If you follow my content, you're probably a highly driven person who wants to succeed in training.
But what if I told you that it is much more effective to simply focus on not failing?
The Principle of Inversion
The principle of inversion is a problem solving approach. When dealing with complex systems (i.e. the stock market, or the human body) there are an innumerable amount of approaches that can work. However there are only a few mistakes that are certain to make us fail.
Most people start from wondering how best to succeed. By instead considering the few ways we could fail, and waterproofing our plan from those first, we are able to narrow the choices available to us. With continued practice, we could notice patterns and iterate based on what seems to work best within those guidelines.
Applying inversion to training
Let's take a really common goal: increasing your deadlift 1RM. There are so many conflicting ideas out there on how to do this, that they could confuse the hell out of you. Some coaches will tell you to deadlift against bands, others will say to do deficits, another will say deadlift 3 times per week etc. The trouble is, all of these approaches and a gazillion others can actually work, and clearly have for many people.
So, let's invert to simplify.
If you could design the worst plan possible, that would be absolutely certain to cause zero deadlift progress, or even regression, what would it look like?
Here's my '5 Keys to Deadlifting Like Total Shit™' programme:
Miss sessions regularly. Just train when you feel like it!
When you do train, make sure you rarely if ever actually deadlift.
When you deadlift, either keep it so light that it's not challenging, or max out so hard that you can't do anything productive in your next session.
Make sure to eat very little, and especially skimp on protein.
Get little to no sleep at all.
Okay so, what would the opposite of that look like. Let's call it
"You'll Almost Definitely PR if You Do This Programme" :
Don't miss sessions.
Train the deadlift consistently.
Use sensible weights that you can progress over time.
Eat enough calories and protein to support your training.
Sleep as much as you can to feel fully rested.
Smart, simple, consistent
When you do this exercise, something very interesting happens.
You write out the 'stupid shit that will definitely make me fail' list and find yourself smirking in full agreement. "Imagine anybody being this dumb", you tell yourself.
But then what happens when you write out the diametric, intelligent version? Does the list perhaps suddenly look a bit 'too simple', a bit 'boring'? Most of us avoid executing very simple things over a long period of time. It's boring. Instead, we like to distract ourselves with novel solutions to our problems. We fixate on the 1% surface level differences in the messages of popular coaches, when really anyone getting great results for normal people is doing the same basic stuff.
The positive thing about the inversion technique is that it shows us why so many approaches can work in fitness. There just aren't that many rules. So long as you stick to the ones we know are true, you actually have a lot of freedom to design the plan that excites you most and from there you can adapt it as needed over time.
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