Dear fitness experts – Stop acting like you are one in a million.
We’re actually a dime a dozen.
It’s time to stop pretending. Pretending like we’re the only one who ever got into shape. That we’re the only one who is good at deadlifts. That we’re the only one with big arms, great abs, or a great bench.
We’re not—we are a dime a dozen.
And within that dime—that group of fitness experts, there are so many different approaches, different diets, different workouts, and different stories.
So what? What does this mean?
It means that there is probably nothing special about your approach. This is as true for you as it is for me.
The truth is consistent effort isn’t nit picky and mundane discipline is very forgiving.
The truth is for every carnivorous intermittent faster there is a vegan who eats 8 meals per day every day.
For every expert training 3 times a week, one set per exercise, there is a another training 6 times per week with 40 sets per workout.
Yet they all look great… so what is going on?
The truth is, it is MORE than just consistent effort and mundane discipline
It starts with understanding that equal physical potential is a myth. It is a myth that we are all equal, that we all respond to training equally or nutrition equally, that we grow muscle at the same rate and lose fat with the same ease.
It is the myth of equal physical potential that causes our confusion; after all, if we all start equal and have equal potential why do some people get superior results? (must be the secret workouts and magical diets)
There is such a thing as being innately gifted. We are all gifted to some degree, and hard work unleashes this giftedness.
Here is your major take away, the TL;DR version of this post… consistent effort and mundane discipline unleash innate giftedness, however they do not create it.
This is as true in physicality as it is in intelligence.
Elon Musk is not smarter than me because he took some rare smart drug, or because he has a special secret way of “brain training”.
Elon Musk was born with innate gifts I don’t have, then work harder than I would ever want to.
[[ You could give me two lifetimes to do the research, and I still wouldn’t be able to launch a rocket into space. ]]
Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t just take steroids and work harder than me.
[[ I could take the exact same steroids and do the exact same workout and I would not look like Arnold. I would look like a bigger Brad Pilon, but not Arnold. ]]
The principles of nutrition and exercise apply as a generality, but the principles do not apply equally to all people.
When you look at the beautiful bodies on Instagram what you are seeing is the physical manifestation of innate giftedness, unleashed by hard work and a disciplined diet.
The mistake we make is that we think ALL we are seeing is hard work and a disciplined diet… we forget about the innate gifts… but the gifts exist.
We know some of the reasons why—differences in amounts of enzymes and receptors, hormones and their affinities, but there are countless other factors we still don’t understand.
Once we accept this, we realize that we can become an awesome version of US, but no matter how hard we work in the gym we can’t become other people.
Once we realize that we’ve done really well for us, and whatever level of innate gifts we have, it becomes much easier to be happy with the result, and to understand that we can pick the methods that best suit us, because it is the hard work and mundane discipline that unleash our gifts, not the minutia of the complexity of special workouts and magic diets.
And fitness experts, remember that while we’re all mostly average, we’re also likely all snowflakes in our own way, each of us having some level of innate giftedness that allowed us to create impressive enough physiques that we decide to show them off on social media. It is hard work and dedication, but combined with our innate giftedness 😉
BP
