The other week I wrote about Ray Bradbury’s Zen instruction to writers and artists:
Don’t Think.
His cryptic suggestion came in a package with two other parts:
Work. Relaxation.
Work AND relaxation? How can this be?
Hold that thought and let’s shift gears for a minute.
Yesterday morning I smoked a double-body-weight squat as my max training single.
I had on Ol’ Blackie, my trusty belt, and, for the first time in years, I put on my pair of red-stripe knee wraps bought in 2002 and worn all of 11 times since. With the loss of body mass and me being old, reasonable supportive gear is no longer a nice-to-have.
The good news is, with money on the line and a couple hot girls nearby, I’m good for 160 kilos, and 170 is within the realm of the possible. Not bad for a 46 year old squirt who weighs all of 165 pounds with veins starting to show in his abs.
While I could hit those numbers in training, I don’t go after them.
What I CAN do isn’t the same thing as what I SHOULD do.
My max training singles aim for an RPE of @8-9. Hard but smooth reps, with a decent buffer from weights I can grind with money and hot chicks on the line.
I never take reps in training if there’s even the slightest chance of missing.
Figuring this out was the Holy Grail as far as ending and reversed all my many legendary injuries. I move better today than I did 20 years ago.
What does all this have to do with Ray Bradbury’s three words of Zen discipline? I’m glad you asked.
Work. Relaxation. Don’t Think.
I came to realize that my approach to lazy auto-regulation grew out of the advice in those words.
I do put in work… but it’s relaxed work. Like I recently told Max Aita, one of the daily-max-squat OGs who trained with a real Bulgarian coach, I’d even call it lazy.
I am lazy as all heck when it comes to hitting training maxes.
The more often you’re doing them the lazier you want to be. If I were doing squats more than three days a week, I would dial my top RPE down to @7, which is nearly speed work, and play it from there if I was having an on-fire day.
Since I only back squat and front squat once a week each, there’s more room to play with bigger bites. But I’m still in chill mode when I knock them out. I don’t go for the crazy psych-ups, yelling, slapping, angry doom metal, smelling salts, energy drinks… forget all that.
Chill mode.
Work. Relaxation.
Working turns into relaxation. Relaxation is how you do the work.
This I believe is where so many people go wrong with lifting. They follow the lead of jacked-up bodybuilders, who are genetic wonders and on everything but roller-skates, and believe that results require hours of agony under weight.
Nah.
Most folks after a lean-enough, strong-enough, good-looking, shapely, and vital body don’t need to do all that much.
Most folks do too damn much and with too little quality.
There’s another secret hidden in Ray Bradbury’s advice:
When the result stops being the most important thing, the result tends to take care of itself.
What you do, as far as exercises, set, and reps and all that jazz, does matter.
But the what is downstream from the how.
Quality is upstream from quantity.
Have I lost you? Almost certainly.
A select few will get it.
The rest will continue to struggle in vain, wondering why “this doesn’t work for me”.
This attitude correlates with lack of commitment and, frankly, a lack of desire to be anything more.
Most people are disappointments, and they wouldn’t be happy any other way.
So it is.
If that isn’t you, because you do have a little fire in you, you might do well to join us in our little community of go-getters.
Matt Perryman