Dirty Cheater

By Neil Anderson

(Over the years I've gotten a lot of heat for this article.  For the record, only about 90% of what you'll read below was even meant to be serious.)

The following is an ever growing list of cheats seen almost daily at GPP that, if applied, will hold you back. If max effectiveness and efficiency for speeding your way to Optimal Health is your goal for completing workouts at GPP (why else would you be here?) let us strive to eliminate the following:

The Chalk Cheat - Did you really need to chalk up to do 5 pull-ups? Really? Every single round? OK, if you were crazy enough to put lotion on your hands before you came to do a workout, you deserve to slip around on the bar – NO CHALK FOR YOU!!!

The Hydration Situation Cheat – C’mon, most of these workouts are only 20 minutes long. The notion that you may dehydrate before the end of this workout is more rooted in your suckery NOT your physiology.

The Target Cheat - In the middle of this workout it occurs to you that your squats aren't low enough. This is honorable. However, this discovery does not mandate your walking all the way across the gym to get a med ball target. Of course you couldn't just do the squats where you find the med ball. You must carry it all the way back across the gym before you begin squats. All the while you were on the clock.

The Groundhog Day Cheat – It’s the same cheat day after day…after day. Two things: 1. you will never get out of this cycle until you make a conscious decision and put forth the effort to do it right. 2. Your health and fitness will never improve until you cover #1.

The Prudery Cheat - In the middle of your burpees you must stop to pull down your shirt. In fact, you must stop after EVERY – SINGLE - STINKING burpee to pull your shirt down. After all you can't go showing 2 more seconds of skin to a bunch of people who really aren't looking and wouldn’t care anyway.

The John Hancock Cheat – We hate this one for two reasons. 1 – Storming to the board to make a mark after every round in an AMRAP takes more brain power than it would take to simply accrue several rounds and keep track of them in your head. 2- Most of the time after you storm to the board to make your mark, you KNOW you are cheating. Now guilt-ridden and ashamed, you hurry back to work without closing the marker.  

The Tandem Cheat - "What round are we on?" is the phrase that starts this 30-40 second cheat. Somehow it seems mandatory to stop all work while the two of you are considering this question of the ages. While you’re pondering, make sure you put up your fingers and pull funny faces at them.

The Life is an Open Door Cheat - Somehow it appears that the 25 seconds you spend finding a weight and propping open the side door of the gym is necessary for your workout success. I’m guessing it has something to do with the full ¼ degree drop in temp (only near the door) that this action affords you.

The Squeegee Cheat – Thank you for wiping the sweat from your brow and not letting it slop onto your neighbor, but you and I both know it doesn’t take a 20 sec stop in the action to do this.

The Kleenex Cheat – OK, we can clearly get all the way on board with this one. Take whatever time it takes to keep from horking a snot bubble onto the ground and/or from slopping it on a fellow Peep.

The Pinball Cheat – The floor is the floor wherever you use it. Bouncing around the gym looking to find the right place to pound out another burpee doesn’t make any sense. Burpees count everywhere you do them.

The Chiseler Cheat – It is hard to imagine that anyone saw you cut the corner on your run. Even harder to imagine someone saw you chisel your reps, rounds, sets or movements. But we do see. Others do too. You would never believe how many of you have been ratted out by a fellow Peep.  Look if you don’t want to do all the work, fine. You’re only cheating yourself. 

The Safety First Cheat – Oh no! The weights on the barbell you are using (with collars secured) slipped an inch! OMH! Now someone is likely to die! Make sure you stop whatever you are doing and fix this immediately. In fact, you may want to stop and adjust the weights and collars between every rep – JUST IN CASE! Oh, and heaven knows we can’t go doing dead lifts without collars. Every time this happens, somewhere in the world a kitten dies.

The Walkabout Cheat – On rep 10 of a 20 rep thruster set you drop the bar to take a rest and begin to walk away. Far Away. You just keep walking and walking until you've caught your breath. Problem is, now you have to go back. All the FRICKIN way back.

The OCD Cheat – In the middle of the workout you storm to the dumbbell section only to find there are no matching pairs close by. This is problematic. It costs you time. So, you think to yourself, “I should organize this section so that next time I come to it they will all be matching.” So you do. Here is the thing, as soon as you leave the area they will all get mixed up before you come back. I realize you have a disease. But it is NOT OCD! It is full-blown wussitis. You and I both know you are taking a break.  Get back to work.

The Kill the Music Cheat – Fine! You’re an artist. Your music is VERY important to you. You want to have great music to inspire you during the workout. Now shut up about the music and inspire us with some pain storm. Trust me, when you are going at max capacity you won’t even hear the music - no matter how sucky you think it is. BTW, they have these new things out called earphones.

The Sweet Home Alabama Cheat – “Turn it up” does not take 30 seconds of workout stoppage to say. And again, if you are listening to the music, you aren't going hard enough. You should be storming the workout so hard that a tornado could be tearing the building down around you and you wouldn't hear anything but your own heart beating and the trainer asking for faster, lower and more perfect reps.

The Listening to My Body Cheat – 90% of the time this is a stupid excuse for a break. Mistaking a raging case of wussitis for a potential injury is rooted in sheer self-indulgence and NOTHING else. IF you truly are about to suffer an injury, figure a way (we’ll help you) to work around it. The operative word here being – WORK!

The Miracle Ear Cheat – “Get lower” the trainer yells … after placing a target ball under you … while looking right at you …after getting your attention first …while standing smack in front of you … right in your personal space … while repeating herself 20 times … as you keep ignoring her rep after ugly, stinking rep.

The Stick-it-to-the-Man Cheat – Yes, it is clear to all of us that you are the supreme expert on all things exercise, health and fitness. You know everything there is to know about it and you won’t be needing ANY help, encouragement or advice from the likes of a mere GPP trainer or veteran while you are here (NOT) doing our workouts. You are a rogue. A true maverick. And you’ll do these workouts YOUR way and non-other. Dude, there is no need to front. We couldn't do all of it when we first started either.

Neil's Law of Reciprocal Pain

by Neil Anderson

The only thing as certain as death and taxes is pain. You're going to have it. From a health and fitness stand point, you only have about TWO choices for how you will receive your pain.

1. You can take it in small increments on a nearly constant basis (as in exercise, soreness and small injuries).
2. You can put it off by never exercising and/or eating right, and take it all at once (as in a debilitating disease or heart attack or stroke, etc).

I call this, "Neil's Law of Reciprocal Pain."

Pain comes around. It's like clockwork. You can try to put it off, but doing so just guarantees more of it. "MORE" probably isn't accurate. In truth, you really won't get MORE. You'll just get what's been coming to you - the stuff you have been putting off. Typically you get this all at once, too.

The other day I had an interview with a guy about doing a daily T.V. fitness tip (I didn't get the deal). As we talked, I was telling him some new exercises that he should try. Just about everything I told him to do, (deep push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, thrusters) was met with raised eyebrows and the question, "Aren't those exercises dangerous?"

This, I HATE.

Look, EVERYTHING you could possibly do for exercise is POTENTIALLY dangerous. You could workout with absolutely, impeccably, PERFECT form (whatever that is...) and still get injured and/or sore. It is simply part of the process. It is inevitable. Injuries are the one thing that all fit people have in common.

I absolutely agree that a person should get a minimal amount of training before they begin exercising. I absolutely agree that a person should strive to limit pain and injuries by becoming, at least, minimally educated before exercising. But this shouldn't cost much in terms of time or money. The internet is chocker-block full of useful suggestions on how to get into great shape in the safest, most effective way possible.

If you understand that pain and injuries are part of the process, you are probably better off. In fact, YOU are probably the person who is more likely to succeed at actually getting fit and healthy, because you have not limited yourself to the impossible.

I find that people who are pursuing pain free fitness are only pursuing a (another) lesson in disappointment and/or futility. Pain free fitness results - DO NOT EXIST.

Fitness is about overload. You must overload your body to make it become more fit. If you simply give your body work that is "quite manageable" - it will not change. It doesn't have to. It had plenty of reserve to complete the work you were asking it to do.

To understand how fitness works you have to understand how your body responds to exercise in terms of evolutionary survival. Exercise temporarily weakens your body. This is an emergency situation for your body. Your body hates to be weakened. Your body thinks that if it is standing with a group of others and a saber toothed tiger attacks while it is weaker (like it is after exercise) - it is more likely to be the one who is eaten. BTW, this temporary weakness also lowers your resistance to disease and illness.

Both of these are emergency situations in terms of evolutionary survival. Your bodies' response to this is to build you back up to full strength as soon as possible.

If you temporarily weaken your body consistently, as in exercising daily, your body will build resistance up. It will become stronger so that when you weaken yourself later, you will still have enough energy left over to fight off the saber toothed tigers and/or disease.

THIS IS FITNESS!

People who are "out of shape" don't need much in terms of exercise or intensity to see progress. Exercise for these folks doesn't need to be overly vigorous. It is therefore, inherently safer. Problem is, to get more fit you have to steadily increase overload. At some point, "just doing anything" isn't going to cut it. At some point, you'll have to push the limits of your endurance, strength, power, speed, agility and stamina.

Question is - how far should you push it? This is impossible to know and it is different for everybody. This leaves you with:

1) push too little and get nothing, or

2) push too hard and get some pain.

Neil's Law of Reciprocal Pain states:

Pain is inevitable. You are going to have it. If you are pushing hard enough to get into shape (as you eventually should) you simply need to embrace this fact. Therefore, life only REALLY gives you these two choices:

1) You can have a little pain - under your immediate and direct control - more often throughout your life through comprehensive exercise and active living, or

2) You can eventually have a bunch of pain equal to the cumulative amount that you have avoided - at a later date.

Note: This "later date" is to be decided by fate and is not under your direct control.

I'm a control freak. If I got to have pain anyway (remember, it's inevitable) - I'll take it on MY OWN terms, thank you.

Log-it

by Neil Anderson

There is no better way to increase your fitness and achieve your healthy goals than by posting times on this website and/or on the board at the gym.  There are several reasons for this...

1.  You can tell much more about your fitness by observing your times and weights as they compare to the last time you did a certain workout, than you will ever be able to know through bodyfat % or weighing yourself or by looking in a mirror.  Look, if your times went down and your strength went up, it only stands to reason that you improved both your fitness and your body.  Think about it.  Would your time on a half mile run really improve much if you are still carrying around a bunch of excess weight?  What information would you trust more to tell you the whole story about your progress, the scale or your run times?    

2.  There is something truly to be said for someone who is willing to put their results "out there" for the whole world to see.  What can you say about the people who do this?  

"These are the most successful people."  

Those who have the guts to put their egos in check and simply let the numbers fall where they may...and then be accountable for those numbers by reporting them honestly to a like-minded community of their peers are more likely to be the ones who are going to ROCK their healthy goals for the long term.  Think of it this way...most of us have got poor health habits that borderline on addiction.  Ask ANY recovering addict what the first step to successfully dealing with their problems is. It is HONESTY.  Becoming honest with yourself is hard to do without someone to be accountable to.  Let your community shoulder some of the load for you.  Let's help each other.  Start POSTING!

3.  Maybe YOU don't care to be accountable to others, but what about those who are looking for someone (a community of like-minded individuals) to be accountable to?  What about that person who has finally committed to take the bull by the horns and conquer this thing?  These people need you.  They need ALL of us. 

We as a community will have more influence on the success of others, including those whom we love dearly, by sharing our own successes (and failures) by posting our results.  By posting our results we are "leading from the front."  Any idiot can cheer another person on.  Cheering doesn't inspire as much as LEADING.  When you LEAD, others will follow.  When others follow, some will push to the front to become leaders.  It comes around and goes around as we all move towards our goals.  

Many of you have seen this in action.  How many times have you seen people go to the board before a workout to checkout the times of those who have come before?  Why would they do this?  Of course, they are gaining strength from others.  Have you noticed that the times get faster and the weights get heavier throughout the day?  These faster times and increased weights are a DIRECT reflection on the effort of those who come in earlier and "put themselves out there" for others.  We all owe them a debt of gratitude.  We also owe a debt to pay it forward to and for others.  

"You can never know how far you've come if you do not know where you started from"

One of the most common laments of the citizens of GPP..."I sure wish I could remember my last time/weight on this workout."  Go check out last week's comments.  Many, many said this very thing.  

Please do not fall into the trap of not knowing where you started.  Start posting your results daily.  Do it for your own success.  What if, like several of our citizens, you lost 5 lbs over the last 6 weeks but your clean and jerk went up 65 pounds?  Would the 5 lbs keep you motivated?  Maybe.  But, 5 lbs combined with an increase of 65 lbs on the C&J would tell the whole story, would it not?  

Then do it for others.  Look, I not asking you to sponsor anyone, or even get to know ANYONE'S name.  Simply post your times/weights/comments.  It is that easy.  You'll be surprised who is looking to you for inspiration.  Trust me, this kind of relationship is win-win.  In fact, when you factor in all those that you may potentially help the relationship looks more like: 

win-win