"Ten
years I devoted to you, but you deceived me! You hid the manual's true
meaning. I never improved but your progress was limitless."
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
I would like to submit a foundational principle Jaron has taught me that may seem surface level elementary to dedicated work out folk. All great fitness regiments provide a healthy mix of individualized exercises. Obvious, right? Even though a wonderful program adapts to our evolving person, what's not revealed by the great ones is the formation of our programs are not a democratic process. In the hands of a craftsman we should never have a choice. Our choice should be to show up and do work, or not. This is especially true for myself. With two years' worth of repetition in strength training, circuits, and cardio sets I am my own worst enemy. It's zeal without knowledge.
My files contain great program sheets full of Jaron's excellence. I could easily set out on my own and devote years to Jaron's manual. The possibility of success would still be there since that is driven by my choice to show up and do work. But the probability of success would surely diminish on my own. Put aside for a moment motivation and varying amounts of vanity. Without a coach to see the long view and continually tweak and retool my program objectively I would eventually fall back into the path of least resistance. Never to improve. Then eventually fail.
Despite evidence to the contrary, there is a small modicum of democracy in my program design. I feel confident that I have the necessary knowledge to design an effective plan for most people and most goals, but even if I design the "perfect plan", results will only be achieved through adherence. If the client hates everything about the plan, they're unlikely to put much effort into the unsupervised workouts. Flip side, if I design a program 85% as good, that the client loves, and adheres to 100% of the time, supervised or not, they WILL succeed. I tell gym members all the time, "anyone can go online these days and research exercises, but for every 100 exercises you find, 20 might be right for you, 20 completely wrong, and the remaining 60 should only be used in it's proper phase". Without the "manual's true meaning", good luck putting that information to proper use. A broken watch is right twice a day, and there will always be that glaring anomaly who succeeds on pure effort, doing all the wrong things. Most of us must work smarter, not merely harder. Working with a trainer is like having a coaching staff making halftime adjustments between every workout. I feel bad, because this comment contains good information and very little gile, sarcasm, or vitriol. For that, I apologize. Might I suggest a more comical take in an archived blog on this very topic that's worth a re-read, or first read for most. "I ain't no swine!", March 28, 2013. http://nofatjokesplease.blogspot.com/2013/05/do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do-because-i-have.html?m=1 You won't be disappointed!
ReplyDelete