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As some of you are aware, last week I accomplished a long-time weightlifting goal of mine. I muscled my way into the Millennium Club, putting up a combined deadlift, squat, and bench max exceeding 1,000lb. Don’t worry though, this piece isn’t meant to elucidate the nuances of meathead bro culture and where this accomplishment sits in its pantheon.
Achieving this milestone provided a nice respite to ponder my athletic journey, and I’m writing this as a structured self-examination of what I’ve gathered along the way.
My learnings are comprised of four main ideas:
Time to Improvement & Delayed Gratification
Persistence & Metadiscipline
Maintenance & Insurance
Asking for Help
Time to Improvement & Delayed Gratification
The arc of self improvement is long and deceptive. Social media sells us smoke and mirrors of “insane 6 week transformations!” and myriad “simple hacks for six packs!”, each promising a cheaper, simpler, and lower effort way to obtain our desires. These are lies propagated by charlatans trying to steal your money or leech your attention. There is but one path to results: long periods of sustained work.
Most people systematically underestimate how long it takes to see positive improvements, especially in arenas of driving physical change (bulking/cutting, running faster, etc.). I’ve learned this time and again with virtually any body part I’ve targeted for improvement. You begin by integrating a few specific exercises into your routine, and you see nothing. Then you continue to do them for a month, and continue to see nothing. It isn’t until you’ve almost forgotten why you’re even doing that one weird lift in the first place that, some months later, results begin to emerge. It’s a real life Marshmallow Test.
For those of you that slept through Psych 101, let’s unpack the famous Stanford Marshmallow Test. Back in the 60’s, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel conducted a study on delayed gratification. The oversimplified premise is that a child would be given the option between an immediate marshmallow or two marshmallows if they waited some period of time (15 minutes or so). The results were then tallied, and the differences in consumption were chalked up to a child’s propensity for delayed gratification. Simple enough.
It wasn’t until the subjects were reexamined later that the study gained the fame it has garnered today. When similar experiments were run longitudinally (on both that initial Stanford group as well as other versions of the experiment), the individuals that showed a propensity for delayed gratification in youth tended to be more successful later in life on a wide range of metrics spanning from SAT scores to incomes.
The correlations are remarkable, even when considering the litany of caveats and qualifiers one must consider with such experiments (correlation <> causation, reproducibility, etc.), and speak to the importance of long-term thinking.
My experience in the weightroom has been a (nearly) decade long practice of delayed gratification. For myself and others I’ve coached, the addictive nature of working out rarely becomes apparent until the results begin to emerge some six to eight months later. It has served as a microcosmic reminder for myself that life, goals, and careers are decade long marathons with the largest rewards accruing to those that can wait. An understated strategic advantage in life is simply a longer timeline than your competitors:
But joining the Millennium Club required more than a cursory understanding of delayed gratification. It required long periods of hard work, and a level of discipline forged by persistence.
Persistence & Metadiscipline
I’ve started reframing my conceptualization of discipline. While there do exist such exceptional individuals that can impose extraordinary levels of discipline upon themselves at the drop of a hat (see: my old roommate going from omnivore to vegan, cold turkey), I am not one of them. Few of us are.
Persistence
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour.”
My personal framework for discipline is that it is forged in the fires of dogged persistence. Each time I’ve had a friend come to me asking about getting into weightlifting or better shape, I tell them the same thing:
“Create a habit of persistence. The biggest challenge is getting yourself to the gym. I don’t want to go every day. But I know that if I can get myself to the door, I’ve usually won. It’s fine if you go to the gym and run on the treadmill for 30 seconds or lift one light weight and leave, as long as you showed up. And more often than not, if you can get yourself in the door and on the floor, you’ll do more than your unmotivated self expected. Just get yourself to the door, and the habit can emerge.”
Discipline is a collection of habits, nurtured by tiny decisions repeated over and over and over again. It is challenging to be both disciplined and motivated day in and day out, but to be persistent is possible for all of us. Through persistence, one can begin to build up the habits and momentum that will carry you to the level of ‘discipline’ that many people hold so lofty.
Metadiscipline
“When Antonio Pigafetta, the assistant to Magellan on his trip around the world, reflected on his boss’s greatest and most admirable skill, what do you think he said? It had nothing to do with sailing. The secret to his success, Pigafetta said, was Magellan’s ability to endure hunger better than the other men.
There are far more failures in the world due to a collapse of will than there will ever be from objectively conclusive external events.” - Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way
Willpower is a fickle beast. At 6AM in my nice, warm bed, there is no willpower to brave the cold morning. When I pass the cookies in the pantry, I can hold myself back the first or second time, but after an exhausting day I’m going to devour them.
My ability to circumnavigate these little daily landmines has become defined by what I’ve been calling metadiscipline. I understand that keeping my drive elevated 24/7/365 is impossible. So, it’s much easier to avoid disappointing outcomes when the temptations aren’t an option.
The simplest example from my own journey comes from diet. The unfortunate reality of my appetite is that when there is a sleeve of Thin Mints in the pantry, I’m going to inhale them. That’s just the fact of the matter. So, what’s the easiest way to not eat Thin Mints when my willpower is depleted after a long day of work? If they simply aren’t an option. It’s vastly easier to make the decision once a week to buy the correct groceries than to undergo a daily knife fight with my willpower (or the lack thereof).
It’s about optimizing choke points in your life to smooth the path to your goals. But it’s challenging to be persistent as well as metadisciplined if you can’t remain in the arena in the first place..
Maintenance & Insurance
“Take care of your teeth. They’re the only ones you got.” - Papa Lemmons
Lebron James and Roger Federer are a couple of the greatest athletes of all time. They have defined their respective sports and conquered the trappings of father time in ways that previous generations of athletes could scarcely have dreamed, both maintaining their seats on the throne well into their late 30’s/early 40’s. One of their uniquely shared characteristics is having had an uncanny ability to remain healthy, despite their insane playing schedules. Even at their advanced ages, they both continue(d) to make mockeries of athletes half their age. This kind of consistency is only possible through a maniacal focus on maintenance and insurance. Lebron himself reportedly invests over $1.5M per year on his body.
At their levels and ages, a major injury could easily have been the end of a career. Unfortunately, this is also true for us peasants as well (especially for the early thirties contingent of my readership). I adamantly believe that the better part of my physique and my ability to accomplish my 1,000lb goal are due to my stubborn focus on both maintenance and what I’ve called ‘cheap insurance’. Persistence is only valuable to the extent that you can stay in the game.
In Investing (in Life) Quotes, I discussed avoiding ‘blow up risk’ within the context of financial markets and careers. It’s much the same that the daily risk when entering a gym is relatively low, but that the proportional, ‘fat tail’ risks of large lifts like squat or deadlift performed incorrectly are significant. Although minor strains and sprains always have some probability, the outsized risk of major blowouts to muscle groups like the lower back or shoulders makes it utterly imperative that any diligent weightlifter is laser focused on reducing the chances of such occurrences.
This is where I credit the value of ‘cheap insurance’. There are a number of lifts that I detest, but which I know help to keep knees/shoulders/backs healthy. It is such a small price to pay (5-minutes of annoyance) for some amount of insurance against catastrophic outcomes (blown out body parts and multi-year recoveries).
But there are still the nagling little injuries that also add up- a tender shoulder here, a tweaked neck there. These experiences have taught me precisely how invaluable basic maintenance and careful recovery are. Icing minor injuries, rehabbing strained shoulders, adopting ridiculous hip flexor stretches, they all come with the territory. These little ‘blocking and tackling’ exercises serve to test my patience with their daily requirements, but the payoff of these rituals is huge for my quality of life in the long term. Your body, like a car, requires some amount of basic maintenance that will do wonders for its longevity if only you put in the effort (see: my 2004 Toyota Camry- she’s still tickin’!).
When thinking about my body, I want to be in the best shape I can for as long as I can. If I’m fortunate enough to have kids one day, I want to be capable of picking them up and playing with them. In order to do this, a healthy muscle carriage (body) is a chief requirement. Hence, a steady maintenance regime.
But we don’t always have the knowledge required to properly assess our physical shortcomings. Sometimes, proper maintenance requires asking for a little help.
Asking for Help
Asking for help is intimidating, especially in a gym. It’s hard enough to admit our ignorance in everyday life, but a couple major factors really compound this problem in a weight room:
Those with the knowledge you desire typically look the most intimidating- monstrous hulk people clanging weights around.
As if their gargantuan stature weren’t off putting enough, many of the most serious gym rats tap into my favorite well for fueling their intensity: channeling vast amounts of self hatred. This results in a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘resting bitch face’ wherein your laser focused meathead friends typically look like they’re repping it out in a murderous rage.
These combined factors create a misperception that most people in the gym are standoffish, desiring to be unbothered as they watch their own pump in the mirror. As I’ve come to learn, this is generally far from the truth.
The irony is that the most serious gym goers (the meathead titans and muscle mommies pumping iron) are often the most eager to share their wealth of knowledge and lift up newcomers. As with most pursuits, the experts in the field have devoted massive amounts of time and effort into achieving their level of mastery. Consequently, they are extremely eager to share the source of their passion and pass on the little nuggets they’ve gained along the way. I think this is one of the saddest parts about gym New Years Resolutioners (as annoying as they are): many of them would get much farther if they knew how welcoming the majority of hardcore gym-goers are, and found the courage to ask for a little help along the way.
But this nugget isn’t gym exclusive. The times I’ve plucked up the courage to cold call people or reach out to industry experts, more often than not they are eager to talk about their area of expertise. The paragons at the top of most fields ascended to their position through an unparalleled love of the game. With that, they are usually flattered and excited to share the joys they hold dear.
Be persistent and be kind. You gotta do the reps.
- W