I love my job. I love my boss, my employer, and my co-workers. I enjoy going to work and I enjoy being there. I look forward to it. I'm not kidding. But my boss and my department are goal-oriented. I think they have to be. I'm guessing all bosses and all departments are goal oriented. But I always struggle to make and keep and talk about goals. It just doesn't feel natural to me when deep down, I realize that the main key to success, mine anyway (if I have any), is showing up. At work, I could do better, I could work harder, I could be smarter and better and more competent and well trained. I wish I were. But I show up and do my best and have a good attitude. At the very least I have these things and they have served me well. I DO make the goals and talk about them and talk about meeting them. But I do this because I'm supposed to. The truth is I work hardest at showing up and being a team player and having a good attitude. And the beauty is I don't really have to work at these things.
The same is true for me in fitness and exercise. The truth is, I don't think I really have any goals other than doing it again today and tomorrow. I have typed a number of posts, especially lately, about progress towards goals. But I don't really have any goals. In strength training this seems strange or misguided, because the message always is that you need goals and you have to keep track of your progress and better yourself. Progressive overload. If you don't, you fail. What's the point in working out if you are not meeting goals?
Well, I don't really have these goals. Building muscle? Honestly, I don't really care. I don't want to be bigger. I don't want to take up more space. I don't have bicep or chest or abs goals, really. If anything I wouldn't mind being smaller and take up less space. But that's not really a goal either. Almost everything you read is based on building muscle, getting this or that to grow, bulking, lean muscle mass, cutting. Blah blah blah. I'm sick of it. I think it's a teenage male mentality and maybe it has to be in order to sell. That's one big reason I'd probably be miserable and horrible in a fitness career. I'd have to start talking about the same things. The same dubious goals and motivation.
I love and respect Mark Sisson and have benefited greatly from his work and read his blog every day and have bought and read his books. He says he has a goal of helping 1 million people and he wants to "look good naked". Why? What about the other 40 million people that need your help? Have you failed them? Look good naked to whom? Your wife? Part of being a wife is not caring what you look like naked, and whenever I'm naked with someone, there's not a lot of looking going on. Maybe you want to look good naked to yourself, but that's a moving target I would suspect, and "good" doesn't have a clear definition.
I talk about achievement goals like a muscle up or pistol squat, but the truth is, I don't think I even care that much about those things. To some degree they're parlor tricks; things to make people ooh and ah. They make ME ooh and ah. But I don't really work on them and if I did, I would be able to do them by now and I can't. I just don't really have anyone to impress.
I forget. I forget all the time. I forget that I don't really care about building muscle mass or doing a hand stand. So I forget and then I switch to body-part splits and keeping track and muscle-building dogma and maybe do weights and dead-lifts. Or I try to progress to a calisthenics crowd-pleaser. I forget that my real goal is to get and stay strong with minimal equipment and to keep doing this. I get convinced by all the noise out there that I'm supposed to be objective and work towards muscle and strength goals or else I'm wasting my time. But then I do remember eventually that I am doing this because I like it, it makes me feel good, and it's fun to wake up and imagine what kind of work out I might do today, rather than the nagging feeling that I have to nail that front lever or bench 275 by end of summer.
I love calisthenics because it's simple and beautiful. It's fun to watch and to do. Ever watch someone lift weights? Not pretty. Pretty ugly really. And watching someone bench 350 is really no more interesting than watching someone bench 135.
If I have any kind of notoriety or tangible success or advice-giving credentials about anything at all, it would probably be in four areas: bike-riding to work, intermittent fasting, natural hygiene, and calisthenics. (Possibly also minimal footwear but the jury's still out on that one. I DO it, consistently, and think it's a good thing but I'm not exactly sure why or what it's doing for me. More on that later.) I've been riding my bike to work and back more often than not for the better part of 13 years (I only know because I remember starting sometime around my 40th birthday). But I'm slow, upright, un-spandexed, and wholly uninterested in speed or "performance" (whatever that is). I'll never race. I don't want to race. I'm no faster today than I was yesterday or last year. I'm probably slower. My bike is heavy, comfortable, bag-laden, and made of steel, leather, cork and hemp. I have no goals other than to do it again, I don't know exactly what it's doing for or to my health, and I don't really care. Well, I do CARE, but I'm not planning to look into it. I show up and have a good attitude and enjoy the process.
Similarly, I've been doing body weight calisthenics every day for at least 6 years. I only know this because my family and I took a beach vacation in 2011 and it's the first time I remember trying to figure out how I would keep working out while away from home. How can I do pull ups? (Push-ups, squats, pull ups on doors....) As I said, I can't do a muscle up, but I can do a lot of push ups and am proud of that fact. I show up, every day. And I don't have too much trouble keeping my weight consistent and my pants waist size 32 and to not be fat despite my age and consistent transgressions (beer). I show up every day.
Similarly, I can count on one hand the number of "normal" breakfasts I've had in the last five years, and all showers are rinses for me. These may deserve their own posts, but it's not a struggle to do them, they benefit me greatly, and I can't imagine not doing them.
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