I was doing a little people-watching this morning at the gym while sucking wind between sprints on the air bike.
When my mind gets to wandering like that, ideas flow easily. It occurred to me that there’s a serious limitation holding back most of those people from getting where they want to go.
It isn’t anything to do with what routine they follow or their form or exercise choices or anything else like that.
It’s something hidden in plain sight.
We can unpack the nuts ‘n bolts of these steps to whatever level of detail you like, but at the highest level, my core mental model and methodology can be summed up in three steps:
1- Find what works
2- Do it
3- Stop wasting your energy and time on everything else
The major qualifier is in step 1.
What works?
Anything. Everything. Nothing.
The question has no meaning unless you can first tell me where or how you want to be.
If you don’t know or don’t care or only have a hazy dream-like feeling of “being less fat” or “looking gooder”, then anything and nothing will work for you.
Results begin with a precise clarified vision.
But the one I like most is step 3.
This is the most powerful step, and the one that the people never think about.
The major obstacles aren’t really about finding motivation (which is a terrible misunderstanding of human behavior) or “finding the time” (while you watch 23.2 hours of Netflix every week).
Those are symptoms that people believe are the problem.
What causes those symptoms is the tendency to do too much junk exercise.
If my workouts were anything like what I see most people doing in the gym, I’d be bored and sick of it too.
I’m talking about everything from goof-ball exercises that I can’t make no sense of… to the endless sets of endless reps with weights that wouldn’t challenge a house-fly… to a disorganized and unfocused routine that has no direction or purpose or focus.
That’s before getting to the unhinged addiction to the treadmills and exercycles.
Now and then I’ll see a poor soul who could use a little nudge in the right direction and I do feel sympathy for them. Between rank ignorance of body-shaping wisdom, and the ignorance which is made 1000x worse for people getting their advice from social media, it’s tough out there. I don’t give unsolicited advice, ever, but it’s sad to see.
The kicker is that these folks would benefit from a serious house-cleaning to get rid of all the junk. Junk exercises, junk sets, junk volume, just clean all that crap out. None of it helps you get better, but it does take away from productive investments of time and energy.
The less I do and the more focused I get, the better my outcomes.
That goes for lifting. It goes for cardio conditioning. It goes for eating.
Fewer moving parts, and throwing more energy and focus into the essentials, means better results.
Find leverage, and then hammer the levers for all you can get.
Leverage points can be positive and negative.
Imagine an engineer needs a massive flood of water running through a pipe, but there’s a blockage that only allows through 1% of what he needs.
His big win won’t come from designing new plumbing, or building a new bigger pipe. Those might be legit solutions, but only at a tremendous cost and delay.
Meanwhile there’s a simple, easy, high-return move right in front of him:
Remove the blockage.
Just like that, most people are getting in their own way by causing blockages in the flow.
YOU are the blockage. More precisely, your faulty beliefs, your ego’s attachment to your faulty beliefs, and your stubborn obliviousness to the fact that you can and should ruthlessly question every premise and presupposition about your present situation and do so constantly.
Contrary to popular opinion, a person is not stupid for believing X or Y or Z.
Stupidity is in the quality of the mental operations that led to believing X, Y, or Z… and to continue on believing it.
I’m always looking for the obvious solutions right in front of me. What can I remove, or jiggle around, or look at differently which will make this way more effective for a minimal cost?
Are people even remotely thinking like this when they do their workouts that leave them looking and lifting exactly the same, month after month?
I doubt it.
The dominant mental models at work in the fitness world are broken to the core, as I’ve said for years.
And that’s amplified by the tunnel-vision that can only see details, “facts”, “truth bombs”, tactics, tips, and techniques.
“But Matt, I don’t want to think. I just want to take action and get results.”
You’re saying this to Dr. Matt “Squat To A Max Every Day” Perryman, PhD?
The guy who has spent the last decade and more preaching action before theory?
Pshaw.
Look at my three steps. Step 1 is “Find what works”.
If “what works” includes a transformed perspective on how our bodies respond to stress and stimulus…
…because our false beliefs prevent us from doing effective work…
…then you’d best believe there’s a tremendous ROI on higher-quality thinking, pal.
It ain’t about either/or.
It’s about the levers where a little bit of attention returns an outsize gain.
A superior philosophy, methodology, and system of mental models is one of the highest-leverage moves to make.
I don’t know where I’m going with all that, or if it helps you out at all, but I am convinced that it is a central piece of the puzzle if you’re not where you want to be.
This is the kind of work I do with myself, and it’s what I’m teaching and consulting with others to achieve for their ownselves.
It’s where the real gains are going to be found, not in special workouts or fashion-trend diets popular online.
Most will do nothing with this info, even if they understand it (most won’t).
For the few who can, it’s life-changing.
Matt Perryman