Friday, February 20, 2015
Orthorexia
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/health/orthorexia/
"Orthorexia" is a relatively new term that has gained quite a bit of popularity over the last couple of years. It is used to describe an eating disorder in which someone obsesses over eating "healthy" or "clean" and ends up actually harming themselves and being unhealthy through that obsession. Being a vegan, this is an important topic to me, but not for the reason that most might think.
First off: is orthorexia real? YES. I can say from personal experience and from observing other people that I know personally that it is a very real problem and can have immense negative impact on a person's physical and mental health. The term is not meant as a label for someone who avoids fast food and preservatives; it is meant to label someone who goes so far out of their way to eat or avoid various foods that they end up being malnourished. These people very often spend ridiculous amounts of money on supplements and "superfoods," and don't eat any of the common high-calorie staples like rice, beans, meat, etc. The obvious problem with a diet like this is that eating "superfoods" and supplements almost exclusively will lead to severe calorie restriction. You can only eat so many goji berries in a day, and they aren't exactly calorie-heavy. They're also expensive as fuck. Obviously, you need to get enough of certain substances through your diet, such as vitamins and minerals. But just as importantly, you need plenty of CALORIES. People obsess so much over antioxidants, phytonutrients, and whatever else people are coming up with lately, that they completely ignore the basics. Let's play devil's advocate and say that you need to get tons of antioxidants in order to maintain optimal health. You have two choices.
1. You can eat goji berries or some other "superfood" that is low in calories and burns a hole in your wallet, or
2. you can eat lots of cheap, calorie-heavy plant foods you can find at any grocery store that also have antioxidants, but not as many, like bananas and rice.
If you spent the same amount of money on bananas and rice as you would have on goji berries, you would have a shitload of calories and carbs to get through AND get plenty of those precious antioxidants. There aren't as many in each banana as there are in each goji berry, but because you're able to eat way more, you're getting a similar amount overall. There shouldn't even be a fucking discussion over which choice is better. What's even worse is when gurus tell people they need to something that doesn't even exist in food, so they have to take a supplement for it that the guru happens to sell. If someone is telling you that some weird substance you've never heard of and would have to go unreasonably out of your way to consume through actual food is crucial to human health, they are very likely full of shit. If they sell the substance in question, they are definitely full of shit.
Cleanse diets are popular among orthorexics. They make some concoction out of cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and whatever else they were told to use, and that's all they consume for days, even weeks at a time. This is absolutely retarded. There is no need for "cleanse" diets. You need to eat a sustainable diet that provides you with the nutrition you need on a daily basis. I don't care who you are or what exactly you're putting in your disgusting smoothie every morning; starving yourself is not "cleansing" or "de-toxing" anything.
I'm going to get this out of the way now. If I had to choose between some ridiculous calorie-restricted "superfood" diet or a high-calorie, high-carb diet including animal products, I would eat the animal products without thinking twice. I say this as someone who ate a standard diet including animal products until I was 17, then a vegetarian diet until 18 when I became vegan. I spent a couple of years as a vegan trying to stick to "superfoods" and all that crap. It simply doesn't work. You will never find an orthorexic who is actually healthy, and DEFINITELY won't find one who is fit. There's no fucking way you can eat like that, exercise regularly, and not quickly end up looking like a prisoner of war with serious long-term health problems.
The best example of this crap: David Wolfe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnhr-1V7MiI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQgrOJu2EVc
This idiot is clearly the most obvious and silly example of the problem, but the other gurus out there aren't any better at all. They all claim to have supplements that are absolutely necessary for optimal health and longevity, which is always pure speculation that can't be backed up by a shred of data. They all claim that they know the ideal human diet, even though they do not have advanced degrees in any subject related to nutrition, and you have to buy their book to read about it. They are all unfit. They are all manipulative, lying douchebags who play the spirituality card to prey on wealthy idiots and make thousands of dollars while making those idiots unhealthy. Many of them also play the persecution card to explain why their ideas are not supported in any way by nutritional science of biochemistry and that "they" don't want you to know the "truth" about diet and health. This problem is made far worse by people who follow them and give them huge amounts of free publicity trying to convince others to try their diets/supplements.
Veganism has come a long way in the 9 years since I decided to stick to the diet. It was once considered extremely dangerous and unhealthy, but over time the data has pointed in the exact opposite direction. Orthorexia is the second-worst thing to ever happen to the vegan community (PETA has a distant lead for first). If you want to starve yourself and obsess over imaginary nutrients that a guru told you about, go ahead. But other vegans that actually want to be healthy and fit don't have time for your orthorexic calorie-restriction bullshit so FUCK OFF.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Bulking as a Vegan, part 2
In part 1 of this blog, I discussed the changes in my eating habits that had to take place to gain muscle on a vegan diet. Part 2 will focus on the training program I used. Before we go any further, I feel the need to explain something to the novices who might read this.
There are definitely people out there who trained differently than I do, and saw good progress. I'm not saying this is the only way to go, but I am saying that this is effective for anyone. There are other training methods that work for certain people who are either genetic outliers or using performance-enhancing drugs, but those methods won't work nearly as well for natural lifters who aren't freaks. Just like my previous post, if you are on steroids none of what I say here really applies to you. Also, this is written with novices in mind. Programming for a novice is completely different from programming for an intermediate or advanced lifter; the programs will not look even remotely similar. DO NOT try to jump straight into some ridiculously high-volume 6-days-per-week split you found on some bodybuilding forum. The only people that notably benefit from programs like that are guys who have either been lifting for years, or are on steroids. You'll make some progress, but not nearly as much as you would following a novice program. It's simply not appropriate for a novice. I'll explain why when we get into the details of the programs I've used.
I want to make sure whoever is reading this understands something:
If you follow a good weight training program and eat at a calorie surplus, you can expect to gain about a pound of muscle per week. Any weight you gain in addition to that is going to be pretty much all fat. Yes, it is slow. But there are no healthy shortcuts.
So first, we need to understand what we're trying to achieve, and the most efficient way to achieve it. If your goal is to get bigger and stronger, pretty much all of the good novice programs you find will have some important similarities:
1. A focus, almost exclusively, on compound movements. A compound movement is one that involves movement of multiple joints at the same time. If a program doesn't include squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses, chin-ups, etc., it's probably not worthwhile. A bit of isolation (direct arm work, ab work, etc.) is fine, but shouldn't be the focus. Nobody gets really big just doing isolation. If you do some curls and tricep extensions in addition to compounds, you are going to grow. If all you do is curls and tricep extensions, you probably won't, and if you do the progress will be way slower than it should and you'll look pretty weird with big arms and not much else.
2. 3 or 4 workouts per week, with each muscle group being worked around twice per week. Novices can recover from workouts quickly, and novice programs take advantage of that. Whatever compound movements are included in a program will probably be done every other workout, which means every 3 or 4 days. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have an "A" workout and a "B" workout that you alternate between over and over. No, you can't stick to this forever, because you'll eventually need to give each muscle group more rest between workouts. That's why advanced lifters work out more often with more isolation; they're only working each muscle once per week with more volume rather than every 3 or 4 days in order to allow it to recover.
3. Moderate volume. Programs that call for a bajillion sets of 12 on each movement are inappropriate for novices, especially if strength training is the goal. This ties into the previous point. Novices benefit from training muscle groups frequently with moderate volume because it's the easiest way to make progress, especially when it comes to strength. Advanced lifters only do higher volume and lower frequency workouts because they HAVE to, not because they want to. Their progress is slow. Yours doesn't have to be in the early going, so milk your noob gains as much as possible while you can.
4. Linear Progression. Novices can increase the weight they're using or the amount of repetition they're doing in each movement very quickly. You should be able to add weight or a repetition to an exercise every day you do it in the early stages of your training. If you're not progressing one way or the other, you will not grow. Advanced lifters need to progress on either periodization or linearly on a weekly, sometimes even monthly, basis, because their progress is going to be slower. Again, milk your noob gains. Try your best to make daily progress. If you have microplates available to you (1 or 1.25 pounds), those are great for upper body lifts like the bench press and overhead press. They'll allow you to make small progress every single day you train without having to add 5 pounds at a time, which will become very difficult very quickly. For squats and deadlifts, you should be able to add 5 pounds at a time pretty easily for a while.
If a program fulfills those 4 requirements, it's probably fine. I did Starting Strength for the first 3 months, then switched to Greyskull, which I'm still doing for now. After a few more months, I'll probably need to switch to an intermediate program, and it's going to be one of Jim Wendler's 5/3/1 variants called Boring But Big.
Another important thing to keep in mind when trying to gain weight is cardio. No, doing a moderate amount of cardio is not going to instantly kill your progress and make you look like you have an eating disorder. But you do need to keep it within reason. If you're running several miles at a time, several times per week, it will affect your progress. But doing cardio in the right amount on your days off from lifting will actually help you; the better your cardio is, the better your blood flow is. Better blood flow and good food = more nutrient-rich blood getting to your muscles to help them recover. You just need to make sure that you're taking in enough calories to still be at a surplus considering how many you burn doing cardio. Just like I said in my previous post about diet, don't guess; count everything. Try to use a calorie calculator that tells you how much you're burning in your cardio sessions, and a bulking calculator that tells you how many calories you need at your weight to be at a surplus.
The last, but not any less important, thing I want to stress is this: once you pick a program, stick to it as written. Seriously, don't mess with it. If you change anything, you are no longer doing the program and only have yourself to blame when your progress is not nearly as good as it should have been. Guys like Mark Rippetoe and Jim Wendler have decades of experience in weight training. You do not know better than them, so stop fucking with their programs.
I hope this has been helpful to whoever took the time to read both posts. Good luck.
There are definitely people out there who trained differently than I do, and saw good progress. I'm not saying this is the only way to go, but I am saying that this is effective for anyone. There are other training methods that work for certain people who are either genetic outliers or using performance-enhancing drugs, but those methods won't work nearly as well for natural lifters who aren't freaks. Just like my previous post, if you are on steroids none of what I say here really applies to you. Also, this is written with novices in mind. Programming for a novice is completely different from programming for an intermediate or advanced lifter; the programs will not look even remotely similar. DO NOT try to jump straight into some ridiculously high-volume 6-days-per-week split you found on some bodybuilding forum. The only people that notably benefit from programs like that are guys who have either been lifting for years, or are on steroids. You'll make some progress, but not nearly as much as you would following a novice program. It's simply not appropriate for a novice. I'll explain why when we get into the details of the programs I've used.
I want to make sure whoever is reading this understands something:
If you follow a good weight training program and eat at a calorie surplus, you can expect to gain about a pound of muscle per week. Any weight you gain in addition to that is going to be pretty much all fat. Yes, it is slow. But there are no healthy shortcuts.
So first, we need to understand what we're trying to achieve, and the most efficient way to achieve it. If your goal is to get bigger and stronger, pretty much all of the good novice programs you find will have some important similarities:
1. A focus, almost exclusively, on compound movements. A compound movement is one that involves movement of multiple joints at the same time. If a program doesn't include squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses, chin-ups, etc., it's probably not worthwhile. A bit of isolation (direct arm work, ab work, etc.) is fine, but shouldn't be the focus. Nobody gets really big just doing isolation. If you do some curls and tricep extensions in addition to compounds, you are going to grow. If all you do is curls and tricep extensions, you probably won't, and if you do the progress will be way slower than it should and you'll look pretty weird with big arms and not much else.
2. 3 or 4 workouts per week, with each muscle group being worked around twice per week. Novices can recover from workouts quickly, and novice programs take advantage of that. Whatever compound movements are included in a program will probably be done every other workout, which means every 3 or 4 days. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have an "A" workout and a "B" workout that you alternate between over and over. No, you can't stick to this forever, because you'll eventually need to give each muscle group more rest between workouts. That's why advanced lifters work out more often with more isolation; they're only working each muscle once per week with more volume rather than every 3 or 4 days in order to allow it to recover.
3. Moderate volume. Programs that call for a bajillion sets of 12 on each movement are inappropriate for novices, especially if strength training is the goal. This ties into the previous point. Novices benefit from training muscle groups frequently with moderate volume because it's the easiest way to make progress, especially when it comes to strength. Advanced lifters only do higher volume and lower frequency workouts because they HAVE to, not because they want to. Their progress is slow. Yours doesn't have to be in the early going, so milk your noob gains as much as possible while you can.
4. Linear Progression. Novices can increase the weight they're using or the amount of repetition they're doing in each movement very quickly. You should be able to add weight or a repetition to an exercise every day you do it in the early stages of your training. If you're not progressing one way or the other, you will not grow. Advanced lifters need to progress on either periodization or linearly on a weekly, sometimes even monthly, basis, because their progress is going to be slower. Again, milk your noob gains. Try your best to make daily progress. If you have microplates available to you (1 or 1.25 pounds), those are great for upper body lifts like the bench press and overhead press. They'll allow you to make small progress every single day you train without having to add 5 pounds at a time, which will become very difficult very quickly. For squats and deadlifts, you should be able to add 5 pounds at a time pretty easily for a while.
If a program fulfills those 4 requirements, it's probably fine. I did Starting Strength for the first 3 months, then switched to Greyskull, which I'm still doing for now. After a few more months, I'll probably need to switch to an intermediate program, and it's going to be one of Jim Wendler's 5/3/1 variants called Boring But Big.
Another important thing to keep in mind when trying to gain weight is cardio. No, doing a moderate amount of cardio is not going to instantly kill your progress and make you look like you have an eating disorder. But you do need to keep it within reason. If you're running several miles at a time, several times per week, it will affect your progress. But doing cardio in the right amount on your days off from lifting will actually help you; the better your cardio is, the better your blood flow is. Better blood flow and good food = more nutrient-rich blood getting to your muscles to help them recover. You just need to make sure that you're taking in enough calories to still be at a surplus considering how many you burn doing cardio. Just like I said in my previous post about diet, don't guess; count everything. Try to use a calorie calculator that tells you how much you're burning in your cardio sessions, and a bulking calculator that tells you how many calories you need at your weight to be at a surplus.
The last, but not any less important, thing I want to stress is this: once you pick a program, stick to it as written. Seriously, don't mess with it. If you change anything, you are no longer doing the program and only have yourself to blame when your progress is not nearly as good as it should have been. Guys like Mark Rippetoe and Jim Wendler have decades of experience in weight training. You do not know better than them, so stop fucking with their programs.
I hope this has been helpful to whoever took the time to read both posts. Good luck.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Bulking as a Vegan, part 1
About 6 months ago, I finally got back to weight training on a regular basis after being away from it for some time. This time, my goal wasn't just to get stronger for sport performance, but to get bigger as well. I've been really skinny my entire life, and I just felt like getting bigger and wanted to see if I could effectively build a noticeable amount of muscle as a vegan who's naturally so lean. As of today, I've gained 30 pounds while eating 4000 calories per day. A small of amount of that is definitely fat, but most of it is muscle. No drugs, no supplements (with the exception of b12, which I strongly suggest all vegans take), no bullshit. A lot of people, especially fellow vegans, have asked a lot of questions about how my eating habits had to change and what kind of weight training program I follow. This first post will focus on the diet aspect of bulking, and the second will focus on the training.
Note: I'm writing this with natural lifters like myself in mind. If you're taking steroids, none of this really applies to you. You can get away with eating like crap and training sub-optimally while still gaining muscle. If you feel like getting on the gear, go ahead. But there WILL be long-term effects on your health as a result. Also, enjoy your uncontrollable acne and testicular atrophy.
First off, in order to gain weight (muscle and/or fat. It's impossible to gain significant muscle without putting on a little bit of fat unless you're using), you need to eat at a caloric surplus. If the calories you take in are more than the calories you burn, you WILL gain either muscle or fat depending on how active you are and what kind of exercise you're engaging in. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know what they're talking about, and probably has a PhD in bro science. Different people will have different caloric needs because of their size, body type etc. But it all comes down to calories in versus calories out. Of course, some people may have conditions that make it much harder to either gain or lose weight (thyroid conditions, etc.). But they are the exception to the rule. The average healthy person can manipulate their weight as they desire. Notice that I said you must eat at a calorie surplus, not a protein surplus. I can't begin to estimate how many times I've spoken to guys trying to bulk who basically function solely on protein shakes/bars and expect to gain weight. It doesn't work that way. You can have an IV pumping whey protein into your bloodstream all day, but if you are not eating actual food that contains significant amounts of calories and other nutrients, you will not get bigger. Macronutrients are important for sure, but you can't just take in isolated protein, carbs or fats and expect to gain weight or be healthy. Taking protein powders all day is like eating table sugar straight-up by itself all day; it just doesn't make sense. This is the part where people come out of the woodwork with anecdotal bullshit about their friend who was at a caloric deficit, just drank protein shakes all day, and got totally fuckin jacked brah, etc. I don't doubt that their friend looked good, but I also don't doubt that they started out fat rather than skinny. Odds are that they built very little muscle; they simply lost the fat because they were eating at a caloric deficit and their muscularity became more visible. They also probably took a ton of supplements including a pre-workout that allowed them to exercise without taking in lots of carbs and fats to fuel them. In the long run, they will lose the muscle if they're not eating frequent large meals of actual food. I'm not saying a protein powder mixed into your morning smoothie won't help at all, but supplements cannot be focused on nearly as much as real, solid food. It's right there in the name; those products are meant to SUPPLEMENT your diet. You don't need a protein powder, but if you feel like it as a convenience, just keep it within reason. One more thing about eating enought calories: estimating is not good enough. You need to measure and count everything you eat, and actually know how many calories you are taking in, rather than roughly estimating. Skinny guys will eat less than they think they are unless they strictly count their calories, guaranteed.
The next thing that must be considered is spacing out your calories throughout the day. You can't eat the typical 3 meals per day while bulking. It would require you to eat incredibly massive meals, and you would gain more fat than you should. 5 or 6 meals per day will probably be necessary to meet your calorie needs while eating reasonably sized meals. I know it's probably inconvenient, but it's what has to be done. So what to eat for those 6 meals every day?
My staple calorie-heavy foods: rice, quinoa, pasta, oatmeal, potatoes, ramen (organic ramen without the MSG, preservatives, and whatever other shit is usually in the common brands), bread, nuts/nut butters.
Other foods that aren't as calorie-heavy, but good for you: fruit, vegetables (especially leafy greens)
Notice something about my staples? With the exception of nuts and vegetables, everything I eat is high in carbohydrates. I get maybe 400 calories per day from nuts and vegetables combined, and the other 3600 or so mainly from various sources of carbs. But aren't carbs are the enemy, and you'll get fat!? WRONG. Fact: every muscle fiber in the human body is fueled by sugar. If there is no sugar to be used, the body then turns to other substances that it has available, and that process is wasteful and inefficient. If you have celiac disease, you can still eat several of the foods I mentioned; they're gluten-free. If carbs made you fat, the majority of vegans would be fat. Why aren't they?
My macro ratios are something like this:
70% carbs
15% fats
15% protein
My rant about low-carb diets:
I 100% guarantee that anyone who eats low-carb either doesn't work out, works out lightly while eating few calories and is nowhere near any decent level of fitness (there is a difference between being thin and being fit), or is fit and operates on stimulants, usually caffeine. Why are carbs better than stimulants? Because you can use them as a regular fuel source without eventually getting adrenal exhaustion. You need carbs, and plenty of them. The idea that sugar should be considered a drug that's just as bad for you as cocaine is some of the most euphoric fedora-tipping bullshit I've ever heard in my life.
All of the low-carb gurus:
1. do not have a PhD in nutritional science, so why the fuck would you listen to a word they say about diet when there are more qualified individuals to listen to?
2. have no significant data to support their claims
3. are the vocal minority in the scientific community. Everyone truly qualified to give their opinion on diet unanimously disagrees with them.
4. are not fit. There are a couple of exceptions, but the vast majority of them are out of shape. The ones who are fit are not actually eating the diet they claim. Atkins, the original king of low-carb, had a history of hypertension and heart disease, and was fat as fuck when he died.
5. ARE FUCKING HYPOCRITES. They go on and on about how low-carb is natural. "Cavemen ate low-carb! Grains are poison! Processed foods of any kind are bad for you! .....but buy our whey protein and other assorted supplements, which are obviously processed but they're different because we said so." Follow the money.
By the way, the best available evidence shows that ancient humans ate tiger nuts (which contain lots of STARCH) as a main calorie source. http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/10/real-caveman-diet-research-shows-ancient-man-feasted-mainly-on-tiger-nuts/ (fuck Fox news, but it was the first result of a google search)
Now that I got that rant out of the way.....that's pretty much it for diet. Next, I'll go into some detail about the how's and why's of the weight training program I use.
Note: I'm writing this with natural lifters like myself in mind. If you're taking steroids, none of this really applies to you. You can get away with eating like crap and training sub-optimally while still gaining muscle. If you feel like getting on the gear, go ahead. But there WILL be long-term effects on your health as a result. Also, enjoy your uncontrollable acne and testicular atrophy.
First off, in order to gain weight (muscle and/or fat. It's impossible to gain significant muscle without putting on a little bit of fat unless you're using), you need to eat at a caloric surplus. If the calories you take in are more than the calories you burn, you WILL gain either muscle or fat depending on how active you are and what kind of exercise you're engaging in. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know what they're talking about, and probably has a PhD in bro science. Different people will have different caloric needs because of their size, body type etc. But it all comes down to calories in versus calories out. Of course, some people may have conditions that make it much harder to either gain or lose weight (thyroid conditions, etc.). But they are the exception to the rule. The average healthy person can manipulate their weight as they desire. Notice that I said you must eat at a calorie surplus, not a protein surplus. I can't begin to estimate how many times I've spoken to guys trying to bulk who basically function solely on protein shakes/bars and expect to gain weight. It doesn't work that way. You can have an IV pumping whey protein into your bloodstream all day, but if you are not eating actual food that contains significant amounts of calories and other nutrients, you will not get bigger. Macronutrients are important for sure, but you can't just take in isolated protein, carbs or fats and expect to gain weight or be healthy. Taking protein powders all day is like eating table sugar straight-up by itself all day; it just doesn't make sense. This is the part where people come out of the woodwork with anecdotal bullshit about their friend who was at a caloric deficit, just drank protein shakes all day, and got totally fuckin jacked brah, etc. I don't doubt that their friend looked good, but I also don't doubt that they started out fat rather than skinny. Odds are that they built very little muscle; they simply lost the fat because they were eating at a caloric deficit and their muscularity became more visible. They also probably took a ton of supplements including a pre-workout that allowed them to exercise without taking in lots of carbs and fats to fuel them. In the long run, they will lose the muscle if they're not eating frequent large meals of actual food. I'm not saying a protein powder mixed into your morning smoothie won't help at all, but supplements cannot be focused on nearly as much as real, solid food. It's right there in the name; those products are meant to SUPPLEMENT your diet. You don't need a protein powder, but if you feel like it as a convenience, just keep it within reason. One more thing about eating enought calories: estimating is not good enough. You need to measure and count everything you eat, and actually know how many calories you are taking in, rather than roughly estimating. Skinny guys will eat less than they think they are unless they strictly count their calories, guaranteed.
The next thing that must be considered is spacing out your calories throughout the day. You can't eat the typical 3 meals per day while bulking. It would require you to eat incredibly massive meals, and you would gain more fat than you should. 5 or 6 meals per day will probably be necessary to meet your calorie needs while eating reasonably sized meals. I know it's probably inconvenient, but it's what has to be done. So what to eat for those 6 meals every day?
My staple calorie-heavy foods: rice, quinoa, pasta, oatmeal, potatoes, ramen (organic ramen without the MSG, preservatives, and whatever other shit is usually in the common brands), bread, nuts/nut butters.
Other foods that aren't as calorie-heavy, but good for you: fruit, vegetables (especially leafy greens)
Notice something about my staples? With the exception of nuts and vegetables, everything I eat is high in carbohydrates. I get maybe 400 calories per day from nuts and vegetables combined, and the other 3600 or so mainly from various sources of carbs. But aren't carbs are the enemy, and you'll get fat!? WRONG. Fact: every muscle fiber in the human body is fueled by sugar. If there is no sugar to be used, the body then turns to other substances that it has available, and that process is wasteful and inefficient. If you have celiac disease, you can still eat several of the foods I mentioned; they're gluten-free. If carbs made you fat, the majority of vegans would be fat. Why aren't they?
My macro ratios are something like this:
70% carbs
15% fats
15% protein
My rant about low-carb diets:
I 100% guarantee that anyone who eats low-carb either doesn't work out, works out lightly while eating few calories and is nowhere near any decent level of fitness (there is a difference between being thin and being fit), or is fit and operates on stimulants, usually caffeine. Why are carbs better than stimulants? Because you can use them as a regular fuel source without eventually getting adrenal exhaustion. You need carbs, and plenty of them. The idea that sugar should be considered a drug that's just as bad for you as cocaine is some of the most euphoric fedora-tipping bullshit I've ever heard in my life.
All of the low-carb gurus:
1. do not have a PhD in nutritional science, so why the fuck would you listen to a word they say about diet when there are more qualified individuals to listen to?
2. have no significant data to support their claims
3. are the vocal minority in the scientific community. Everyone truly qualified to give their opinion on diet unanimously disagrees with them.
4. are not fit. There are a couple of exceptions, but the vast majority of them are out of shape. The ones who are fit are not actually eating the diet they claim. Atkins, the original king of low-carb, had a history of hypertension and heart disease, and was fat as fuck when he died.
5. ARE FUCKING HYPOCRITES. They go on and on about how low-carb is natural. "Cavemen ate low-carb! Grains are poison! Processed foods of any kind are bad for you! .....but buy our whey protein and other assorted supplements, which are obviously processed but they're different because we said so." Follow the money.
By the way, the best available evidence shows that ancient humans ate tiger nuts (which contain lots of STARCH) as a main calorie source. http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/10/real-caveman-diet-research-shows-ancient-man-feasted-mainly-on-tiger-nuts/ (fuck Fox news, but it was the first result of a google search)
Now that I got that rant out of the way.....that's pretty much it for diet. Next, I'll go into some detail about the how's and why's of the weight training program I use.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
First Order Optimal Strategies: why they're shit, and you're wasting your time
This is my first post on this blog in quite some time. If any subject would rustle my jimmies enough to get me to start writing again, this it it.
Few things are more annoying to me than when people think they have found an amazing "trick" that will allow them to succeed in a particular game, sport, or field of work while having far less knowledge and spending far less time practicing than everyone else. When it comes to games, this way of thinking is extremely common, and often rewarded by the imbalanced casual trash that most people play. It's far less common in sports, but definitely exists in my sport of choice. These strategies are commonly used because the ratio between power and ease of use is skewed; they are more powerful than they should be considering how easy they are to execute. The downside is that since the skill ceiling for them is low, they are purely "tricks" that rely on catching the opponent off guard, and will very rarely work against quality competition. These are usually known as "cheese," but the more technical label for them is "first order optimal strategies." I will provide examples of these and of objectively superior strategies in two subjects that are near and dear to me: gaming, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. But before I get into specific examples, I feel the need to clarify the difference between cheese and unorthodox strategies.
Unorthodox strategies may break what is generally considered a "rule" of good play in a game/sport, but they are not necessarily cheese. Sometimes, there is a high skill ceiling for an unorthodox strategy, and it could possibly work against a higher level of competition than cheese would. With that being said, these strategies still usually fail at the elite level. Cheese strategies often follow the rules, but don't even make it past the bottom tier because the skill ceiling is so low that player skill basically doesn't factor in. They will fail in the hands of experts just as often as they will for novices. The only factor that decides success or failure for cheese is the opponent's familiarity (or lack thereof) with it, and sometimes that isn't even enough. Many strategies often fail against standard play even while totally catching the opponent off guard.
Cheese is present in pretty much any multiplayer game you can think of. The best examples can be found in chess, the most balanced, studied, and competitively played game ever made. The metagame of chess has had hundreds of years to develop, and there are countless strategies, both standard and unorthodox, that have been studied in painful detail. Still, one of the pleasures of chess is that the metagame continues to deepen. On the other side of the coin, there are a few first order optimal strategies available to idiots who think they can watch a couple of Youtube videos and instantly master the game. The most common is the scholar's mate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrUalgPaiPQ
This strategy is the epitome of cheese. It will work pretty often against inexperienced players, but is never seen being used effectively in high-level play. It's very simple and easy to prevent if the black player is familiar with it. White goes for an absurdly early checkmate by forgetting about establishing center control or safely developing pieces. When (not if) the attack fails against a quality opponent, white is behind on development and it is likely that the queen will be very vulnerable. This strategy simply has no depth to it. It is purely a trick, and there is no way to effectively transition from it when the shallow initial attack fails. A good example of a standard opening for white is the Ruy Lopez, also commonly referred to as the Spanish game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41rPFNY_CAY
This is about as standard and solid as it gets. The Ruy Lopez is used all the time at all levels, including by the very best in the world. White can be aggressive, but doesn't go all-in with a shallow early attack.
So what's the problem with using the scholar's mate? None, if you are okay with being bad. But if you would like to use your playing time efficiently and be as good as possible considering how much time you put into the game, a standard opening like the Ruy Lopez is the obvious choice. The scholar's mate will not make you better at chess, no matter how many times you play it. The Ruy Lopez definitely will make you better at chess, not just at that particular opening, because it forces you to play by the accepted "rules" of good chess and therefore will translate to overall improved play.
The "rules" of good play for any competitive game or sport exist for a reason. You WILL NOT find a way to ignore them and excel. If it were possible, someone much smarter than you who spends much more time studying and playing the game would have done it by now. But for the sake of argument, let's say that you truly believe you can change how the game is played entirely. Even if that is the case, you need to thoroughly understand the rules before you can begin to effectively break them. If you go in blind, you are almost guaranteed to accomplish nothing. It would require a potent mix of arrogance and stupidity to think that you are going to undo centuries of metagame development for chess within your lifetime. I am not saying that unorthodox strategies are as bad as cheese, but they're still really, really bad for the most part.
When it comes to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, there can be more of a grey area than in chess. A fight happens in real time, and many variables must be considered (strength, speed, flexibility, circumstances of the fight, etc.). With that being said, there are definitely standard techniques and strategies that have been shown time and time again to work either in a street fight against an untrained opponent or in a match against world-class competition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW_btInPLl4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubdzhri2HQQ
Royce gracie dominated the early UFC tournaments with the same basic positional and submission attacks being used by top-level competitors today. If any doubt existed that the basics could still work in modern Jiu Jitsu or MMA competition against knowledgeable opponents, Kron and Roger Gracie eliminated that doubt. There are different standard styles of guard being played by high-level competitors, which I will go into detail about in a separate post. But nobody, NOT A SINGLE PERSON, has made it to the elite level of MMA or Jiu Jitsu competition using first order optimum strategies. I bet those of you reading this who are familiar with combat sports are trying to find an example to prove me wrong, but you won't find it. There are guys on the second or third tier winning with cheesy or unorthodox moves for sure, but it fails them when they try to make it work against truly elite competition. Many people who rely on cheese rarely compete, if ever, so some may think that a conclusion cannot be reached until more examples are available. But to think that there are people crushing everyone in their school with cheesy bullshit who just don't feel like competing even though they would win is laughable. If cheese could work in high-level competition, at least 1 person would have shown that by now.
First order optimal strategies are shit. Unorthodox strategies are marginally less shitty. You are not special; you are not going to outsmart the whole of a community that obsesses over a particular game or sport and find a way to reinvent the wheel while improving on it. I feel the need to repeat myself, especially for other members of my generation who may read this: YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL. Rather than spending your time and energy being an arrogant douche with a compulsive need to be unique, you could spend your time and energy trying to actually be good.
Few things are more annoying to me than when people think they have found an amazing "trick" that will allow them to succeed in a particular game, sport, or field of work while having far less knowledge and spending far less time practicing than everyone else. When it comes to games, this way of thinking is extremely common, and often rewarded by the imbalanced casual trash that most people play. It's far less common in sports, but definitely exists in my sport of choice. These strategies are commonly used because the ratio between power and ease of use is skewed; they are more powerful than they should be considering how easy they are to execute. The downside is that since the skill ceiling for them is low, they are purely "tricks" that rely on catching the opponent off guard, and will very rarely work against quality competition. These are usually known as "cheese," but the more technical label for them is "first order optimal strategies." I will provide examples of these and of objectively superior strategies in two subjects that are near and dear to me: gaming, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. But before I get into specific examples, I feel the need to clarify the difference between cheese and unorthodox strategies.
Unorthodox strategies may break what is generally considered a "rule" of good play in a game/sport, but they are not necessarily cheese. Sometimes, there is a high skill ceiling for an unorthodox strategy, and it could possibly work against a higher level of competition than cheese would. With that being said, these strategies still usually fail at the elite level. Cheese strategies often follow the rules, but don't even make it past the bottom tier because the skill ceiling is so low that player skill basically doesn't factor in. They will fail in the hands of experts just as often as they will for novices. The only factor that decides success or failure for cheese is the opponent's familiarity (or lack thereof) with it, and sometimes that isn't even enough. Many strategies often fail against standard play even while totally catching the opponent off guard.
Cheese is present in pretty much any multiplayer game you can think of. The best examples can be found in chess, the most balanced, studied, and competitively played game ever made. The metagame of chess has had hundreds of years to develop, and there are countless strategies, both standard and unorthodox, that have been studied in painful detail. Still, one of the pleasures of chess is that the metagame continues to deepen. On the other side of the coin, there are a few first order optimal strategies available to idiots who think they can watch a couple of Youtube videos and instantly master the game. The most common is the scholar's mate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrUalgPaiPQ
This strategy is the epitome of cheese. It will work pretty often against inexperienced players, but is never seen being used effectively in high-level play. It's very simple and easy to prevent if the black player is familiar with it. White goes for an absurdly early checkmate by forgetting about establishing center control or safely developing pieces. When (not if) the attack fails against a quality opponent, white is behind on development and it is likely that the queen will be very vulnerable. This strategy simply has no depth to it. It is purely a trick, and there is no way to effectively transition from it when the shallow initial attack fails. A good example of a standard opening for white is the Ruy Lopez, also commonly referred to as the Spanish game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41rPFNY_CAY
This is about as standard and solid as it gets. The Ruy Lopez is used all the time at all levels, including by the very best in the world. White can be aggressive, but doesn't go all-in with a shallow early attack.
So what's the problem with using the scholar's mate? None, if you are okay with being bad. But if you would like to use your playing time efficiently and be as good as possible considering how much time you put into the game, a standard opening like the Ruy Lopez is the obvious choice. The scholar's mate will not make you better at chess, no matter how many times you play it. The Ruy Lopez definitely will make you better at chess, not just at that particular opening, because it forces you to play by the accepted "rules" of good chess and therefore will translate to overall improved play.
The "rules" of good play for any competitive game or sport exist for a reason. You WILL NOT find a way to ignore them and excel. If it were possible, someone much smarter than you who spends much more time studying and playing the game would have done it by now. But for the sake of argument, let's say that you truly believe you can change how the game is played entirely. Even if that is the case, you need to thoroughly understand the rules before you can begin to effectively break them. If you go in blind, you are almost guaranteed to accomplish nothing. It would require a potent mix of arrogance and stupidity to think that you are going to undo centuries of metagame development for chess within your lifetime. I am not saying that unorthodox strategies are as bad as cheese, but they're still really, really bad for the most part.
When it comes to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, there can be more of a grey area than in chess. A fight happens in real time, and many variables must be considered (strength, speed, flexibility, circumstances of the fight, etc.). With that being said, there are definitely standard techniques and strategies that have been shown time and time again to work either in a street fight against an untrained opponent or in a match against world-class competition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW_btInPLl4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubdzhri2HQQ
Royce gracie dominated the early UFC tournaments with the same basic positional and submission attacks being used by top-level competitors today. If any doubt existed that the basics could still work in modern Jiu Jitsu or MMA competition against knowledgeable opponents, Kron and Roger Gracie eliminated that doubt. There are different standard styles of guard being played by high-level competitors, which I will go into detail about in a separate post. But nobody, NOT A SINGLE PERSON, has made it to the elite level of MMA or Jiu Jitsu competition using first order optimum strategies. I bet those of you reading this who are familiar with combat sports are trying to find an example to prove me wrong, but you won't find it. There are guys on the second or third tier winning with cheesy or unorthodox moves for sure, but it fails them when they try to make it work against truly elite competition. Many people who rely on cheese rarely compete, if ever, so some may think that a conclusion cannot be reached until more examples are available. But to think that there are people crushing everyone in their school with cheesy bullshit who just don't feel like competing even though they would win is laughable. If cheese could work in high-level competition, at least 1 person would have shown that by now.
First order optimal strategies are shit. Unorthodox strategies are marginally less shitty. You are not special; you are not going to outsmart the whole of a community that obsesses over a particular game or sport and find a way to reinvent the wheel while improving on it. I feel the need to repeat myself, especially for other members of my generation who may read this: YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL. Rather than spending your time and energy being an arrogant douche with a compulsive need to be unique, you could spend your time and energy trying to actually be good.
Monday, December 17, 2012
New Years Resolutions
HUR DUR IT'S ALMOST NEW YEARS SO I'M ONLY NOW GOING TO DO SOMETHING I'VE BEEN WANTING TO DO AND I'M SUPER SERIAL ABOUT IT AND WILL STICK WITH IT BECAUSE IT'S A NEW YEARS RESOLUTION.
Fuck that. Arbitrarily waiting until new years to do/change something important in your life is pathetic. If you want to get in better shape, you can go to a gym today. If you want to quit smoking, you can throw out that last pack today. There is literally nothing stopping you besides your own apathy.
I'm sure we will see plenty of resolutionists showing up at Sampa. I guarantee that AT LEAST 80% of them will quit shortly after they begin, either because they will realize just how out of shape they are and won't be willing to put in the time to change it, or because their ego will get in the way and they won't understand or be able to deal with the idea of "tapping out" to their sparring partners on a regular basis while they improve. There will be even more resolutionists at the gym I work out at. I guarantee the vast majority will show up with new exercise pants, running shoes, water bottles, etc., lightly jog on a treadmill for a little while, do some curls, leave, and not want to ever go back because they will be hit with the sudden realization that working out (ACTUALLY working out, you know, when you follow a legitimate program and sweat once in a while) isn't always the most super-fun, pleasant experience in the world. You WILL have days where you have to force yourself into the gym and stick to your fucking program. I love working out, and I still have one of those days once in a while. It happens.
If I suddenly realized that I need to change something in my life, but happened to come to that realization in the middle of February, should I sit on my ass for 11 months so I can start on New Years? No, because that's fuckin stupid.
Do you want to start exercising regularly? Get a gym membership, get your ass under a bar, and start squatting. RIGHT NOW.
Fuck that. Arbitrarily waiting until new years to do/change something important in your life is pathetic. If you want to get in better shape, you can go to a gym today. If you want to quit smoking, you can throw out that last pack today. There is literally nothing stopping you besides your own apathy.
I'm sure we will see plenty of resolutionists showing up at Sampa. I guarantee that AT LEAST 80% of them will quit shortly after they begin, either because they will realize just how out of shape they are and won't be willing to put in the time to change it, or because their ego will get in the way and they won't understand or be able to deal with the idea of "tapping out" to their sparring partners on a regular basis while they improve. There will be even more resolutionists at the gym I work out at. I guarantee the vast majority will show up with new exercise pants, running shoes, water bottles, etc., lightly jog on a treadmill for a little while, do some curls, leave, and not want to ever go back because they will be hit with the sudden realization that working out (ACTUALLY working out, you know, when you follow a legitimate program and sweat once in a while) isn't always the most super-fun, pleasant experience in the world. You WILL have days where you have to force yourself into the gym and stick to your fucking program. I love working out, and I still have one of those days once in a while. It happens.
If I suddenly realized that I need to change something in my life, but happened to come to that realization in the middle of February, should I sit on my ass for 11 months so I can start on New Years? No, because that's fuckin stupid.
Do you want to start exercising regularly? Get a gym membership, get your ass under a bar, and start squatting. RIGHT NOW.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Competitive Starcraft: why it's totally fucking awesome
The final major tournament for Starcraft: Brood War took place recently. This
game has been the top competitive video game for over a decade.
People have made hundreds of thousands of dollars playing it. South
Korea has 2 television stations dedicated to airing professional
matches. Starcraft changed everything as far as how seriously video game
competition can be taken.
There will never again be a competitive video game with such a high skill ceiling. I love Starcraft 2, and I think it has the potential to be more fun and interesting than Brood War after the expansions, but Brood War is by far the more mechanically demanding game. The average actions per minute needed for Starcraft 2 seems to be around 120 at minimum. Starcraft: Brood War required twice that.
What makes a game worthy of competition? What makes someone who is good at a game worthy of making a serious amount of money playing it well? To me, it comes down to three things.
1. The game has to have an extremely high skill ceiling.
2. The game has to allow enough strategic variation for a deep metagame to develop.
3. The game has to be enjoyable to watch, so companies that put on competitions can make money selling tickets, or getting people to pay to watch on television or online.
There aren't many games that fulfill these criteria. There are plenty that fulfill 1 and 2 easily, but fall short with 3. In order to be marketable, it has to be enjoyable for people who don't play it, who basically don't know anything about it. Sports are much easier to market. Basketball is a spectator sport because the skill it takes to play is obvious to anyone who watches it; professional players run extremely fast, jump extremely high, and make incredible shots. You really don't have to be a basketball player to enjoy watching a game. Golf is a spectator sport because it doesn't take a genius to see that hitting a small ball with a club over such long distances and avoiding hazards to get it into a tiny hole requires a tremendous amount of precision. The skill required to play video games competitively is usually only obvious to other players, and in order for a game to be taken seriously and for players to be able to make a living off of competition, it has to appeal to people who don't really know anything about it. I think the skill required to play Starcraft 2 will be obvious to anyone who has even tried to play a single ladder game. But what about those who have never touched a real-time strategy game before? It's basically South Korea's national sport at this point, but whether or not it will catch on like that in the United States remains to be seen.
Seeing people make a living playing a video game that I started playing as a kid and instantly fell in love with is just awesome to me. I remember when I was young and all I had was an NES. I would often think to myself while playing, "man, if there was such a thing as playing video games professionally, that would just be the absolute best." These people are making a living doing exactly what they want to do, just like any professional athlete or musician. Ya, it's nerdy. So what? Anyone who makes fun of people making a living playing a video game is fucking jelly.
For anyone who might read this and want to see what high level Starcraft 2 looks like, here's the conclusion to an MLG series between a high-level Korean player, Bomber, and America's Zerg hero and my favorite player, Idra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaAHU4EFWGQ
There will never again be a competitive video game with such a high skill ceiling. I love Starcraft 2, and I think it has the potential to be more fun and interesting than Brood War after the expansions, but Brood War is by far the more mechanically demanding game. The average actions per minute needed for Starcraft 2 seems to be around 120 at minimum. Starcraft: Brood War required twice that.
What makes a game worthy of competition? What makes someone who is good at a game worthy of making a serious amount of money playing it well? To me, it comes down to three things.
1. The game has to have an extremely high skill ceiling.
2. The game has to allow enough strategic variation for a deep metagame to develop.
3. The game has to be enjoyable to watch, so companies that put on competitions can make money selling tickets, or getting people to pay to watch on television or online.
There aren't many games that fulfill these criteria. There are plenty that fulfill 1 and 2 easily, but fall short with 3. In order to be marketable, it has to be enjoyable for people who don't play it, who basically don't know anything about it. Sports are much easier to market. Basketball is a spectator sport because the skill it takes to play is obvious to anyone who watches it; professional players run extremely fast, jump extremely high, and make incredible shots. You really don't have to be a basketball player to enjoy watching a game. Golf is a spectator sport because it doesn't take a genius to see that hitting a small ball with a club over such long distances and avoiding hazards to get it into a tiny hole requires a tremendous amount of precision. The skill required to play video games competitively is usually only obvious to other players, and in order for a game to be taken seriously and for players to be able to make a living off of competition, it has to appeal to people who don't really know anything about it. I think the skill required to play Starcraft 2 will be obvious to anyone who has even tried to play a single ladder game. But what about those who have never touched a real-time strategy game before? It's basically South Korea's national sport at this point, but whether or not it will catch on like that in the United States remains to be seen.
Seeing people make a living playing a video game that I started playing as a kid and instantly fell in love with is just awesome to me. I remember when I was young and all I had was an NES. I would often think to myself while playing, "man, if there was such a thing as playing video games professionally, that would just be the absolute best." These people are making a living doing exactly what they want to do, just like any professional athlete or musician. Ya, it's nerdy. So what? Anyone who makes fun of people making a living playing a video game is fucking jelly.
For anyone who might read this and want to see what high level Starcraft 2 looks like, here's the conclusion to an MLG series between a high-level Korean player, Bomber, and America's Zerg hero and my favorite player, Idra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaAHU4EFWGQ
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Practice
"Natural talent" is a term thrown around in an attempt to explain why some people excel in their chosen field and others suck. I want to discuss why the "natural talent" explanation for true proficiency in anything is crap, and that if you use a lack of talent as an excuse for being bad at something, you are lying to yourself.
First off, yes, some people just happen to be better at something when starting out than others. They got lucky, and it came easier to them.
Second, before I can go any further I need to discuss what it means to be truly good at something. When I say "good," I don't mean someone picked up a trumpet, learned 3 scales and a couple of easy jazz licks, and played in some mediocre ska band at a couple of bars in front of 30 people, half of whom they knew personally. "Good" is someone who was interested in playing trumpet so they took weekly lessons from a reputable teacher, practiced the exercises given to them every day, listened to professional players regularly to have an idea of what a good tone quality is, and developed a command of the instrument over several years. "Good" is not a three-stripe white belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu that knows some gimmicky inverted guard sweep that he crushes other white belts with because they don't know it, and fails 100% of the time against higher belts because it's a garbage move that he spent all his time on instead of developing the basic mechanics of grappling. "Good" is someone who is a brown or black belt who has been training for several years on a regular basis, and could roll with a blue belt like myself, tell them exactly what he is going to do, and then do it with no possibility of them stopping it because he's just straight up better than them.
No human being on the face of the earth became truly good at something because of natural talent. Everyone hits a talent wall at some point, and once they get past the wall (assuming they have the desire and drive to do so), it is 100% hard work after that. Tiger Woods was talented at golf. He picked it up very quickly at a very young age. Did he become one of the best to ever step up to a tee because of it? Hell no. He became great at it because he learned from experts and practiced his ass off. Marcelo Garcia, one of the best jiu jitsu players of all time, lost his first competition. He eventually developed into a world-class grappler through persistence, constant seeking of knowledge, and ridiculous amounts of time spent on the mat. Talent had absolutely NOTHING to do with it.
There are 3 requirements that need to be met to be on your way to truly being good at something.
1. You need to know what exactly to practice
2. You need to know how to practice it properly, safely, and efficiently
3. You need to practice for the appropriate amount of time on a regular basis
If you meet those requirements, you will eventually become proficient at whatever you are doing. The only way to be sure that you are fulfilling these requirements is to receive instruction from an expert in the field. Other people may have been talented and picked things up more quickly than you at first, but if you persist you WILL become good at it. I can't even begin to remember how many trumpet players my age that I've come across that were better than me at some point, but now either suck or they just quit altogether. Is it because I suddenly developed a natural talent for it, and they lost theirs? No, it's because they got lazy and I didn't. I've been taking weekly lessons and practicing regularly for 12 years. I can comfortably say I'm an above-average player. I'm not completely satisfied, and I will continue to practice and improve, but I am satisfied with the results of 12 years of dedication to the instrument so far. I'm only a blue belt in jiu jitsu, but already the same trend is obvious. Countless numbers of guys that started around the same time as me never got a blue belt, even though they started out better than me because it came a little easier to them. Then they got lazy, and I didn't. I guarantee it will happen from blue to purple. The majority of blue belts will quit, and I will keep training and eventually get a purple belt. I can 100% guarantee that, barring a sever injury that prevents me from training, I will eventually get a black belt, not because I'm amazing at jiu jitsu or naturally athletic, but because I'm not going to get lazy. It will surely take me longer than it has taken others, but I will eventually get there. If you can't honestly tell yourself that you will eventually excel in whatever field you are pursuing, you need to either find a new field that you're more passionate about or change your mindset.
Reality is a bitch. Accepting the fact that someone is better than you at something simply because they worked harder and longer can be a much tougher pill to swallow than hand-waving it away by saying they're more naturally talented than you. But you have a choice to make: you can accept the truth and use it to motivate you, or you can convince yourself that you're amazing at something you suck at or that everyone else is better than you because of talent. I lose to people that are better than me at jiu jitsu because they have worked harder and put in more time than I have. But I am confident that I can eventually catch up to them. Reality will frustrate you, and delusion will comfort you. But living in reality will actually get you somewhere and prevent you from wasting your life.
You can CHOOSE to become great at whatever you want. And if you stop improving, it's because somewhere along the way, you chose to suck. Improving at something requires humility; you need to acknowledge and accept your shortcomings and directly work to improve them. Don't be confident in your talent. Be confident in your work ethic.
First off, yes, some people just happen to be better at something when starting out than others. They got lucky, and it came easier to them.
Second, before I can go any further I need to discuss what it means to be truly good at something. When I say "good," I don't mean someone picked up a trumpet, learned 3 scales and a couple of easy jazz licks, and played in some mediocre ska band at a couple of bars in front of 30 people, half of whom they knew personally. "Good" is someone who was interested in playing trumpet so they took weekly lessons from a reputable teacher, practiced the exercises given to them every day, listened to professional players regularly to have an idea of what a good tone quality is, and developed a command of the instrument over several years. "Good" is not a three-stripe white belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu that knows some gimmicky inverted guard sweep that he crushes other white belts with because they don't know it, and fails 100% of the time against higher belts because it's a garbage move that he spent all his time on instead of developing the basic mechanics of grappling. "Good" is someone who is a brown or black belt who has been training for several years on a regular basis, and could roll with a blue belt like myself, tell them exactly what he is going to do, and then do it with no possibility of them stopping it because he's just straight up better than them.
No human being on the face of the earth became truly good at something because of natural talent. Everyone hits a talent wall at some point, and once they get past the wall (assuming they have the desire and drive to do so), it is 100% hard work after that. Tiger Woods was talented at golf. He picked it up very quickly at a very young age. Did he become one of the best to ever step up to a tee because of it? Hell no. He became great at it because he learned from experts and practiced his ass off. Marcelo Garcia, one of the best jiu jitsu players of all time, lost his first competition. He eventually developed into a world-class grappler through persistence, constant seeking of knowledge, and ridiculous amounts of time spent on the mat. Talent had absolutely NOTHING to do with it.
There are 3 requirements that need to be met to be on your way to truly being good at something.
1. You need to know what exactly to practice
2. You need to know how to practice it properly, safely, and efficiently
3. You need to practice for the appropriate amount of time on a regular basis
If you meet those requirements, you will eventually become proficient at whatever you are doing. The only way to be sure that you are fulfilling these requirements is to receive instruction from an expert in the field. Other people may have been talented and picked things up more quickly than you at first, but if you persist you WILL become good at it. I can't even begin to remember how many trumpet players my age that I've come across that were better than me at some point, but now either suck or they just quit altogether. Is it because I suddenly developed a natural talent for it, and they lost theirs? No, it's because they got lazy and I didn't. I've been taking weekly lessons and practicing regularly for 12 years. I can comfortably say I'm an above-average player. I'm not completely satisfied, and I will continue to practice and improve, but I am satisfied with the results of 12 years of dedication to the instrument so far. I'm only a blue belt in jiu jitsu, but already the same trend is obvious. Countless numbers of guys that started around the same time as me never got a blue belt, even though they started out better than me because it came a little easier to them. Then they got lazy, and I didn't. I guarantee it will happen from blue to purple. The majority of blue belts will quit, and I will keep training and eventually get a purple belt. I can 100% guarantee that, barring a sever injury that prevents me from training, I will eventually get a black belt, not because I'm amazing at jiu jitsu or naturally athletic, but because I'm not going to get lazy. It will surely take me longer than it has taken others, but I will eventually get there. If you can't honestly tell yourself that you will eventually excel in whatever field you are pursuing, you need to either find a new field that you're more passionate about or change your mindset.
Reality is a bitch. Accepting the fact that someone is better than you at something simply because they worked harder and longer can be a much tougher pill to swallow than hand-waving it away by saying they're more naturally talented than you. But you have a choice to make: you can accept the truth and use it to motivate you, or you can convince yourself that you're amazing at something you suck at or that everyone else is better than you because of talent. I lose to people that are better than me at jiu jitsu because they have worked harder and put in more time than I have. But I am confident that I can eventually catch up to them. Reality will frustrate you, and delusion will comfort you. But living in reality will actually get you somewhere and prevent you from wasting your life.
You can CHOOSE to become great at whatever you want. And if you stop improving, it's because somewhere along the way, you chose to suck. Improving at something requires humility; you need to acknowledge and accept your shortcomings and directly work to improve them. Don't be confident in your talent. Be confident in your work ethic.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)