Schwartz

I love this talk by Dr. Barry Schwartz. If you don’t get this then you may have already discovered the secret to happiness!

Barry Schwartz is a sociology professor at Swarthmore and author of  The Paradox of Choice.

In the talk he makes a great case for how the abundance of choice in our affluent Western society is making us miserable.

The story Dr. Schwartz relates about buying a new pair of jeans made me laugh because that is ME. I want that pair of jeans too…the kind that used to be the only kind.

This is at work everywhere but I want to explain why I particularly want to include it in this blog which is supposedly about strength, condinitioning, and related issues.

You see, I saw this so-called “Beginner’s Powerlifting” article and I was struck by the ridiculous complications and especially by the long list of exercise and exercise variations.

I thought to myself, not only is it way too complex for a “beginner” so many choices will make them crazy. They’ll spend all their time thinking about what they “shoulda done” whenever a workout doesn’t seem “perfect”.

At the same time I was thinking about the research done on buffets that I was blogging about earlier and also about the “abundance paradox”. That is how I came across this fascinating and quite funny talk.

Everyday I see another article or blog about how there are “so many great programs out there”. Perhaps it’s instinct but I never say that to people. You can’t be happy in your training when you are thinking about the million and one choices you might have made.

Cover of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

This book is definitely next on my list. Sounds fascinating and could teach me a thing or two that will relate to my little corner of the world. Speaking of which having “your little corner of the world” may be what it is all about.

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