Month: January 2023

A Tentative Theory about Why the New Testament is so Revolutionary

As many of my recent blog posts do, this one starts with: I was recently having a conversation with a brilliant friend, and I was excited when I was forced to think about something in a new way. I love that feeling! Not only do I get to play with a new idea, I get to do so while sharing it with a treasured friend!

The conversation had made its way to our religious upbringings, although I don’t remember exactly how we got there; part of the joy of discovery. My friend Lyn was raised in the Catholic Church; I grew up mostly in the Episcopal Church of the late 70s and early 80s, and went to a couple of years of Catholic school, so we had much common ground. Lyn made an observation that immediately resonated with me: “I never quite understood how Christ’s suffering was supposed to absolve me of my sins, 2000 years later.”

It was an Aha! moment – I have frequently felt the same way, though I hadn’t ever articulated it so clearly. And as we shared our experiences with the popular interpretations of this idea, the idea itself seemed to get weaker and weaker. So many people seem to take the idea of Christ’s sacrifice as a license to live life how they want to, secure in the knowledge that their sins will be forgiven, so no problem! Isn’t that convenient?

As a “not an actual historian” who likes to read history (see the Story of Civilization series of posts, soon to be continued) and as a “not as actual Bible scholar who hasn’t read the whole book yet” who is interested in how religion helps weave the tapestry of culture, I took a stab at an idea about what the real value of the Christ story is, and what makes it so historically unique, and indeed revolutionary, that it remains powerful even in diluted and misunderstood forms two millennia later.

A Brief, and Probably Inaccurate, History of Polytheism

For many millennia, before the advent of writing and of history itself, mankind told stories about the gods. A frequent modern interpretation goes something like this: “people in the old times weren’t very smart, so when something they didn’t understand happened, or something was scary, they made up silly little kid stories about unseen and very powerful gods to explain it.” Of course, I think our ancestors deserve quite a bit more credit than this rather condescending view affords them. The same Greeks who had a multitude of gods and myths knew the Earth was round and measured its circumference to within 1% of the actual figure. With a stick. (Eratosthenes) The same Egyptians who had a multitude of (very similar) gods and myths built architecture more beautiful than anything built today, and aligned the pyramids to geographic north with incredible precision, again within 1% (Imhotep and others). Never mind that modern people are so mystified with how the pyramids were built that many people rely on a deus ex machina (Aliens!) to explain it. Similar examples can be found in every major culture, whether in India, China, Persia, the Norse lands, etc.

So what would it look like if our ancestors were actually much wiser than we commonly give them credit for? We might interpret the old gods and myths something like this: complex stories, rich in symbolism, much of which few modern non-scholars recognize, that served to transmit the wisdom of the centuries about how to navigate the difficulty and complexity of life. From this perspective, we see the purpose in each character, and the lesson in each story becomes richer and more meaningful. Yet we are left with gods, who although immortal and very powerful, are imbued at the deepest level with very human flaws and foibles. Zeus the philanderer. Hera the jealous and vengeful wife. Bacchus the immoderate partier who never grew up. Diana the goddess of both love and war (what a rich topic that is!). Vulcan, the forger of weapons with the tender heart whose gift is to appreciate beauty and whose curse is to remain outside its grasp. Hades, the guardian of the darkness. The cast of characters is nearly universal across cultures and across time. Yet in one respect, they aren’t exactly Gods as we think of them. They aren’t perfect beings distinctly different in character from humans. They aren’t superhuman; they are only super-humans. Human in temperament and character, but super powerful.

The Old Testament God

In my limited understanding of the Old Testament, we see a transition from polytheism to one God. But to me, the God of the Old Testament is again a super-human. He is jealous. He is vengeful. He demands sacrifice. He requires praise. Like the Greek gods, he frequently walks among humans on Earth. He judges whether the sacrifice is worthy and punishes swiftly and harshly if it isn’t. He wipes out entire cities. He turns people to pillars of salt. He even becomes so disgusted (is there a more human emotion than disgust?) that he wipes out all of humanity! Have we not, in the Old Testament, merely merged all of the old gods into one new, more powerful but still very human, god?

Of course, this is not to say that the Old Testament doesn’t contain nearly endless wisdom about the experience of being human. In fact, in its symbolism and story, it is extraordinarily rich and complex, and undeniably wise. Yet it seems that a large majority of the stories are meant to warn us of the perils of certain choices. The distance between an offering made from hard work being found unworthy to resentment, anger, vengeance, and nihilism is but 5 short verses in the tale of Cane and Able. How applicable to life, even today, that one should take notice when one finds himself feeling resentful, because that road can become very dark, very quickly, with great and harmful consequences. Likewise, the tale of Job reminds us again that sometimes virtue, instead of being rewarded, is punished, not just by other humans (as is so frequently the case), but by god and satan, or perhaps just the stark reality of life.

The New Testament Christ and God

Which brings us to the Christ story, which I recently heard described by Jordan Peterson as not only a tragic story, but technically speaking, the most tragic story possible. Here we have the most virtuous person, probably ever, who is being led to execution precisely because of his virtue. And he’s going to be executed in the most excruciatingly painful way possible, with a death deliberately designed by world’s global superpower to punish the worst of the worst. On top of that, he was betrayed by his friend. For money. Even worse, the authority in charge of the ordering his execution knows he’s innocent. And even worse, so does literally everybody else. And even worse, he is publicly shamed, mocked, and humiliated on the way to his execution. And even worse, Pilate offers clemency to one of the criminals being crucified that day. And that guy is guilty. And literally everyone knows it! Perhaps the only thing that I can think of that is more tragic than Christ’s experience is that of his mother, Mary, watching and witnessing all of this with grace. This act, of giving his life for humanity, is what gives rise to the interpretation that his sacrifice, specifically being punished precisely for his virtue, acts to cleanse humanity of our sins. But what of the rest of the Christ story? Might it fill the gap and also transform the Old Testament god into a different and new and more important and more useful character altogether?

In Christ, we find not just sacrifice, but we find an aspirational example, counter to the old gods in their flawed multitudes and the old god with his many, very human flaws. Through the journey of the Gospels, we witness an example, not of the perils of failing to properly balance the order and chaos in the world, but of how to live a virtuous life, to our full human potential in a way that improves not only our own lives, but our families’, our communities, and the world around us. In the process, the Old Testament god himself is transformed, and becomes a new God who is not a super-human, but who is superhuman in the sense of having transcended the inherent and unavoidable flaws of being human. And how revolutionary is that, that the Christ story transformed the nature of God himself?

We now have God as a loving father, a God who guides rather than demands, a God who forgives rather than enacting vengeance, a God of infinite patience who encourages us to thrive, a God who asks only one thing of us: do your best. And then gives us an example of what that can look like. And in so doing offers the challenge that it is hard work. And shows us the reality that we will be unfairly and perhaps tragically persecuted for it, not by him, but by life, by the condition of being human. And that we can handle that tragedy with grace. And that accepting the personal, individual responsibility for doing our best is worth it, precisely because it matters deeply, in the sense that each person who does so makes the world a richer place for everyone else. And in that way, God provides a purpose to each of us. A purpose not to please God, but a purpose that is pleasing to both God and to humanity.

And isn’t that way better than a life spent merely trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid tragedy and perhaps enjoy some momentary hedonistic happiness?

Hierarchy of Fitness Priorities

If you have a clear view of the purpose behind your fitness journey, and make actionable goals that align with that purpose, this hierarchy of priorities may be useful as you do the work, with discipline and intensity, necessary to improve your fitness, your lifespan and your healthspan.

In another recent conversation, this time on the social medias, I offered a framework for how I think about fitness training, which for me these days is mostly weightlifting, but also includes much walking and some other cardio and mobility work. I thought it might be useful to develop those ideas a little bit more and share my goals and my approach with this audience.

My Current Fitness “Goals”

As I recently shared in the What About Happiness post, I’m not the biggest fan of goals, per se, but it works well enough as a heading.

Early last year, February 28, to be precise, I had one of those moments in which I discovered that my ongoing rationalizations were bullshit. Specifically, I had been focusing on a specific strength goal, at the expense of overall fitness for about a year. And I’d gotten FAT. Not like Chris Farley fat, but more like John Belushi fat. Of course, I had rationalized that a little fat was to be expected when chasing a strength goal. And also, one can eat one’s way into a bigger bench press – weight gain translates very well to strength on that particular lift for most people. On that day I was up in the DC area for a dinner with some friends. The afternoon before the dinner, I went to the gym with one of my friends for a deadlift workout. I pulled a solid single, given my lack of focus on that lift at the time. But my friend Jack called me out – “nice pull, fat boy.” And he was right. The pull was ok, but damn, I was way fatter than I should have been.

The next day, I stepped on the scale. 252. I’m 5 ft 10 and I’m reasonably muscular from many years of lifting. But this was not good. And I had scheduled an anniversary cruise for July 31 with my wife. Being fat for cruise would definitely not be good. It was time to reframe and get serious.

What started as “I’m going to get as close to having abs as possible before cruise” quickly evolved into “I’m turning 52 this year. I’m fat. I have one chance to get in as good of physical shape as possible and then hang on for all I’m worth.” Later in the fall, witnessing some people close to me struggle with mobility issues and an injury from a fall, the importance of being fit and resilient came into very clear focus. In my teens and 20s, I think I overvalued physical fitness and undervalued mental and moral fitness. During my 30s and 40s, I think I mostly undervalued physical fitness, but made great progress on the moral and mental. It has now become clear to me that physical fitness is now at least as important to the pursuit of Eudaemonia as the moral and mental. The circle of life has come around, carrying with it added experience and a more mature perspective.

I started March 1, managing my own nutrition and exercise plans. Then with about 10 weeks to go before cruise, I got nutrition help from an IFBB Pro Figure competitor at our gym. By the time we left for our cruise, I had lost 30 pounds of fat. I’d probably also put on about 7-8 pounds of muscle. Didn’t quite get to a 6-pack. But we’ll call getting from a keg to a 2-pack progress. And I felt bold and confident on cruise, at the spa, and on South Beach. It was good to feel like the “in shape guy” again.

On the eve of the cruise…

After cruise, having just turned 52, I decided to test my deadlift again. I just wanted to see if I could still pull 10x my age. And it went up smoothly. So I added specific deadlift programming to my routine. If I could pull within 30 pounds of my lifetime best, 6 months after my last deadlift, well, then maybe it’s worth actually training the lift to see where I can take it. You know, one last time.

From January to July, I had been dealing with some shoulder issues in the shoulder I’d had repaired in 2016. Between the shoulder pain and the weight loss, my bench numbers collapsed. I finally saw an ortho doc in July, who helped me manage the pain so I could sleep through the night again, just in time for vacation. But his initial diagnosis of a rotator cuff tear wasn’t encouraging. Luckily, since then, I saw another ortho doc – and though there is a very minor tear, surgery isn’t required, and with a return to my rehab exercises, the shoulder feels better, and my strength is back as well. So, I added a bench press goal to my plan and started programming for that as well. You know, one last time.

So here we are on the back side of the holidays, and there was a bit of food binging and a few pounds of fat regained. Not a big deal, since it will be gone in a couple of weeks. But it’s time to recenter on goals again.

Long Term Goal: Get in as good of shape as I can this year, within the demands of the rest of my life, and build the discipline and habits to maintain/improve it for as long as possible. How I define this is roughly:

  • Sub 12% bodyfat (visible abs), to me, this is a marker of strong metabolic health and nutritional discipline, both of which are preventive for metabolic disease later in life (the deadly combo of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s)
  • Maintain strength within 10% of lifetime best and set new lifetime PRs on specific lifts. Maintain high lean muscle mass. For me, these are both important for maintaining the ability to participate fully in daily life as we age, and protective against falls and injuries in later life.
  • Get resting heart rate back under 60. Strong cardiovascular health supports avoiding metabolic disorders and also supports maintaining an active lifestyle
  • Return to running /jogging. I haven’t done these in many years, for a combination of reasons. But I used to enjoy them, and I don’t think I can be a fully capable dad and husband if I can’t run after dogs, grandkids (someday), or bad guys

Short-term Goals. Train specifically to hit lifetime strength goals in the bench press and the deadlift. Potentially compete in a master’s powerlifting meet in May. This will depend on a few factors. Not really important, but a nice to have.

Scott’s Hierarchy of Fitness Priorities. This is the real meat of the post I set out to write, despite the long pre-amble. I am frequently asked by both young gym-goers and peers how I approach training. The younger folks are usually looking for the ‘secret’; the more seasoned folks know the ‘secret’ doesn’t exist – so they ask for the ingredients. As fitness social media is full of top 3/5/10 things to do to achieve X type posts, I thought I’d take a little more general view of fitness and share what I think are the most important things to get right.

Here are what I view as the five most important ways to think about building and maintaining fitness:

1 (most important): Consistency. Don’t miss days. Even if you have to modify/scale back, don’t miss days. This isn’t to say that sometimes, due to life, illness, or injury, that wisdom won’t dictate that a day off is in order. But it does mean that discipline over long periods of time will win the game. As an example, Michael Phelps, after he became an Olympic champion, had a five-year period where he was in the pool at least once every single day. Every. Single. Day. The day after the Olympics? In the pool. Christmas day? In the pool. Every single day. This requires a certain mindset that seems to elude many people these days – discipline. One doesn’t have to want to do the work. One doesn’t have to feel motivated to go do today’s workout. One simply has to have the discipline to do what is necessary. It’s what adults do – we delay gratification because we know that the end result is better in the long run, for us and for those we care about. Be consistent.

Boatloads of progress are lost by people switching up their programs every month or two and switching up their nutrition four times a year or more (bulk/cut cycles). Once you have a program that aligns reasonably well with your goals (see below), stick with that program exactly as written for a year. After a year, you might be smart enough to make one minor change. A big part of consistency is allowing the process to work. Once the beginner gains are done, progress won’t be linear. Plateaus will happen. And you will delay or stall your progress more by changing a bunch of stuff all at once than by staying consistent and boring, doing the damn sets and reps, and letting the process do the work of breaking that plateau for you. When you become advanced enough to need advanced/elite training methods, you will know it. And it’s a lot later in the training journey than most people think. When the young guys in the gym ask, “how did you get that strong at bench press?” my answer is always the same. Five pounds at a time for many years. Be consistent. Effective training is almost always boring and repetitive.

2- Recovery. In my social media post, this was the nutrition section, but I think that was too narrow. Recovery includes sleep, nutrition, mobility, hot/cold treatment, body work, etc. Sleep – if your sleep is dysfunctional, it will severely limit your potential in every area of your life. It’s that important. Get a study and get it fixed. Nutrition. In our 20s, we could outrun the fork. In our 50s, we can’t. Good nutrition will improve progress more than anything else except fixing sleep. The beginners and intermediates in the gym talk about which program they do; the advanced guys and the big guys talk about nutrition. Mobility – have enough mobility to support good technique (see below) and prevent injury. If you don’t know where to start, go to a yoga class or google “Kelly Starrett Supple Leopard.” The others (hot/cold, body work) are mostly fine-tuning. If you discover that they help, and you have access to them, go for it!

3- Technique. Especially for people new to the weight room: let strength be a byproduct of practicing good technique. Because good technique will not happen whilst practicing strength. Be careful here. A lot of famous trainers are terrible and teach injurious techniques and exercises. Likewise, a lot of the instructional videos on the internet are terrible. See my How to Select a Personal Trainer post to increase your odds of getting good coaching. Perhaps I should consider a How to Find Good Fitness Advice on the Internet post, but I’m not sure I’m ready to go down that rabbit-hole. DM me if you want specific recommendations. There are some useful universal principles for good technique.

  • In lifting, like in boxing, all power starts from the floor. Build tightness from the floor up anytime you are lifting and your feet are touching the floor.
  • Likewise, learn how to brace your core – you can’t transmit force effectively through a shock absorber.
  • Learn how to grip the bar properly – this fixes a multitude of downstream problems, especially in the bench press.
  • Gravity acts 100% vertically – whenever possible stack the weight and your joints to apply force to the bar 100% vertically.
  • Know the difference between normal lifting movements and ballistic movements and keep these separate. Don’t try to make a curl a ballistic movement; don’t try to do slow-motion kettlebell swings.

Developing technique is a continuous process of attention to detail and learning. Roughly, it follows three phases. Beginners learn how to move the weight through a desired path of motion and develop the neuro-muscular coordination to generate efficient movement. Intermediate lifters learn how to apply the principles above to move their body through the desired range of motion and generate intensity to develop strength and muscle growth. Advanced lifters learn how to use the weight as a tool to put tension on the muscles in a specific way to generate a specific training stimulus in order to cause the muscle to adapt in the desired way. For a great example of this advanced intentionality in lifting, follow Mike O’Hearn on Instagram.

Make every single rep as technically masterful as you can. Use the best technique you can achieve on every rep of every set, especially warm-up sets. You can do one thing under light loads than you can’t do effectively under loads over about 85% of max – think. When the weight gets heavy, and you can’t think about more than one technique cue, your body will do what you taught it to do during all of your other sets. If you taught it to be sloppy during warm-ups, you will get sloppy under heavy loads. When you get sloppy under heavy loads, you will get injured. When you get injured, you blow up your consistency. When you blow up your consistency, you lose months or years of progress. Make every single rep, especially your warm-ups, as technically masterful as possible.

4- Intensity. Be intentional in your training. This can be hard sometimes, because effective training is almost always boring and repetitive. Learn how to generate brief periods of great intensity when the program calls for it. And learn how to turn it back off between sets. For cardio, learn how to focus on technique while hitting your HR zone with precision. Make it a game.

5- Programming. This is the sets and reps, the miles/yards/HR/intensity/intervals. Unless you have very specific goals in a particular domain (like a national level or higher competition), it matters way less than most people think. Find or build a program that aligns reasonably well with your goals and use it as the framework for doing 1-4. There are thousands of good enough programs for free on the internet and probably also thousands of great ones. Don’t major in the minors here. And don’t switch programs or nutrition plans until it is really necessary. See consistency above.

Conclusion. If you have a clear view of the purpose behind your fitness journey, and make actionable goals that align with that purpose, this hierarchy of priorities may be useful as you do the work, with discipline and intensity, necessary to improve your fitness, your lifespan and your healthspan.

In strength – S

How to Select a Personal Trainer

You are highly competent in most aspects of your life, but you want to get better at being physically fit. The problem is that 92% of personal trainers are terrible and it’s really hard to find one who isn’t. Use this guide to find a great fit.

Tips for success from a former personal trainer.

Tis the season for renewing commitments to personal growth. And for many people, that means a renewed commitment to “getting in shape,” whatever that may mean for each of us.

Yesterday, my friend Alex wrote a very thoughtful Facebook post about fitness that I engaged with, and that sparked a personal phone call based on some specific questions he had about his personal fitness journey. Because we live about 600 miles apart, and I can’t personally assess his fitness relative to his goals, I couldn’t offer any specific advice on exercise selection and progression. So, the conversation became less about his personal fitness goals, and more about how to select a personal trainer who can help guide him on his journey.

Who this article is for: In my time as a personal trainer, and in my decades of experience in competitive and recreational fitness, I’ve found that the people I see in the gym in my age group (born late 60s- early 70s), break down into roughly four groups:

  • The first group I call the Lost Boys/Girls. They go to a personal trainer, or more frequently a group fitness class, because either they want to do something for their fitness (something usually being better than nothing), or they want to be able to tell the story that they have a personal trainer/fitness group. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I see these folks week in and week out, for many years, generally doing the same stuff at the same intensity and making little or no progress.
  • The second group are the Socializers. They seem to have a personal trainer because it gets them out of the house and they have someone to talk to for 30 minutes 3x per week. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
  • The third group are the Gray-Haired Warriors. These are usually former competitive athletes of some variety who have a solid knowledge of how to train and eat for results. They set goals and make progress. They never work with a trainer, and almost never have a work-out partner. These lone eagles come in the gym, nearly every day, and just get the work done. They are typically in the top 5-10% in fitness in their gym, and for their age group, they are even more exceptional. They also have been in your gym long enough to know who the good trainers are and who the idiots are. Their advice is probably a cheat code to finding the right one.
  • The fourth group are the folks who really want to make progress toward some specific fitness goals, usually something like “I want to improve my health and fitness so that I can remain healthy and engaged in life as I get older.” But they don’t have the background of our gray-haired warriors and aren’t sure where to start. If they don’t find a Gray-Haired Warrior mentor or a really good trainer, they usually end up in the first group, but longing for more.

This article is for the people in the last group. You are highly competent in most aspects of your life, but you want to get better at being physically fit. The problem is that 92% of personal trainers are terrible, it’s really hard to find one who isn’t, and you want to avoid slipping into the purgatory of group one.

How to Select a Personal Trainer

So how do you find a great personal trainer? One who won’t just walk you to a series of machines and tell you to do 3 sets of 10, while they guffaw at the latest TikTok trending video and mumble the occasional empty word of detached praise? One who won’t try to indoctrinate you into their particular cult-like fitness niche, whether it matches your goals or not? One who won’t program idiotic, injurious movements with little benefit other than having been featured on the latest color glossy magazine cover?

Interview. I know those three free training session coupons are burning a hole in your pocket, but before your first training session, interview the trainer. After all, this is the person you want to help you achieve goals that are important to you, and not hurt you in the process. They work for you. A good trainer will be more than happy to discuss what your fitness goals are, why they are important to you, what your fitness history is, and what limiting factors you may have (injuries, old and new, mobility challenges, medical limitations, etc.). If they aren’t happy to have this conversation, move on to the next candidate. The trainer should listen actively, and should ask clarifying questions to ensure they understand. They should be able to restate what you told them. These sound like simple communication things (and they are), but they are critically important.

Red flags at this step: not willing to have the conversation, including we’ll talk about this after we get started; failure to listen actively and attentively; attempts to shoe-horn your goals into their preferred program.

Yellow flags at this step: offers simplistic advice without assessing your fitness (see next step); talks excessively about their credentials (beyond something like – yes, I can help you with that).

Assessment. After your prospective trainer passes your interview, schedule the first training session. A good trainer will use this first session to assess your ability across the relevant aspects of fitness relative to your goals. For weight lifting, they should assess your basic movement patterns, including at a minimum a basic squat movement, a basic hip hinge movement, a horizontal pressing movement, a vertical pressing movement, a vertical pulling movement, and a horizontal pulling movement. These assessments should be done initially with no load or minimal load (unless you have a decent training history – like a couple of years in the gym). A thorough assessment may require adding load to see where form begins to break, but should not approach a maximal effort. For monostructural cardio (running, biking, rowing, etc.), a few minutes of moderate Zone 2 effort should be sufficient to assess a beginning trainee. The goal of this training session is not to induce a training response. It is to assess the starting point.

Red flags at this step: trainer doesn’t do an assessment (this can be sorted out during the interview while discussing the first session); trainer tries to use machines to do the assessment (cable type machines are OK for pulling movements); trainer ignores any injuries you reported and insists that you do painful movements.

Yellow flags during assessment: trainer attempts to correct form during the assessment, beyond the minimal necessary instruction for a novice to perform the assessed movement.

Programming. At this point, the trainer should be ready to recommend a program for you to follow that takes into account your goals, your current abilities, and any limitations. The program should incorporate elements to help you progress toward your goals. I’m being pretty non-specific here, because there are a multitude of possibilities, depending on the person. Some principles to consider:

  • Is the program relatively simple? For most beginner and intermediate trainees, the program should be based on progressive overload and linear progressions. Unless you are an advanced or elite trainee, you don’t need wave periodization or more complex training methods. If you are advanced or elite, you know it already, and this article isn’t for you.
  • For weight training, since this is where most people have questions, the program should be primarily based on compound (multi-joint) lifts or appropriate variants for the trainee. These are the same types of lifts discussed in the assessment section – squats, hip hinges, horizontal and vertical presses, horizontal and vertical pulls. If you have limitations that prevent you from performing any of these with non-injurious form, then the trainer should be designing a routine with progressions of the main lifts and/or related exercises to build the primary lift. For example, if a trainee can’t get into a safe initial position for a deadlift because they are unable to maintain a neutral spine position, the trainer should be looking at something like 45 degree back extensions and core bracing exercises to build the ability to maintain a neutral spine position before introducing the deadlift.
  • Does the program integrate with your lifestyle? Is it achievable? For most people seeking general health and general purpose fitness, something like 2-3 days of weight training for 30-60 minutes, 2 hours per week of Zone 2 cardio, mobility work appropriate to the trainee, and maybe one session of high-intensity cardio (like a Tabata on the Air Bike) every week or two is more than sufficient.
  • Did the trainer discuss nutrition as part of the plan? Did they go deeper than calories-in/calories out? Did they discuss that scale weight is only part of how you look and feel, and that losing 5 pounds of fat and also gaining 5 pounds of muscle will make most people look MUCH better than just losing 5 pounds of fat? Did they discuss realistic expectations for long-term fat loss (about 1 pound per week is sustainable) and muscle gain (about one pound per month for non-enhanced trainees)?

More Red Flags. I mention these because I see them ALL THE TIME in commercial gyms, largely because magazines and influencers, who are chasing clicks and follows, have discovered that flashy, complicated, fancy stuff sells over boring and effective hard work.

  • Any trainer who wants you to deliberately be unstable with an external load (holding a weight of any type) should be summarily dismissed as your trainer. I could write an entire post about this particular flavor of personal trainer idiocy, but I won’t. I’ll just sum up thusly: 99% of the time they do this to improve the trainee’s balance, which they sometimes also sell as “strengthening the little stabilizer muscles.” While balance is an important component of fitness, I have found that being stronger naturally improves my balance, and if I need to work on balance as a skill there are programs, usually based in yoga or gymnastics, that are very effective without the disproportionate risk of doing balance under load. Why would you want to hold a heavy iron weight over some part of your anatomy, especially your teeth and throat, and then deliberately put yourself into an unstable position? Here are a few pictures of some of the dumb exercises I’m talking about:

If you are morbidly curious, you can find plenty of videos of people breaking ankles (bosu squats), breaking wrists when the ball pops (presses on the ball), and dropping the bar on their face/neck (feet up bench). In general, for beginning and intermediate trainees, these exercises are nothing but risk incurred for a reward that can be found elsewhere.

  • Trainer doesn’t understand physiology/kinesiology. The simplest way to spot this red flag is if the trainer is trying to get you to move the weight in an ideal path relative to the exercise itself, and not relative to your particular proportions and leverages. If you aren’t sure, and you are struggling to execute an exercise as the trainer is instructing, ask the trainer: is there something I should be doing to adjust the exercise due to my proportions? They should be able to explain how your build/proportions/physiology relate to the exercise and what adjustments, if any, are necessary. If they pass this, then it may be that you don’t yet have the training experience, proprioception, or body awareness to translate their instructions into the actions they are seeking, and the trainer should adjust their cuing to help you make progress. If they get frustrated and head down the path of “you just don’t get it” or “you aren’t very coachable” or “I’ve never seen someone struggle with this before,” time to find a new trainer.

Conclusion. Selecting a trainer is difficult, because most of them are unqualified for the job, and those that do have official certifications are frequently still not skilled enough to help you without creating unnecessary risk. So the burden falls to you to find a good trainer. I’d encourage anyone to ask the advice of the most fit people in your gym – they will have a pretty good idea, and probably some pretty strong opinions, about who to avoid and who to seek out. Then apply this template to ensure a great fit.

In strength- S

What About Happiness?

Goals, Systems, and Identity

I was privileged to have a great conversation with a brilliant friend recently. Emily is someone who is an exceptionally high performer. She’s at the top of her chosen profession. She has a successful and fulfilling marriage. She also runs a non-profit foundation. She has two kids who are doing very well. She runs a global mentoring network. She exercises, meditates, and prays daily. She also is on the school board, church board, neighborhood board… I probably left out a few things.

Her observation was that she has achieved every goal she has ever set for herself. She’s wise enough to understand that the universe gets a vote in those goals; that is to say that the outcomes weren’t fully in her control and that to some degree luck and fortune amplified her efforts. Yet, she finds herself struggling with a really hard question: I’ve achieved every goal I’ve ever set for myself – now what? I don’t want to keep chasing goals to find happiness.

A voracious reader, she set out to look for answers and read several current books on the topic. But still, something wasn’t connecting.

In one of those moments where an insightful question causes the listener to connect dots previously left unconnected, we stumbled on an idea. Perhaps there’s a progression to this, and Emily’s expectations haven’t quite caught up with her progress.

We started with goals -discrete problems we will solve on a particular timeframe, such as “I will lose 10 pounds by Memorial Day.” The problem with goals is that happiness lives on the other side of achievement. So we set a goal, we paint a picture of how happy we will feel, and how we will feel happy, when we attain our goal. This picture serves as motivation to get started, and provides the ‘why’ to generate the dedication to stick to it.

Everything is going great until… the day we achieve the goal. Perhaps we give ourselves a moment of the happiness we imagined. But very quickly, one of two things happen. Having arrived, we set a new goal. Or worse, we celebrate by reversing our progress and have to set the same goal again! (For instance, celebrating losing weight by indulging in pizza and cookies!). Very quickly, happiness moves back over the horizon of goals. Of course, it is also possible that we never achieve the goal – either due to factors within our control or factors outside of our control. Feeling that we can’t achieve happiness because we can’t achieve our goals because of factors outside of our control can lead to some very dark, very nihilistic places. Not good.

Scott Adams famously (but probably not originally) suggested a solution. Implement systems rather than goals. James Clear made essentially the same recommendation in the very popular book Atomic Habits. Instead of “I will lose 10 pounds by Memorial Day,” a systems statement lives a level of abstraction higher. A systems statement might be of the form “Every day, I will exercise in some way, even if it is just a brisk walk.” The systems idea is that if one builds habits and patterns, then those habits create opportunities to succeed at a variety of pursuits. And some of these might not be opportunities that one could plan and make goals for, because the future is too unpredictable. A famous example is Steve Jobs. Jobs took classes in college that he thought were interesting, even though he didn’t know whether they would be useful in the future, and if so, how. He thought calligraphy was one of those interesting things that he wanted to learn more about. Because one of Jobs’ systems was to learn new things about diverse topics, he was able to connect his knowledge of calligraphy with his knowledge of computers and his brilliance at marketing to make the first PC with proportional type fonts – the MacIntosh. But Jobs couldn’t have planned to build the first Mac and then worked that plan into a list of goals, one of which would have been ‘learn calligraphy while in college.’

Where is the happiness in the systems model? I think it has to be in the joy of creation. The feeling of ‘Aha!’ when ideas and skills, previously separate, combine to create something new and, hopefully, valuable. So what’s the problem with that? Well, most people want to feel like they are working toward something meaningful. We are stimulated by challenges because we know the direction our efforts are leading, if not the end result. But if all we feel are challenges, without direction or the guarantee or even probability of that meaningful ‘Aha!’ it might be a lonely, barren journey. Even worse, it could devolve into the “Ants Marching” (Dave Matthews Band) problem wherein we do everything we are expected to do, with no hope of joy at the end of the journey. Another dark place.

Serendipitously, while we were discussing the systems approach, I mistakenly phrased an example as “I am the kind of person who exercises every day.” And here was a fun ‘Aha!’ moment. This is an identity statement, not a systems statement. It isn’t about a habit, it is about being or becoming a particular type of person. Emily quickly recounted how her mother used identity statements to help her succeed. If she was struggling in math, her mother would remind her that “you are the type of person who can do well at this.” And then when she succeeded “of course, you are a person who is good at math!” Brilliant!

Identity statements quickly led us to remember Aristotle’s virtue ethics, because Artistotle’s virtues can be phrased as the type of identity statements most people would like to aspire to. For example: “I am an honest person.” Or: “I am a courageous person.” Or even better: “I am a prudent person – I deploy the right virtues correctly in the appropriate situations.” Where lies happiness in the virtue model? The Greeks had thought about this so deeply that they had a special word for it: Eudaemonia. No such word exists in English. The closest might be “human fulfillment.” Even better might be “the feeling of deep fulfillment that comes from deliberately living a virtuous life.”

So our tentatively-developed model seems almost like a set of conditions or ways of living one might be able to progress through. From goal-setting and achievement, with its brief and fleeting rewards, to building systems and habits for improving ourselves and helping others, with the attendant greater but unpredictable joys, to practicing an identity as someone who consciously pursues becoming the most virtuous and capable version of ourselves, with the result of achieving human fulfillment. In this model, Emily was consciously in the systems mindset, although she rediscovered that she already knew the identity/virtue mindset, and she realized that she was seeking the wrong feedback system. Emily discovered that she was still trying to measure happiness, even though she is already well along the way to fulfillment. To Eudaemonia.