The adventure is the journey, not the destination

By Pete Ryan

Many people have dreams, goals and desires that they wish to achieve. You may want to be Mr Olympia, become a champion powerlifter or have 6-pack abs. Whatever the goal or dream, remember this fact. It is not the goal that is the important feature of this idea, it is the journey to that goal that will decide if you achieve it or not. In fact you may or may not actually succeed in that goal, so deciding on a goal becomes “Is the journey itself worth the sacrifice and effort”. Suppose I said you will go to the gym, drive yourself hard for over a decade and you will not become a pro bodybuilder, is the journey itself enough to drive you? If you say it is not, then I would not pick that journey. To succeed the journey needs to be enough to sustain you, you need to love the process that leads to that goal. We are not being simplistic, obviously some aspects of any goal may be dull, scary or even unpleasant, but overall you need to enjoy the process to succeed.  Winning a medal is a fleeting moment in time, a blip in your life, but the journey to that goal can take years or even decades to complete, so consider the process before you decide on a goal.  If you want 6-pack abs, but love fatty food and exciting dining adventures, then giving that all up may not be the best journey choice you could make.  Maybe just staying trim and in decent shape while still enjoying regular culinary adventures is a thing that would add depth and appreciation to your life? If you want to be the strongest man in the world, but hate the gym, then maybe you’d be better finding a goal that didn’t involve so much of life in a gym situation? You have one life, spending the majority of it doing something you do not want to do seems very wasteful of your time.

It is surprising how many people do not think of the process when they begin to choose a goal. They think of college in terms of what will give them the highest paid career, they think of jobs in terms of what will be the most financially successful. In both of these outcomes they have not thought if they will enjoy those courses or the job that follows. Let me offer you two job examples; One pays a lot, you will have a fabulous home, nice cars and all the luxuries imaginable, but you will hate the job, every workday will be long hours and you will rarely feel happiness in the job. By 50 you will begin to suffer serious stress related issues, your family life will be terrible, you will potentially suffer issues with alcohol or other abuse just to cope with the work. Or our second scenario where you find a job you enjoy a lot, it is challenging and sometimes you fail, but generally you do well, you improve. Again, you might have to work long hours, but these are productive hours with results you care about. It is a mid-income job, you are not exactly poor, but your car is a few years old, you have a small property, but you have few luxuries. By 50 you are still in good health and have a happy life generally. The first guy might retire with immense wealth and the second guy may retire with much less, but if we look back on their journey was it really worth all those decades unhappy to achieve the goal of immense wealth? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to do what made them happy for decades, but end up with less?

Before you think I am suggesting you always limit yourself, let me reverse the scenario.  Suppose you love exercise, the process of muscle growth. Now you could settle for a job or follow your dream of becoming a bodybuilder.  If the training is what makes you happy, then maybe the right goal for you to aim at is to see how far you can go in the bodybuilding field. You may just be a Mr Olympia one day, or if starting businesses is what you love to do, then maybe developing multimillion pound businesses might be the way forward for you. What I am saying is pick a process that you mainly enjoy, then consider how to make a goal from that journey.  You are more likely to be happy if you plan things that way. 

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Ever forward

By Pete Ryan

You often hear the quote “I want to maintain”, or “I just don’t want to lose any strength/size”.  This might be a reasonable sounding goal and it can often be the outcome in the older trainee, but I do not believe it should be a goal. I will give my reasoning below.

The human body is a dynamic organism. It is not like a car or a bike. If you store it carefully, it will not maintain its abilities. What happens is a body is in two states.  The body is either anabolic or catabolic, so it is either growing and rebuilding, or it is consuming itself and destroying unnecessary parts of itself.  This is an on-going process that occurs all the time. Being catabolic can be health promoting by removing old or damaged cells, but it can also have a negative impact by removing hard fought for muscle, bone density, tendon durability or fascia strength. Meanwhile we have anabolic effects which involves adding tissue, this can be muscle and lean tissue, but adding fat is also an anabolic event. So, our goal is to create methods that heighten the positive effects of both the catabolic and anabolic processes in the body. We want to remove old and damaged cells, while also promoting the creation of new lean tissue with minimal increases in fat storage.

The best way to achieve these goals is through progressive resistance exercise. This can be bodyweight, or using equipment. Note the name of this type of exercise. PROGRESSIVE resistance exercise. That is the goal, but why is it important to progress, and what do we mean by progression?

Let us look at progression, or to be more precise, let’s look at non-progression. Let’s say you reach a point where you believe 10 reps of 100 pounds in an exercise is ‘strong enough’. So, you always do 10 reps or 100 pounds.  If you never go over that your body will adapt to it, you will become more efficient at the movement and you will end up with the very minimum you need to do that 10 reps of 100 pounds. Any issue, ANY problem that increases stress or stops you training will drop you below that level. As you age, it will become progressively harder to get those 10 reps. If you reached 10 reps of 100 pounds with ease at 30 years old, by 50 you will be struggling to get it, by 65 years old you probably won’t have it any more…and you will blame old age. It will not be aging that took that lift away from you, it will be the lack of progression.

Now let us look at what we mean by progression.  When we talk about progression most people think of ‘intensity’ the actually weight lifted, but that is an oversimplification of progression.  Yes if you lifted 90 pounds and later lifted 100 pounds then you have progressed, but there are other options. The amount of reps done during an exercise, a harder variation of an exercise, taking less time between sets, even trying new forms of exercise that stimulate the body in novel ways and develop new skills, all of these are forms of progression.

Most people realise that you cannot keep adding weight to an exercise (or repetitions).  There is a limit, most people will never lift 1,000 pounds or do 1,000 pull-ups in day, but you can progress by cycling exercises so throughout your life you continue to progress and move forward.

Let’s return to the person who believes 10 reps of 100 pounds is ‘strong enough’.  My argument is they should be aiming at higher numbers (let’s say 125-150 pounds for 12-15 reps), but not do it every week. They should do a mesa cycle working up to that peak and then move on to other exercises, then return again regularly and aim at equalling or ideally bettering that goal. So suppose you have four mesa cycles in a year (3 months each). Mesa cycle 1 would be get to 12-15 reps of 125-150 pounds doing the exercise, mesa cycle 2 could be doing a variation of the same exercise or working the same muscle groups using other exercises, mesa cycle 3 could be working up to 3-5 reps with 175-200 pounds of that exercise, mesa cycle 4 could be another variation that works the same muscle groups.  You can also do variations other than increasing weight or reps, think about the rest time between sets, what you do before this exercise.  So, you could cut your rest time between sets from 1 minute to 30 seconds, or if you are doing a curl, do a chin up before you do the curl.  All these things will change the results and create new demands on your body.  You have more than a lifetime of tweaks to play with. No one will ever have time to try every variable or even every type of exercise available. So, progression is possible throughout life and expect to set goals and repeatedly conquer them throughout your life, go forward, ever forward.

Come join us on our social media:

Website http://www.veganbodybuilding.org/

Facbook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/23353662623/

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So have we any new year resolutioners out there?

I don't really set goals at new year that much.  Most of my goals for 2012 where already set earlier this year (I'm aiming at increasing my deadlift & squat by a reasonable amount over the next year- actually in the case of the squat it's the high end of reasonable as I am a rubbish squatter, but there you go might as well aim high!).
Anyway, have you got goals to set for 2012?  If so let's have them.  Here's some ideas to help you reach those goals.

Write it down:

Put it somewhere you can see it regularly.  I'm aiming at 185Kg squat, which is my toughest goal as I'm not a natural squatter & it will be about 2.5x bodyweight lift for me so it may take more than 12 months to get there?  Anyway to 'remind me' I've redesigned my wallpaper on the computer, I went & grabbed a load of guys squatting big weights, wrote a big, red 185 in thumping HUGE numbers over it, so everytime I look at the computer I see the number 185 & squats, but you could put something on your fridge, put something by your bedroom lamp, whatever, but somewhere you'll read it.
Also make sure you keep your goals, your goals (I stole that line from Dan John), if you are trying to lose fat, then suddenly trying out the latest powerlifting training from Eastern Europe may not be the best thing in the world for your goal- if you are anything like me I get excited when I read new stuff about training & yes I want to try it out..but you can't reach your goals if you are swapping stuff up all the time, sticking to a plan is the best method.  Before making any change go back to that thing you wrote out (your goal), does this change move you towards or away from your goal?  Answer that before you make any change (yes this is a tough one to do, I know!).
Here are some quick & rough rules for achieving your goals.

Dieters:
If you're looking to lose fat then 80% of the effort should actually go into the food journal, 15% into training & 5% recovery (prehab/rehab, recovery etc).  That's right, you will get better results by really focussing on what you're eating & writing everything down, then seeing how things affect you.  This % is the starting place of your diet, I don't think you can (or should) keep a food journal forever, but this gets you going correctly & you can actually see what you eat, calories etc, it leads you towards a decent eating plan.  If you have a lot of weight to lose (say a year or more of dieting) then look at returning to a food log once a quarter or every 6 months at least & write out a week & see where you are.  This is actually good practice for everyone, just to see the amount of junk you are eating & ways to tidy up your diet to move towards those goals.

Mass gainers:
70% should be focussed upon eating more & trying to keep those calories as clean as possible, again only 20% should be on your training.  Many people can train hard, but many fail on eating enough to grow, especially on a vegan diet which can be less calorie dense than a typical meat eaters diet, the rest fail on the other 10% which is recovery, so sleep, stretching, self myofascial release, massage, pre-hab/rehab etc, they simply don't do it or enough of it.

Athletes:
80% sports specific skills, so playing the game, practising specific skills etc, 10% strength training, 10% other (recovery planning, rehab/prehab, massage, self myofascial release etc).  Yes 80% should be doing something directly related to your sport.

Goal setting:
Goal setting is important.  You need to set some numbers & dates for goals if you can.  Do not just say  "I want to be slim for the beach this year".  That is not a goal, it is a vague dream.  A goal is "I want to lose 10 pounds of fat by June 1st 2012".  Now you have a goal, you can work backwards & set up a plan to hit that goal.

Obviously these are rough guidelines as there will be some athletes who need to gain muscle mass, or dieters who are trying to hit a weight class in a contest, those are outside these general guidelines, but I thought I'd write some very rough outlines about how you should be thinking about those goals right now, so you can plan them, not just waste your time with vague dreams.


One final tip is announcing your goals makes them MUCH more likely to come true, so why not pop your goals up on here right now (I did, so how about you?), then you will be loads more likely to hit that goal in 2012...if you can't do that then consider - Is the goal realistic?  Do I REALLY want it?  Because if you can't even say it out loud, then you're unlikely to have the mindset to achieve it!

With all that said get your goals set now, have a great holiday season, then get on that plan when the clock chimes 12 on the first day of 2012!