Hey peeps!
Gyms and most places are shut down from tomorrow and The Quad will have to be fully virtual, for the next few weeks or months. After a hard year last year for all of us in the community and the Quad Squad, it is a blow to realise we are not out of it.
But it is what it is. There are bigger things going on and we need to make what we can out of this. If our health is important, we need to stop worrying about being entertained/bored and learn to do what is required. I don’t know enough to opine about the larger picture, so I am steering clear of all that and just sticking to doing what I do.
It doesn’t have to be fun to be fun, as a friend of mine always says.
The 3 things for today
on Zen Buddhism’s eightfold path. I love reading Bruce Lee and this passage on the path struck me. My lens is my lens and so I used this to view the journeys of our health and fitness.
3 quotes. On digital socialism and hobbies.
on skill work and exponential progress. You immerse yourself in the process, constantly trying to improve. But without being supercritical or an ass to yourself. You try to figure things out, you ask for an outside perspective, you assess and see if you are moving in the right direction.
the eightfold path
In my fitness journey and the other successful paths (there are multiple) that I've seen our students take over the years, there are a lot more nuances and complexity going on. It is never as simple or trivial as finding the best method because there's no such thing. Most reasonable methods will take you a significant distance towards your goal.
I was reading my favourite philosopher, Bruce Lee, and he talks about Buddhism's eightfold path.
The eight requirements that will eliminate suffering by correcting false values and giving true knowledge of life's meaning.
— Bruce Lee
The patterns of similarity between what changes one needs to make to take ownership of one's health and put that behind them are pretty similar to what Bruce talks about. So, here goes.
#1: First, you must see clearly what is wrong.
If you don't acknowledge that there's an issue or a problem, then you cannot get started. Your health and fitness (or lack of) is a clear outcome of your habits over the past few years. Getting angry with me for saying that is not productive. You need to see where you are at.
#2 Next, decide to be cured.
Seeing the problem honestly is one thing. Deciding that you do not want to be there is the next big step.
If you are genuinely fine with where you are and assuming that there are no health complications, maybe there's nothing to be fixed.
#3 You must act.
Well, duh.
Choose a path. Choose an action or a slew of actions on how you are going to go from here to there.
For a lot of us, this is when we decide to join a gym or start a diet.
It is not an isolated action but a thread that needs to make sense. And I think you need to be a bit angry to get out of the hole.
#4 Speak so as to aim at being cured.
THIS!
You should not just be mouthing the right words. You should not be spinning wheels at the gym, bored out of your mind, and then bitching about it later. You need to fully buy into the process, act with full intent, and conduct yourself with that belief - the belief that you are clear about what you are doing and it is now a matter of putting in the work.
Your inner dialogue needs to be honest! You need to truly believe that you are aiming to fix this problem not just put up a show.
#5 Your livelihood must not conflict with your therapy.
Here's where a lot of us have a problem. Work is busy. It is hectic. The work hours are stupid, the work pressure is insane. You go to bed late and are on call at random times - there's no way you can wake up reasonably early and start your day with exercise. You plan to do it in the evening but there's a fire at work and you are it - there goes your plan.
Most of my students falling off, the ones who genuinely want to make a change and have come past fads and vanity and status games - here's where they get blocked.
#6 The therapy must go forward at the "staying speed"; the critical velocity that can be sustained.
You start off with a blast. No sugar for this month, no junk for this month, and you are going to exercise 6 days of the week. You are going to attack your problem with all you have.
Going from zero to such a high level of action is difficult to sustain. This is why we need to start small and think about the long haul. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
#7 You must think and feel about it incessantly.
Not obsessed with it. But it is in your thoughts all the time. When a cake is offered, the clarity of your path helps you answer it without a shred of a doubt. When you want to hit that snooze and contemplate skipping today's workout, you immediately see the larger picture and get out of bed. When you wonder if you should stay up late and watch the IPL versus going to bed and waking up well-rested, your answer will be clear.
This is not something you do for 1 hour a day. This is not something that happens just around mealtimes.
This is why you will see these people who suddenly become fit overnight do things like taking the stairs regularly, or saying no to snacks, or being moderate when it comes to many things.
#8 Learn how to contemplate with the deep mind.
This is out of my depth. So, instead of telling you how it might apply to you, I'll stick with how I think this applies to me.
Are my actions leading me in the right direction? Is the direction I've set still making sense? Could I be doing something else? Is this making me happy or am I just following a pattern that I see around me? Am I learning from this and am I enjoying this? I might be having fun but is this going in the right direction? Am I growing?
What step is blocking you? The more you probe and answer this for yourself, the higher the probability of you figuring this out.
It is important as well to know where you are and where you are going - 6-pack abs might not be where you actually want to go. Or lifting 3x your bodyweight. Don't look at someone else's goal and expect that to solve your problems. Figure it out.
3 quotes for this week
This is the main question, with what activity one's leisure is filled.
– Aristotle
Hobbies are awesome. They are a creative exploration of oneself, with no constraints, with no pressure.
If you are looking at turning your hobby into your job, think long and hard.
While old-school political socialism was an arm of the state, digital socialism is socialism without the state. This new brand of socialism currently operates in the realm of culture and economics, rather than government - for now.
– Kevin Kelly
There is a power to social media. Right now, the signal to noise ratio is high but there's hope and there's scope for larger things to happen. And it is happening in various places but most of us are too busy with the noise.
But something will emerge.
Be exposed to the various paths of combinations and be able to change paths during execution.
– Bruce Lee
While this quote pertains to combat and attacking, I think a lot of things he says are applicable to life. His is a philosophy for life, and not just martial arts. That's just the initial lens.
on skill work and exponential progress
better skill, better output
Strength is a skill. That's a powerful statement whose message is often missed. Let's probe a bit into the skill aspect required to get fit, eat better and all that in this post.
Playing the piano, for example, requires skill, practice, coaching, and steadily pushing into uncomfortable territory i.e. finding the upper limits of your current skill levels. This applies to playing a sport, to any musical instrument, to painting, to making pottery.
Improving our skills leads to better output in all these endeavours.
when we start
When you pick up any new thing, your skill levels are zero or thereabouts. Pretty much any little bit of practice or work you put in, however average, you quickly see results and improvements. As Coach Dan John says, anything works for 6 weeks.
Until you hit your first plateau
Then, it stops. Why aren't you magically improving every week by leaps and bounds? Well, welcome to your first plateau. You need to continue putting in the work. In fact, now's when you put in a lot of reps on some basic stuff.
But most of you are bored with the plank. You've already conquered it. So, when it is time to plank, you don't put in the hard effort. You just do it in a half-assed fashion.
Or you have to suck at a movement until you stop sucking at it - say the reverse lunge. You are stumbling all over the place. So, your coach tells you to just start by balancing on one leg for 30+ seconds. But pfft, that's boring. You instead lunge terribly and hurt your knees.
Now, that stupid coach got you injured. Or those darn lunges. Or they colluded together to do this to you and stop you from becoming the master athlete you were on track to becoming.
keep the goal the goal
A lack of good coaching where the plan is laid out is at fault. And well, quite a bit of not listening on your part. On failing to keep the goal the goal, as Coach Dan John says.
Quality repetitions are the magic cure. And patience. And learning to love plateaus.
We don't progress linearly. We progress in spurts and leaps and jumps. Maybe you spend 6 months at a plateau. But if you put in the quality effort, you will see a huge leap in output one day suddenly.
learn to break down the skills
Whatever you are working on, if you can break down the skills and honestly gauge your progress and effort, you will see the patterns emerge and see progress being made.
skill work
Skill work is fun. You immerse yourself in the process, constantly trying to improve. But without being supercritical or an ass to yourself. You try to figure things out, you ask for an outside perspective, you assess and see if you are moving in the right direction.
Skill work can be boring. If you look at reps as boring. If doing the same thing daily is boring. If plateaus are boring. If trying to push yourself to the outer edge of your skill levels is boring. If failing is boring.
With anything, skill improvement means improved results. Whether it is more tools in your dieting toolbox, whether it is better form and technique in strength training, whether it involves better habits in your lifestyle, whether it is an improved sleep routine - skill is where it is at.
(Almost) everything can be improved and worked on. You will see exponential progress.
Eventually.
Thanks for reading/listening. I’ll see you here next week. Mask up, stay sensible and stay patient!
