Hey hey!
Hope your Sunday is pleasant so far. At The Quad, we are gearing up to start the 3rd quarter in a couple of days. With the ease of lockdown, our physical centres will open up on Tuesday. While we will continue to maintain distance and safety norms, it will be great to see people come in to lift!
On to the 3 things for today,
I see many instances of flailing wildly. Trying insane diets, going ridiculously low on calorie intake, removing carbs or fats or whatever is the enemy completely - unfortunately, these are too common an occurrence. Likewise, doing boot camp workouts, running every day, throwing the kitchen sink at your body while saying "no pain, no gain", beating it up with metcons with regularity.
I’ve written about this before in my brute-force method. Most of us start here. But the idea is to grow from there.3 quotes! Bruce Lee, James Clear and Andy Grove feature this week.
on the power of showing up. I received a note from a student about their recovery from COVID-19 but this one is so much more than that.
thrash your arms about like you just don't care
jumping into the deep end
You jump into the pool and you start to flail your arms and legs in a wild fashion. With frenetic quantities of thrashing, you manage to stay afloat. Or so you thought. You sink to the bottom. Panic ensues. Someone kindly pulls you out of the water where you gasp and cough and hack your lungs out.
If you do this with reasonable regularity and learn to not panic, you can learn to stay afloat by cycling your arms and legs in the water. Graceful flailing, let's call it.
While learning to stay afloat is a useful life skill, it is not swimming. And until you learn to swim, that complete confidence and mindset of not panicking do not set in.
learn a stroke
That's why we are taught a stroke or two, as part of learning to swim. We learn to breathe and we learn to propel ourselves forward. Locomotion happens in the water, and as we understand the skill required for this, we get even better at the stationary cycling bit. Even when we sink, we stay calm and push the bottom off and come right back up to the surface.
No one should confuse a graceful freestyle stroke with flailing their arms about. Even if you manage to do that with a ballerina-like grace. And even if you continue staying afloat. Because that's not swimming.
Duh, you say.
learning to lift
This applies across the board, to any skill you are trying to learn. As always, I'll stick to my area of expertise - lifting weights or eating well. Because we've lifted our couch or dining table does not mean we know to lift them well. Or use/utilise our body to reasonable stress that we should. Because we've dumped food into our mouth all these years daily, it still does not make us an expert in knowing what to eat.
We've learned to flail. And we've had years and years of practice at wildly flailing. We might've convinced ourselves that we are rather decent at it.
But we don't even know a proper stroke.
I see many instances of flailing wildly. Trying insane diets, going ridiculously low on calorie intake, removing carbs or fats or whatever is the enemy completely - unfortunately, these are too common an occurrence. Likewise, doing boot camp workouts, running every day, throwing the kitchen sink at your body while saying "no pain, no gain", beating it up with metcons with regularity.
I don't think there are any awards for doing that.
Instead
While there are many methods and ways to practice, this fitness and nutrition thing can be as simple and graceful as learning a stroke. Until you do, it seems like magic from the outside. Once you learn it, you realise it is simply a skill that one needs to take time to master.
I recommend you stop flailing and learn a stroke or two. And in case that's not clear, learn to lift weights with proper technique, have a training plan. And eat more vegetables, drink more water, and eat less crap. And do this for 150 out of the next 200 days of the year and good things will happen.
You can be a hacker or a dabbler. But do that consciously.
3 quotes for this week
Instead of opposing force by force, one should complete an opposing movement by accepting the flow of energy from it and defeat it by borrowing from it. This is the law of adaptation.
– Bruce Lee
While this sounds like something pertinent only to the martial arts, where we see folks flip folks over as they charge in, I think this is a relevant and powerful strategy in life as well. When we oppose force with force when we try to push away a thought rather than accept it when we refuse to accept what is - we are slogging for no reason.
The opposing movement is a hint. Use the opposing force. Sometimes, we don't need to fight it. Sometimes, we should let go.
The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows [that ruin you/your good habit]. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.
– James Clear
I wish I had read James many years ago. Through the process of self-experimentation, I've devised my own methods but James has the cheat code. Similar to Josh Hillis', the logic is straightforward and not confusing at all, and will make immediate sense.
My version of this is a guideline to myself. There are certain things I like to do daily. But it is no big deal if I skip them. But two days in a row - no way. I go out of my way to ensure that the second-day miss does not happen. For example, doing pranayama. It is a new habit that I've tried adding. It takes all of 10 minutes. But it is not yet second nature. But by having my guideline, my success rate is at least 50%, which is pretty good.
There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little.
– Andy Grove
If 40 hours are not enough, I don't think 80 is the answer. Or if 80 is the answer, I want to find a different answer.
Hard work is the key. But work is infinite. And time is finite. I think the key is to figure out which work to do with the finite time, rather than trying to make time stretch.
on the power of showing up: a letter from a student
Today, I want to share a message that a student, let's call them WB, sent across. WB has been having a hard time both personally and professionally over the last 3 years and has been a champ in dealing with it in their own way. From not having any mental bandwidth to train, they reached out to me early last year and we connected. Rather than set any goals, all we agreed upon was to just come in and train. Why? Because at the community, we inherently understand that sensible strength and conditioning is good for you. That's it.
The goal was the effort - just show up.
let's take a break
The decision to stop training came about mutually. Seeing the stress WB was going through, the two of us agreed to not let coming into class be a burden and just get any physical activity they could. Once things settled down (after a year and some), WB reached out and just wanted to get back to doing things.
come back. show up.
Whenever you step away from training, coming back is a bit difficult. Why? Because you've already labelled a few experiences. Things like "I can lift 24 kg easily" and "16 kg is light for me" and all that. So, with these hanging around your neck, when you come back to lift a weight and it feels harder than you recall. And you beat yourself up. You lose motivation.
That's why the constant mantra at The Quad is "Show up!"
Instead of defining yourself based on what you can lift or making it a part of your identity, just let it be. You are not what you lift. You spend a few months or years lifting, you will lift better and lift more. You take a few months off, you will lift less. That's all there is to it.
Personally, I learned a lot and was inspired by WB and how they handled the past few years. Showing up for 5 quarters (you will read the context below) while struggling mentally to be present and apply is not easy. Or simple. But showing up and letting go can do wonders, as WB elaborates.
Read on. Be inspired.
Hey coach,
Just wanted to share this with you. I recovered and [I am] doing fine. In fact, I was feeling better from the 7th day onwards. But till then it felt as though someone was driving over my body with a road roller.
The only symptom I had was fever and body pain and my chest CT showed zero effect of COVID in my lung.
I think the effort that I put in in the last 5 quarters has played a huge role in getting my body to a state where it could fight the virus.
It is very prophetic because the last five quarters were ones where I struggled every class to finish and was just able to barely survive. Mentally I was so disconnected that most days I didn’t even know what I was doing, I was just doing something because the coach said so.
But I did that for 5 quarters and unknowingly got my body to a state where it had the ability to withstand this sledgehammer of a virus.
Now comes the most important part, both my mother and grandmother tested positive on my 7th day and by then I could focus all my energy on attending to them which was very very demanding as both had to hospitalised but I was able to functionally move and get work done for them and I think it’s all thanks to those 5 quarters.
If you have a story to share, please share. You never know who might need to hear it. Or share this story with someone who needs to hear it.
And that’s it for this week. Thanks for taking a few minutes from your precious Sunday to read my thoughts. I’ll see you next week.
