This video (hat tip) is about bodybuilder Kai Greene. Here is what Kai has to say about Bodybuilding…
A lot of bobybuilders go off track right here… I’m going to show you how it’s done… [first] you get yourself some Tupperware.
The point, as Kai drives home again and again and again is that he needs to eat every two hours every day. In order to do that he needs to always have food on him. In order to do that he has to cook it. Every day. To do that… well, let’s let Kai explain what it means to do that:
[you need to be able to] get up, cook you meals, pack them, have them with you and follow thorugh with eating them every two or three hours.
I’m not talking about focusing on how many grams of [protein, carbs, fat]… what I’m focusing on here is the development of character which speaks to your ability to follow through and start to string together days of efficient action on the very basic level.
…to have your food with you every day all day, in order for you to be able to eat on time and allows you to stay in an anabolic state. Now you start talking about the things that scientifically that can suppost cellular growth and muslce repair.
But if you are still working without the strength of character, without the ability to follow through, then all that complex converstaion about those sciences will mean very very little, will mean nothing to you.
…No one should stay over you: did you eat, are you on top of your schedule. Are you staying true to your path?
At the end of the day it’s just not important to everybody else. And if it’s more important to other people than it is you then there’s a large part of your better potential that will. not. be. tapped.
There’s often little that surprises in ‘inspirational’ videos: hero overcomes odds with hard work and perseverance and wins. The reality of high performance is of course that it demands an extraordinary tolerance of routine.
Put another way, I believe that success comes from an ability to do the shit that nobody else wants to do. Or refuses to learn how to do. Or thinks they can’t learn to do. But here’s the secret: apply time to most any problem and it will relent. Eventually. For problems with really juicy rewards, it takes longer than most people would tolerate.
That’s drive. It ain’t romantic. It is slow and really, truly, boring. Numbingly boring.
I find this idea… glorious.
Not Unreasonable 