Persistence and Patience

courtesy of the New York TimesThis week, the world lost 22 amazing men in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. I didn't know anyone on that helicopter, but I know people who knew too many. This article is dedicated to the memory of what those men accomplished and how you can apply it to accomplishing what you want to in your life.

There are 2,278,616 people in the United States Armed Forces. There are 13,000 special operators. So we are looking at the top 6/10 of 1% of an above average group of awesome men and women. They live their jobs, have been in the military an average of 10 years, and accumulated tens of thousands of hours in training and combat. These are the pros, people. But they are just people. They are not superhuman. If you select for the top 0.6% in any profession and give them 100,000 hours of practice, the results are going to be pretty freaking amazing. But as Anthony Robbins says, “success leaves clues.” Here are the clues I picked up on from two separate conversations about those elite men.

Persistence

I have a friend who works with what some pretty badass dudes. One day over lunch, he was giving advice to a young man hoping to join those ranks. This man was in better shape than you or me, had a little bit of military experience, and had come to lunch in order to learn as much as he could about the physical demands of being a badass dude who kills terrorists for a living. But my friend gave him some pretty weird advice.

“What’s the hardest book you’ve ever read?” he asked. “Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper,” replied the young man. “Go get The Pathfinder today. And it has to be today. Get The Pathfinder and start reading it as soon as you get to your hotel room. Do not put the book down until you finish reading it. Every time you want to stop reading it; don’t. Every time your mind wanders; don’t let it. Every time you start to doze off; wake up and keep reading. Every time you feel the overwhelming desire to just do anything else but read that book; keep reading with 100% of your concentration and do not stop until you finish it. If you can do that, you will make it through BUD/S.”

Persistence is just doing stuff that needs to get done until it’s finished. With rare exception, we all know what to do to reach our goals. You know you need to move more, lift heavy things, eat better food (and less of it), and sit up straight. So just keep doing it. To quote Calvin Coolidge, “nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.” Keep your eyes fixed on the goal and see this thing through.

Patience

I have another friend who was a badass dude as well. Three years ago, when I told him I wanted to be a Marine officer, he told me a little about his experience as both an enlisted sniper and an eventual officer in a pretty badass sub-section of the Rangers. He told me a bunch of stories that had a familiar pattern to them. I will recount that pattern below, redacted because the actual facts don’t matter. (I’ll leave one number in though, because it blew my mind). 

“We were in X doing a thing. They dropped us in X and we had to crawl X miles through X  to make to X by X. But they missed X by X miles so it ended up needing to go X miles to get to X before X wasn’t there anymore. So we did. When we got to X we set up and watched X for the next X days. We couldn’t move because we were 700ft from X and people would see us. So we waited X days for the order to shoot X, but they decided not to shoot X. So X days later we crawled X miles to the border with X and got a ride out. But it was OK. War is a lot more about who you don’t shoot than who you shoot.”

Patience is not doing stuff you don’t need to do because doing so will mess up getting the stuff done that matters. If you are doing everything that needs to be done to reach your goal, then by definition there is nothing left for you to do. When my clients start losing fat or getting stronger, the first thing they start looking for ways to mess it up. They all want to diet harder, lift more, and start doing two-a-days. But if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. You’re doing everything right and as Edmund Burke says, “our patience will achieve more than our force.” Stay the course. You’ll get there.

Thermodynamics

There are very few “laws” in physics. And Newton’s Four Laws of Thermodynamics are about a “proven” as science gets. As a big fan of science, I have to tell you that in Coach Stevo’s House, we obey the Laws of Thermodynamics. That’s because your body is a system like any other in that Newton describes in nature. A machine that takes in energy and performs work. It is a complicated machine with lots of moving parts, but the inputs and outputs are pretty simple. Food goes in; life comes out. And if you want to streamline your machine, you are going to have to obey the Laws of Thermodynamics. In very real terms, if you want to lose weight you are going to have to take in less than you put out because exercise is a dumb way to burn fat. Here’s why you can’t outrun a donut.

How You Work

You eat food. Food is made up of a lot of stuff, but the main components are carbohydrates (fast energy), fat (slow energy + some legos), protein (legos + some slow energy), and fiber (lubrication). Your body uses the energy you eat to manipulate the legos you eat into creating you while and the fiber keeps things from grinding to a halt. The unit of measurement of food energy is kcal (or just ‘calories’). Sometimes there’s not enough energy to make you, so your body has a backup system to store it when there's too much. Biologists call that ‘adipose tissue’ and it contains about 9 kcal of energy per gram. You call it fat. There is debate about the amount of body fat that is considered ‘healthy,’ but I don’t think anyone is gonna pitch a hissy fit if I suggest that 14-17% body fat for men and 21-24% body fat for women is good target for long-term health. (Health aside, I think with the right amount of muscle, most men achieve ideal hotness at 12% and women at 19%. But that’s totally my opinion). The average American man is 191 lbs and carries around 21% of that in fat. The average American woman is 164 lbs and about 28% of that is fat. Oh, and as I’ve talked about before, your body can’t really store protein. If it needs legos to build stuff and you haven’t eaten any lately, it strips what it needs from your skeletal muscle.

Getting Rid of Fat

Let’s say the average American lady wants to get hot. For most women, part (part!) of hotness is getting close to 19% BF. Most women will look crazy hot higher than that, but let’s just use this hypothetical lady as an example. She basically has 60,225 kcal of “extra” fat on her. The only way fat comes off outside of a surgeon’s office is by eating less calories than you use. That’s thermodynamics and most people know it pretty instinctively. But most people are also really bad at math. Since this equation has two sides (input and output), many people assume that they can up the output to exceed the input (‘burn fat’ by exercising a bunch). And while this is technically true, it’s just not realistic because your body is REALLY good at efficiently moving around. In fact, the average American woman only burns about 100 kcal per mile of walking and only 124 kcal when running at a 10 minute per mile pace (which most women can’t even maintain for longer than a minute or so). Assuming this rate of efficiency would be constant and assuming her dietary input would be exactly the same, our hypothetical woman would need to walk 602 miles in order to lose that 14.74 lbs of fat. That’s the distance from San Francisco to Tijuana, Mexico. But it gets worse because all those assumptions are wrong. Your body gets really efficient at movements that it does a lot (it’s called the training effect and it’s the whole point of training). So the more you walk, the less calories you burn walking. The more your run, elliptical, kickbox, Bar Method, TaiBo, pilates, yoga, and CrossFit, the less calories you burn doing them. Your body is also really good at telling your brain that it’s hungry when you work out more so there's very little chance your dietary input would remain constant unless you control it. So even if you made it to Tijuana, you’d probably still have a few more pounds to lose!

Fat Loss in the Real World

Strength and cardio training is really important for lots of health and hotness reasons, but quite frankly exercise has little to do with fat loss. In the real world it takes about 16 minutes of running to expend the energy equivalent of a Krispy Kreme donut that most people eat in less than 30 seconds. Translation: you can’t outrun a donut. The answer? Don’t eat the damn donut.

The smart path to fat loss is through your stomach. Find a nutrition plan that works best for you and stick to it. If you are a normal, healthy adult free of disease, I suggest starting with my “four mores." But if you like paleo, do paleo. If you like slow carb, do slow carb. Atkins, South Beach, Intermittent Fasting, they will all probably work if you stick to them. Any diet that you can live with long enough to maintain a 3,500-7,000 kcal per week caloric deficit will probably provide stable fat loss for you in the long run. So if you want to lose fat, don’t sweat so much, listen to your body (and your doctor or Registered Dietitian) and find a nutrition plan that works for you.

Goal Setting in Gotham

When I was ages 4 to… well now, my favorite fictional character was Batman.* Mostly because he is everything I wasn’t. Since the death of his parents, Batman has been singularly focused and utterly disciplined. He spends every night doing the same noble, difficult, but boring thing: patrolling the rooftops of Gotham looking to stop crime. I, however, suffer from a unique attentional deficiency my wife likes to refer to as “a laser beam pointed at a spinning mirror.” From moment to moment, my focus and concentration is fixed, intense, and powerful but rarely for longer than a few days or weeks. Between graduating from college and starting to train people I had no less than 13 career goals from Master of Wine to Marine Officer. But Batman only every wanted to do one thing: fight crime. That's dedication to a goal. In fact, Batman is able to wake up every day and get stuff done because he has goals and he meets them. When I was 25 and 60lbs overweight, all I knew was that I was fat. It took a goal to get me off the couch. But that meant I was one step closer to making my dreams become reality.

Make It Real

Everything you want in life starts out as a dream. They’re big, abstract, and for most people, very unlikely to happen. Reality is kind of the opposite. Lots of small, concrete events that actually do happen. Goals are somewhere in the middle, one step closer to real. Like Diana Scharf Hunt says, “Goals are dreams with deadlines.” So when you are thinking about something that you want to do, make it real. Give it a deadline. Give it a number. Make it realistic. Instead of saying, "I don't want to be fat anymore", say, "I will to lose 60lbs in 292 days."

Plan It Out

60lbs is a big number. Some of my clients have bigger numbers. This can seem daunting because targets that are far away are harder to hit. But the easiest way to stay focused is to give yourself a series of closer targets. "I will lose 1.4lbs a week" sounds a lot easier because it's more real. So break your big goal down into a series of smaller ones and see if they don't feel more realistic and possible. For an extra dose of reality, write them down in your calender. Look! Now you've got a plan!

Make It a Habit

Maybe it's a limitation of my profession, but the only way I know of to get better at something is to practice. Goals are no different. The more you practice meeting goals, the more likely you are to meet them in the future. Alwyn Cosgrove calls it the "Goal Snowball." But I see it as a matter of priority. Dan Gable says, “if something is important, do it every day.” I can’t think of anything more important in life than making dreams come true. So write a plan for your goal that includes a daily task that brings you closer to reaching it. Start with one or two tasks per day. Like, "I will exercise and eat right today." Before you know it, doing those tasks will become a habit. And habits have a way of sticking around and defining who we are.

Summary of How Coach Stevo's Dream Became Reality

DREAM: I don’t want to be fat anymore.

GOAL: I will lose 60lbs in 292 days.

PLAN: I will lose 1.4lbs per week.

TASK: I will exercise and eat right today.

HABIT: Daily exercise and healthy eating.

All the Success, None of the Glamor

When people ask me how I lost 60lbs in 292 days, I tell them, "I made diet and exercise a habit." When young Marine Officer Candidates ask me how I went from a 195 PFT to a 300 PFT in 9 months, I tell them, "I made training for it a habit." It's simple, but it's not easy. And sometimes, it hurts.

My favorite illustration of Batman is this Alex Ross painting from 1999’s Batman: War on Crime. Batman is the archetype of human discipline; someone who has set huge goals, met every one of them, and is living his dream life. And it’s not pretty.

When you break down a dream into real tasks that you can do every day, you’re left with a list of things to do. And the person you dream of being is the person that does those things, every day, no matter what, out of habit. The first step you have to take to become that person is to do is start doing those things. No, habits are not glamorous, but reality rarely is. And along the way, it may even involve some pain. But in the end, it's your dream. Do you want to make it real, or keep it glamorous?

*ok, fine. I wanted to be Batman. Seriously. I had a cape.

Suck Days

There comes a time in any training program when you go off the wagon. There are days when you just can’t seem to make it into the gym. There are days when you can’t get your meal planning together and you end up at In ‘N Out. Suck days happen and they happen to us all. But what separates people who meet their goals and people who don’t meet their goals is whether those suck days become suck weeks, suck months, or even years lost to not training and eating like crap. But if you know suck days are going to happen, and give yourself some slack, you can plan ahead to prevent them from getting out of control. 

It’s Your Fault

Other than “they happen to everyone,” the thing you need to know about suck days are that they are your fault. It wasn’t that you “ran out of time.” Only you know yourself and only you are in complete control of your day. You knew it was gonna be a tight day; you could have easily woken up a little earlier or done something ahead of time. But you didn’t. And now it’s midnight and the only clothes you’re changing into are PJs. It’s your fault you f-ed up, but there’s no sense in beating yourself up when there’s an opportunity to learn from it.  

• What are the days that are tightest to schedule? Write shorter programs on those days and wake up 20 minutes early. Hit the five movements, get your heart rate up, and get on with your busy day.
• Doesn’t look like you’ll make it anywhere near the gym? Grab a kettlebell and put it in your trunk. Or find a pull up bar in a nearby park and bang out a bodyweight-only set of exercises.
• What is your priority? You know you feel better, get more done, and are more pleasant to everyone in your life when you are on the wagon. So make training an appropriate priority and don’t be afraid to sacrifice a little to get it done.

Boredom 

Other than travel, boredom is the leading cause of suck days. When you start a new training program, there isn’t much that can get in the way of a good lift or run. But as the novelty wears off, it’s easy for training to start dropping down your list of priorities. And once training is lower on that list than reruns of “How I Met Your Mother,” you have little hope of meeting your goals. But it’s ok. You can either beat yourself up for not being more disciplined or admit that you need to mix it up and plan accordingly.

• Bored of that super awesome program you started a week ago and starting to skip things? No program is so great that it can make you stronger while you aren't doing it. And training, any training, is better than not training at all. So don’t be afraid to mix it up. Programing is not dogma. You can change whatever you want if it means you keep training. But before you go scrapping everything, ask yourself this question from Pavel, “What do you want out of your strength program? Strength or entertainment?”
• Only really like doing cardio or bicep curls? Do them! Do a session that is just the things you love or just do them first thing. It will jumpstart your desire to train, and once you’ve cooked yourself on the pec machine, maybe you’ll feel like throwing in a deadlift or a mobility drill. You know, since you’re there.

Out of the Habit

Sometimes, usually as the result of travel or boredom, you get out of the habit of training. It doesn’t take much time. A week off might be all you need to get derailed, especially when motivation was low going into the missed sessions. And once things in your life gets crazy again, it can be hard to justify that hour for your body. Here's what you can do to get off the couch and back on track.

• Seems impossible to dedicate a whole hour to training? Then don’t! Grab a kettlebell and do 100 swings. Do as many push ups as you can in 5 minutes. Run up the stairs in your house. Anything that gets your heart rate going and your blood pumping, even if it’s only for 1/10 of your normal training time, will remind you how awesome it feels to use your body as a tool again. Do a little more the next day and you’ll be back on track inside a week.
• Can’t imagine yourself getting into your workout clothes when you feel that bloated and fat? Do a fast day. Stop eating after dinner and don’t eat again until dinner the next day. Drink plenty of fluids and take the time you’d normally spend working out to go grocery shopping for healthy food. Keeping busy will make you less aware of being hungry and if you shop hungry you’ll be more likely to buy lots of healthy food for the week. There’s no better jumpstart than a fridge full of healthy food that can go bad if you order takeout instead of eating it.
• Don’t feel any pressure to train? Tell everyone you know you’re going to the gym today. Put it as your Facebook status. Tweet it. Call your Mom and tell her that you are going back to the gym today come hell or high-water and you’ll get the motivation you need to hit it hard. Mostly because you’ll hear lots of positive encouragement from people, but also because if you don’t everyone will laugh at you.

From The Onion

The ABCs of Training

With rare exception, what most of my clients want is change. They want to change their body’s shape or function. They have a goal, and they come to me to help them attain it. Sometimes they have trouble articulating that goal and they need my help to even work up the courage to say it out loud. When a new client tells me she wants “toning and core strength, ” I hear, “I wanna look better naked.” When she tells me she wants to “lose 10 lbs.,” I hear “I wanna look better naked.” But I don't judge and no matter what the goal, there is only one path to achieving it: the direct one. When you’re with Coach Stevo, you’re training.

As I’ve talked about before, training is placing consistent, progressively intense stress on the body in order to illicit physiological changes during recovery that you have deemed to be beneficial to your goals. It’s not “burning calories,” although it does burn some calories. It’s not “working out” even though it takes work and, at least with me, is often outside. I call what I do “training” because the next question in your mind has always got to be, “training for what?” Your body is a tool that you are shaping for a purpose. That purpose is your own (speed, power, hotness, a PFT, the Olympics, etc.), but you always need to keep that purpose in mind. If you can say to yourself, “I am training for X” then you are more likely to do those things that you believe will improve your ability to perform X. You are also less likely to get distracted by the latest fads and chances are better that you will succeed. As Dan John says, “the goal is to keep the goal the goal.” But let’s look at the difference this mentality can make.

Gym? What’s a Gym?

Most of us do what we think of as training in gyms. Gyms sell convenient access to heavy things and showers to people who do not wish to make a formal investment. So really, gyms are more like libraries than bars, although you’d never know that by visiting them. Like bars, one of the most common things that people do in gyms is observe other people and judge them. This means that a lot of people who enter the gym unsure of their purpose or knowledge of how to affect their body go in and get immediately distracted by what other, stronger, hotter people are doing. But also like bars, very few people talk to the hotter people and ask them why they are doing what they are doing. This leads to lots of bad form and scattershot exercise choices that get reinforced over time by fear and ignorance.

The fix? Treat the gym like a library. You go to the library to learn things from books you don’t feel like buying. You know what you don’t know and you are there to learn it. You may even ask an expert for help. The gym should be no different. You’re training. You know what you want; you know how to get there; you are just at the location for the convenience. I’m not saying it can’t be an enjoyable space filled with interesting people, I’m just asking you to remember what you’re there for. If you spend more time at the gym talking than sweating, then you need to save your money join a knitting club.

Get Out of the Box

The most important thing that happens when you start to think about “training,” instead of “exercising” is that your head gets out of the box. Specifically the globobox gym that you probably go to every week. Training doesn’t just mean lifting. It doesn’t just mean cardio. Training means getting better at something and that can happen anywhere, anytime. I train people in parks and playgrounds, but I also give them homework so they can train in their apartments and in their offices. Training happens every damn day because otherwise it will never become a habit. If training never becomes a habit it will always be a struggle. So if you tie training to a certain location, then every time you are away from that location you will not train. The same goes for tools, clothes, or even rituals. I have had a client who thought that not being able to stretch her hamstrings for 45 minutes on a certain wall at a certain time before a session was a reason to cancel. Her hamstrings were not the problem.

The fix? ABC, baby. “Always Be Cranking.” There is always something to work on. Specifically, there’s always something you suck at. Most of us are happy to work on the stuff we are good at, but foolishly undo all our hard work by ignoring glaring weaknesses in our body’s performance. These blind spots are usually motor-patterns, mobility and soft tissue quality. The funny thing is that all of these problems can be easily cranked on without special shoes or a sports bra. I encourage all my clients to stretch, foam roll, and pattern (squat, hinge, push, pull, carry) wherever they find themselves. This usually means at home or at the office, where all you need is 24 sq. ft. and a lacrosse ball to get some serious work done. Throw in a 12kg kettlebell and a jump stretch band and there is almost no weakness you can’t crank on every damn day. You don’t even need to break a sweat; you just need to move a little. The key is remembering that you are training, not working out, not exercising. Training has a purpose and as Kelly Starrett likes to say, “there are no off days.” So keep moving; be aware of your body and its weaknesses; and remember to ABC. Because you’re not exercising; you’re training. And chocolate coconut almond super shakes are for closers.