When you follow rules, it works. Be it exclusion diets, rigid volume or weight targets for food, training plans with progression and volume targets, body composition targets, photo shoots, competitions, workshops etc. They work.
Until you hit a wall. The wall is the ability to adhere to the rules. The wall comes in the many forms:
It could be changed circumstance: a new cook, shifting homes, changing jobs, work pressure, injuries, a new relationship, testing time in existing ones.
It’s most common to run out of gas trying to power through a demanding plan.
The ability to work through this wall or constraints will come in one of two ways :
You muster up the sheer conviction and will power needed to stick to the plan at all costs. You will do what it takes. No cook? You meal prep or find a home chef to send you meals. Work is hard? You wake up earlier. Training has no time? You get up earlier or stay up late.
These solutions get oversold on social media and celebrities. It is neither pragmatic nor smart of us to try and run through this wall.
Suffice to say most of humanity rarely finds the conviction. Even the best of plans is sacrificed at the altar of shit happens in life.
There’s a second path. You understand the principles behind an effective rule-based plan.
There’s the protein you need in a day. There’s the rough calorie count. You improvise. Your 100 grams of low fat paneer can be subbed out with a 25 gram protein shake in a pinch. Your 3 eggs can become 1/2 tub of Skyr. You don’t agonise over specifics. You find effective replacements.
Ditto for training. Don’t have time for an intricately crafted push-pull-squat-hinge routine over 4 days? 15 mins in the morning to do some push-pull work 4 times a week. Another 20 mins thrice a week to get single leg squats and jumps.
No time for 5000 steps. How about just a few rounds of wall sit, duck walks and calf raises. The steps aren’t the magic. It’s the movement that counts.
Same goes for sleep, stress etc.
There’s a time and place for rules. But for most of us having some sense of why the rules exist gives us the wiggle room needed to lay low and get something done when the going gets tough. Status quo is preferable to reversed gains.
Until you hit a wall. The wall is the ability to adhere to the rules. The wall comes in the many forms:
It could be changed circumstance: a new cook, shifting homes, changing jobs, work pressure, injuries, a new relationship, testing time in existing ones.
It’s most common to run out of gas trying to power through a demanding plan.
The ability to work through this wall or constraints will come in one of two ways :
You muster up the sheer conviction and will power needed to stick to the plan at all costs. You will do what it takes. No cook? You meal prep or find a home chef to send you meals. Work is hard? You wake up earlier. Training has no time? You get up earlier or stay up late.
These solutions get oversold on social media and celebrities. It is neither pragmatic nor smart of us to try and run through this wall.
Suffice to say most of humanity rarely finds the conviction. Even the best of plans is sacrificed at the altar of shit happens in life.
There’s a second path. You understand the principles behind an effective rule-based plan.
There’s the protein you need in a day. There’s the rough calorie count. You improvise. Your 100 grams of low fat paneer can be subbed out with a 25 gram protein shake in a pinch. Your 3 eggs can become 1/2 tub of Skyr. You don’t agonise over specifics. You find effective replacements.
Ditto for training. Don’t have time for an intricately crafted push-pull-squat-hinge routine over 4 days? 15 mins in the morning to do some push-pull work 4 times a week. Another 20 mins thrice a week to get single leg squats and jumps.
No time for 5000 steps. How about just a few rounds of wall sit, duck walks and calf raises. The steps aren’t the magic. It’s the movement that counts.
Same goes for sleep, stress etc.
There’s a time and place for rules. But for most of us having some sense of why the rules exist gives us the wiggle room needed to lay low and get something done when the going gets tough. Status quo is preferable to reversed gains.