Half an Eye Is Pretty Useful...

This is what hard work looks like...

There's a pretty old cliche in discussions of the viability of the theory of evolution. It goes thusly; those who don't accept the theory will say that the eye is far too complex to have evolved in stages, and you can't have half an eye... that half an eye is worse than having no eye at all, so life could never develop along a path that leads to having a whole eye.

On the other side of this argument, those who do accept the theory of evolution say that of course you can have half an eye, and point to all the different variations of eyes that exist, from simple photo-sensitive cells to our complex visual organs, as different stages and how they can be useful, each more useful than the previous, less complex version.

This post has nothing to do with evolution, I'm just going to apply that argument to the subject at hand, and possibly annoy many of my friends in the fitness world when I say that, provisionally, half-assing it is far more useful than doing nothing.

Many people I know who are heavily involved in fitness, be they coaches or just dedicated to their own health and well-being, are very strongly of the opinion that people have to be 100% committed. I understand this, and certainly, judged by their own perception  and desires, it's absolutely true. No one will reach their personal, maximal level of athletic performance unless they push themselves, move outside their comfort zone, eat properly, train properly, rest properly. But, I feel like this can leave the impression that taking a more casual approach isn't useful, and that's just completely wrong.

We've got athletes at many levels of fitness, who've been with us for varying lengths of time, and who cover a broad spectrum of ages, body types, and backgrounds... and as I'm writing this, I'm thinking also of the folks who, for one reason or another, no longer train with us.  There are some who have walked through the door, been coached on a movement once, and execute good form and hold themselves to that good form with almost no further input from me from that point forward. There are those who strive to maintain good form, and are maybe not quite as innately aware of their body position, etc., and need to be cued with regularity. And, there are those who take a pretty relaxed approach and don't mind cutting corners, and aren't really worried about standards of movement as long as they're moving safely, and so depending on what's going on I'll be right on them, cuing every rep, or letting them slack a little.

This is where I'm going to make some of my fitness friends angry, because many are of the opinion that, if someone's not doing it right, they shouldn't be doing it at all and certainly I should be calling them on their every improper movement. But, here's the thing... we all have different levels of commitment to the various things which fill our lives. I've known very few people who give 100% of their energy, focus, and discipline to everything in their lives, and those few who have had much less diversity of things with which they fill their days. For most of us, I just don't think that's a tenable position.

And, as a coach, I'm supposed to help athletes perfect their athletic ability. But, though I know my job includes teaching people how to train effectively, how to execute the movements, and helping them find and develop the things which will motivate them and make them work harder, my job is NOT to decide what motivates them. That's a fine distinction, but an important one. I used to have a coach who thought his job was to decide for me what should be driving me, and what I should want out of training, and that's just something which has to come from within us... you might be most driven by competition with yourself, or competition with others, or by the desire to overcome your health issues, or by thinking of your ageing parents and all their health issues and your desire to avoid their fate. But, nobody can force you to care more about it or in a different way than you do, only you can develop those attitudes.

This is something with which our training program is already familiar, the concept of relative intensity. We scale our workouts to the current capacity of the athlete, so that whether someone is at a very high level of fitness, or they're just starting out, they can do the work and be challenged without being overwhelmed. Oddly, I don't see this concept being applied to the mental side of things much. If an athlete gives 100% and pushes themselves to the limits, they're going to really get the most out of it. If an athlete works up a sweat but doesn't really explore their limits, it's still harder than their body works 90% of the time, and if they're eating reasonably well, using functional movements in their workouts, and executing those movements safely, nine times out of ten in my experience they're doing enough to improve, or at least maintain, their health.

So, as a coach, I have to decide what I think is more important; driving them to perfect their athletic ability (and risk frustrating and alienating them with my efforts to push them somewhere they clearly don't want to go), or meeting them where they are so that I can provide whatever support I can to their effort to maintain and improve their health and fitness.

Now, remember when I said that half-assing it was better than doing nothing, I said "provisionally." The range of motion in a squat is not arbitrary; there are vital physiological reasons why when you squat you need to get it right, and so I will tirelessly correct this every time I see it, and hope that it sticks. Anything which is about the safety of the athlete, that's a non-negotiable thing.

But, honestly, there's nothing about the "proper" execution of the hand transition in a medicine ball clean which is about safety, either short or long term. So, if an athlete is getting tired (or is just not that interested) in whether they're doing it to the standard or curling the ball or playing catch with themselves, and I know they don't give a damn, I think it's far more useful to let them concentrate on the effort they're putting into the rest of the movement and workout rather than calling them out every single rep and frustrating them. Similarly, some people break often for water, even when they don't really need it... if I know that they're driven to perform and are really just giving in a little to the desire to rest when they don't really need it, I will call them out because that's helpful to their goals. If they're not that driven, the few extra seconds they've spent unnecessarily resting will not undo their health and overall wellness.

This is the next provision... truly, the goal which takes priority for me, as a coach, is the lifelong health and well-being of my athletes. If someone comes to me and says, "I'm training for this specific thing, please help me," then that's their choice and training may be tailored to sacrifice some domains of fitness in order to strengthen others in accordance with their specific goals. But, overall, the point of all this work at the gym is to keep people healthy and mobile throughout their life. So, with that in mind, whether or not they're training hard enough to compete at some level, or whether they're training hard enough to push the upper boundaries of their capacities, is not as important as whether or not they're training hard enough to improve their health.

Now, early on, especially if someone is beginning from a place of being fairly unfit, pushing their capacity and  training to improve their health will be pretty much the same thing. Every workout will be a challenge. But as they grow, they'll reach a point where maybe they could be far more fit, but they're safe from / have overcome their risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, old-age immobility, etc. At this point, if they're not strongly motivated by something and tend to not work as hard as they might in training, I cannot give them that extra motivation completely externally and trying to do so might make training an experience to be avoided... it's far more helpful and effective to keep them in a program which is working to maintain their health and wellness at the level at which they've engaged it.

Could an athlete be reaching their goals more quickly? Possibly, certainly if they're not giving 100% to the process. And this is the final provision: do not expect to get more out of training that you're putting into it!

Some of my athletes have made remarkable transformations, and some of those happened faster than others did, which is all down to the path each athlete took in working toward their goals. One person had me create a spreadsheet to figure out what and how much they should be eating, and stuck to it rigorously. Others very quickly adopted a very strict Paleo diet, while others still have adopted Paleo in stages over time, or have been less strict, etc. All this adds up to variations in the time it takes to reach goals. The same is true for the training itself; improving performance and mastering new skills is all down to how much effort you put into it.

But you cannot, ever, approach with the expectation that your progress will be quick, steady, or even ultimately reach your stated goals if those goals are set above the work you're willing to put in. If all you want is to avoid the diseases of civilization and keep your mobility into old age, that's great. You might be putting your energies into other areas of your life, and that's awesome. But, you can't then look at the whiteboard at the end of the training session and be upset or disappointed that so-and-so finished faster than you did, especially if so-and-so is training more often, at a higher level of personal intensity, and just bought themselves a copy of the Everyday Paleo Cookbook. This kind of expectation is a recipe for disaster, because you will always be disappointed. You also cannot set yourself the goal of reaching X body composition in Y time, proceed to not work as hard as you possibly could to achieve the goal, and then get to Y time and be upset. Might you have missed the mark if you'd totally worked your ass off? Possibly. It's also possible that you could have worked less than 100% and still gotten there. But, if you haven't tried your best, you damned well don't have the right to be upset about it.

This is really the point of this post... it's all down to you. Your coach (be it me, a trainer at some other gym, or even the person on the home workout DVD you use) can offer you much in terms of motivational support; exploring what cues, attitudes, and factors work for you and helping to cultivate them. But, ultimately, it has to come from within. And, if your effort is commensurate with your goals, then all is well. You may not care at all about competing in athletic competitions, whether or not you beat your last Fran time, or even whether or not you're doing the workouts as Rx'd. That's totally fine, that's valid. You're almost certainly working hard enough to at least maintain your health.

But, if you have set yourself personal goals of performance or physiological change, you cannot rationally take issue with how long it takes to get there if you're not giving 100%, and definitely don't get to take issue with never getting there if you're not giving somewhere near 100%.

Here's the real secret, though; when you're doing all the things you need to do (training, nutrition, recovery) and you're doing them the best you can, and you're seeing progress (and you WILL see progress if you're truly doing all these things at least pretty well)... if you're really doing your best, that progress will be enough to keep you going, because you'll come to see that eventually you'll reach the goal... and if halfway there you find that the goal you've set isn't attainable, for whatever reason, you'll likely be so satisfied with the work you've done and the progress you've made that you'll just keep working to improve as much as you can. And so, the journey becomes the sustaining motivation, seeing the next PR reached, buying the next smaller dress size, etc.

Every day you walk into the gym, this is the choice to be made; how hard do I work? There will be those who say the only choice is, "as hard as I can." And, for many people, personally, that's true. But don't sweat it if it's not your personal answer, as long as you're making progress toward your goals. If you're making progress, and content with that progress, you're doing it right. If you're not content, you need to re-examine your effort, your goals, or your patience. :-) That last one is a whole other post, though....