Lately I have been really amazed at the way the human nervous system is able to adapt to incredible amounts of stress and in turn mold the body into a machine efficient enough to do truly mind blowing things. For example the world record for the women's 48kg snatch is 97kg! That's basically 105 pound woman (my size Barbie) snatching 215 pounds (high school lineman). Obviously this is not done by packing on slabs of muscle and flexing in the mirror pretending like your strong because you are "pumped" have your non sweat stained hat ripped, big head phones, tank top, and you just bought a new pre-workout. No this is done by years and years of carful training. With surgical precision goals and extreme mental fortitude. The truth is basically anyone can get big if they just stick to a basic bodybuilding routine and are willing to eat a pant load of half decent food.
I don't say this in a disparaging way about bodybuilding but the truth is you will never get the level of adaption necessary for high level power output performances in you are following the stuff that has been hashed and rehashed in every bodybuilding magazine since 85', it's flat out too passive.
Most of of you reading this will probably nod their heads in agreement with that statement not knowing that I am in fact talking to you, yes you. Stop looking around behind you I mean you. The problem with most of us americans is that we have been programmed to focus on aesthetics so much that we have begun to gauge fitness, and sports performance on what it looks like or what we look like while we are doing them.
Do you think that while Nurcan Taylan was setting that record she was worried about if her shoulders looked like Cameron Diaz or her butt was just the right amount of juicy? If you answered yes to either of those questions don't look in the mirror for 24 hours you'll be ashamed. This may sound like I'm going to harp on women now but in reality men are just as bad. They ask, "Will doing these oly lifts get rid of my gut? Because I don't think so, I have to do crunches every day.... and that's what I've been doing for a month!" Well obviously it's worked because you don't still have a gut....
Anyway sarcasm aside what I'm trying to say is that we need to stop looking at diet and exercise as a means to an end for satisfying our narcissism. I know some people lift for the fun of it and some just want to be healthy, that's fine. I'm talking about athletes, real athletes who want to be the best at what they do. Or at least make the most of what God gave them, even if the genes aren't ideal.
I believe the best way to do this is to drop forget everything that you think you know about what an athlete is, what they do, and what they eat. Because the western lens that we view those things through distort the truth. So I'm offering up a new lens, a fresh lens. Ok it's not new per-say but it is quite novel to some people.
I propose that we focus all of our training, eating, sleeping, and supplementing; on the nervous system. So what does that look like? When you're training what are your goals? Does everything you do have a specific purpose? If I asked you why you were doing a certain exercise directly after you finished up working a classic lift for that day could you tell me? Could your coach tell me? When you're eating what are you eating for? Are you simply fueling muscles and vital organs, or are you ensuring you have the all of the building blocks available for necessary neurotransmitters, or are you just counting your macros and patting yourself on the back. When you go to sleep have you set the alarm far enough into the future that you actually experience all sleep has to offer, REM cycle and all? Does your supplementation support all of these things by filling in the cracks like mortar between bricks as it should, or is it a foundation because you're too lazy to cook and you want to watch Netflix until it's "tomorrow?" The phrase eat to perform isn't too far off but it is vague. I like "Eat to Adapt" much better. That is what we want. We want to be transformed. We want to unlock potential. That potential is stored in the nervous system and the only way to unlock it is train, feed, properly recover, and supplement the nervous system. Let's be honest if you want to be great you're going to have to romance that greatness out of that nervous system, and I'll be honest she's stubborn.
I will be writing more extensively on ways to focus eating, training, recovering, and supplementing on the nervous system in a 5 part series of posts so stay tuned.
315 power jerk recovery. Making sure that the old neurons are firing on all cylinders.
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