Hey hey!
I am excited about the three posts I have for you today.
How to use the concept of reverse linear progression to help you stop when you are full, rather than overeat without meaning to.
A simple thought on Play.
How to learn to create the hardest plank you have ever done. And why that is important!
Here we go.
Reverse Linear Progression
Free lunch
The first time I heard the word burrito was when Chipotle opened up near campus, where I was in grad school. A free burrito for anyone for the grand opening. For a broke-ass grad student, what grander invitation is there? So, I and a couple of my classmates stood in line for a few blocks and I got my free lunch.
This was only a month after I had moved to the US and my appetite and portion sizes were about the same as they were in India. For those of you who have eaten American portions, you know there's a huge difference.
I started to gobble up my food but I could barely make a dent at it. In fact, I saved up more than half of my burrito and ate that for dinner. Free lunch AND dinner!
My first chocolate milkshake
In fact, on my first day in town, I went to get a burger and got a chocolate milkshake as well. Coz I love that stuff. It was at Steak N Shake, for those of you who are curious.
It was the first time in my life that I could not finish a milkshake. In fact, I did not finish what was in my glass. In diners like these, they give you a tall glass and the big jar that they blended the milkshake in, to pour into your glass once you were done with your first serving. Ridiculous, I thought!
I was in shock and sadness. For wasting an amazing chocolate milkshake. I couldn't believe it.
Fast-forward
In less than 6 months, I was easily polishing off my Chipotle burritos. And finishing the gargantuan milkshakes after a night of dinner and drinks.
What the heck happened? Simple. Linear progression.
It happened slowly but steadily. The second time I had a burrito, I ate a bit more than half. About 2 months in, I was starting to eat 2/3rds of it. And of course, the burrito was a simple watermark. But for every food plate that I encountered, I would pack half of it and eat it later. But slowly the quantity I was taking home reduced. Eventually, in just under 6 months, I was eating American-sized portions aka fucking gargantuan portions that you have no business eating.
Overeat
You've eaten more than you should have. Multiple times. You feel full and not so good. And chastise yourself. But the food was soooo good and you couldn't help it.
This occasional over-eating is not what I am talking about. Your stomach size, your portion sizes are still what they are. This is why when you suddenly stuff in a lot more, it feels terrible.
But in my not-at-all unique case where I went from eating less than half a burrito to finishing a full one, slowly my mind and body got used to the larger sizes. I slowly trained my stomach to enlarge and accept and want more food. My hormonal signalling also modified itself to allow more food intake.
How the heck is any of this useful?
It is a two-way street!
Let me explain. You can train your mind and body to eat lesser portion sizes as well, in the same way. Today, if you suddenly eat half of your regular portion, you are gonna feel hungry. But if you eat 95%, you'd barely know the difference. Slow your eating, double your chewing and it becomes rather simple. And over 6 months, you can reduce your portion sizes to whatever is the appropriate amount.
Please note that I am not asking you to starve or eat half your food only, indiscriminately. We live in a day and age where we over-consume calories too easily. We eat more than we should. And it is simply because we have, unconsciously, put our mind and body on a linear progression.
Slowly, you can reverse it.
The concept of linear progression in strength training or in endurance work is rather similar. Do just a little bit more than what you did today. And soon enough, you are doing a lot more while expending the same amount of effort.
If you feel you over-eat...
Here's what you have to do. Simple linear reverse progression.
Eat slower. Chew more. And eat just a little less than you normally do.
Many times, we have a number in our heads coz that's the number we are used to. We don't listen to our bodies anymore. Instead of eating when we are hungry, we eat coz it is 9 pm or whatever.
While those are long-term fixes to do, my burrito eating and milkshake drinking should shine a bulb about your own eating habits over the last 10-20 years. I've had two people tell me that over the pandemic, all they did was something similar and their doctors are rather happy with them.
Linear reverse progression to find the right portion sizes for you. Do it!
Play
I used to think play meant only playing sports or video games. A few years ago, I, unfortunately, stopped doing both. And it definitely brought about more grumpiness in my life. Then, I realised that I could play with a variety of activities. What was essential were finding an enjoyable activity, discovery, learning, fun, community (occasionally) and improving in skill without making that the focus.
Having enough play in my life is mandatory. And learning to think about it differently has opened up a lot more.
No one can show you how to do it, because he would be giving you a technique, he would be programming you. But watch yourself. When you talk to someone, are you aware of it or are you simply identifying with it? When you got angry with somebody, were you aware that you were angry or were you simply identifying with your anger?
– Anthony de Mello
Reality is apparent when one ceases to compare.
There is "what is" only when there is no comparison at all,
and to live with what is,
is to be peaceful.
– Bruce Lee
HowTo: Plank Hard Enough to Hold Up a Building
Linkage and Tension
The plank is one of the fundamentals of strength training. In fact, I think the word strength training turns some people off coz it is a bit scary. Let's try again.
The plank is one of the fundamental ways in which you re-train yourself to use your body the way it should be.
Even as you progress in your skills, how well you can plank continues to play a rather important role. Because your skill in planking keeps improving in subtle and invisible ways. Let me explain.
The plank is an expression of linkage. From head to toe, your muscles and joints link with each other to create absolutely no weak links in the chain.
The top of the squat is a plank with a load on you. The top of the swing is a plank with a bell pulling you away. The deadlift is a moving plank.
How well you can create and maintain this linkage determines how well you learn to move and express your body.
The plank is also about creating tension. How much can you tense all the muscles in your body? Our muscles are already a bit tense, called muscle tone. If they were fully off, we would collapse into a bag of bones. Squeeze your fists - you just increased the muscle tone around your fist and forearm.
Thus, the plank allows you to get better at linkage and tension.
The heavier loads you need to lift, the faster you need to run, or the higher levels of skill you seek in your domain, these two fundamentals play a huge role.
And you can constantly keep working on them via your plank and its progressions.
Upping the Intensity
The mind needs to get better at talking with the body. The signals to tighten up and move in a certain fashion comes from there. That's why, when you start off, you feel ungainly but slowly, as neuromuscular coordination improves, you start to lift more, look better and all that.
One of the simple ways we improve our skills is by increasing the intensity of the exercise. Simply put, if you add more weight to your squat, you will automatically have to create more tension and better linkage. Or you fail.
Many exercises use leverage to up the intensity of the exercise as well. They all work. The idea is to get to improving our skills. And intensity teaches this like no other.
Caveat
Most of you rush to lift more weights or run faster or run longer. Yes, while that's what I said about upping the intensity, you do this only on a firm foundation. And you never neglect the fundamentals.
I've done this. Rushed to lift more load coz it is a rush. It is fun.
You can learn from my mistakes or make your own and then learn from them.
Do not be in a rush to up the intensity.
My best recent plank
While I plank as part of my warmup in almost every training session, there is an upper limit on how much tension I am able to create neurologically. This is simply a matter of me training my mind.
It is a skill - the skill of tension and relaxation. The higher up the athlete chain you go, the better they are at this. Why are some people able to lift crazy weights - not just their training etiquette and all that but they've worked on the skill to tense their muscles more. And if you can do this without props i.e. if you can create as much tension to lift 20 kilos as you create when you lift 75 kilos, you are on to something. That's a great skill.
Our content team does some amazing work - check them out over here. Recently, they were working and I got to goof around with them. It ended up with Coach Sudeep, all 75 kilos of him, sitting on me while I planked.
The linkage and tension I automatically generated was a new level that I have not done in my planks or weighted movements. He first sat with his legs on the floor and slowly transitioned to putting his full weight on me. And my body automatically started creating more tension and linkage. There were some gaps that I did not know existed that were tightened up. For example, how much I could pull up my quads and tense them, as well as how much I could drive my heels down - the intensity made me reach a higher level.
Don't do this at home
Which, of course, you are gonna.
The learning from something like this, or squatting a crazy load, is to bring it back into the other parts of your training. My mind and body accessed this and I need to keep working at accessing this. Now that it knows to generate this much tension and linkage, if I can learn to do it without Sudeep sitting on me, that's a gargantuan software upgrade.
Remember, the hardware's already there. We chip away at getting it better. But the software is something we tend to neglect, and that's what this 10-second plank helped me with.
Now that I know what's possible and more importantly, my body has felt it, I can work on re-create it.
If there's one simple point to this story, it is this. Learn to lift your light weights as if they were heavy. That's how your heavy weights become light.
Safety
Don't do this at home. Except that's an obvious signal for you to do it immediately. Please stay sensible. I have had 12+ years of training experience and I can press half my body weight.
Do not start off with someone heavier than you.
Do not have them jump or stand on you.
Have them sit with their feet on the floor. And slowly put more weight on you.
Play around with it. Be sensible.
Thanks for reading. I’d truly appreciate it if you can share ONE post with ONE friend.
March 13, 2022