Monday, March 19, 2012

The Power Of Habit

Dan John is fond of talking about "free will", the limited pool of volition we have to spur ourselves to action. There's no doubt that reserving as much "free will" as possible to "keep the goal the goal" is critical to success, and habits are KEY to sparing free will for when it matters.

  "I know you've told this story a dozen times," the doctor said to Lisa, "but some of my colleagues have only heard it secondhand. Would you mind describing again how you gave up cigarettes?"
  "Sure," Lisa said. "It started in Cairo." The vacation had been something of a rash decision, she explained. A few months earlier, her husband had come from work and announced that he was leaving her because he was in love with another woman. It took Lisa a while to process the betrayal and absorb the fact that she was actually getting a divorce. There was a period of mourning, then a period of obsessively spying on him, following his new girlfriend around town, calling her after midnight and hanging up. Then there was the evening Lisa showed up at the girlfriend's house, drunk, pounding on her door and screaming that she was going to burn the condo down.
  "It wasn't a great time for me," Lisa said. "I had always wanted to seem the pyramids, and my credit cards weren't maxed out yet, so..."
  On her first morning in Cairo, Lisa woke at dawn to the sound of the call to prayer from a nearby mosque. It was pitch black inside her hotel room. Half blind and jet-lagged, she reached for a cigarette.
  She was so disoriented that she didn't realize - until she smelled burning plastic - that she was trying to light a pen, not a Marlboro. She had spent the past four months crying, binge eating, unable to sleep, and feeling ashamed, helpless, depressed, and angry, all at once. Lying in bed, she broke down. "It was like this wave of sadness," she said. "I felt like everything I had ever wanted had crumbled. I couldn't even smoke right.
  "And then I started thinking about my ex-husband, and how hard it would be to find another job when I got back, and how much I was going to hate it and how unhealthy I felt all the time. I got up and knocked over a water jug and it shattered on the floor, and I started crying even harder. I felt desperate, like I had to change something, at least one thing I could control."
  She showered and left the hotel. As she rode through Cairo's rutted street in a taxi and then onto the dirt roads leading to the Sphinx, the pyramids of Giza, and the vast, endless desert around them, her self-pity, for a brief moment, gave way. She needed a goal in her life, she thought. Something to work toward.
  So she decided, sitting in the taxi, that she would come back to Egypt and trek through the desert.
  It was a crazy idea, Lisa knew. She was out of shape, overweight, with no money in the bank. She didn't know the name of the desert she was looking at or if such a trip was possible. None of that mattered, though. She needed something to focus on. Lisa decided that she would  give herself one year to prepare. And to survive such an expedition, she was certain she would have to make sacrifices.
  In particular, she would need to quit smoking.
  When Lisa finally made her way across the desert eleven months later - in an air-conditioned and motorized tour with a half-dozen other people, mind you - the caravan carried so much water, food, tents, maps, global positioning systems, and two-way radios that throwing in a carton of cigarettes wouldn't have made much of a difference.
  But in the taxi, Lisa didn't know that. And to the scientists at the laboratory, the details of the trek weren't relevant. Because for reasons that they were just beginning to understand, that one small shift in Lisa's perception in Cairo - the conviction that she had to give up smoking to accomplish her goal - had touched off a series of changes that would ultimately radiate out to every part of her life. Over the next six month, she would replace smoking with jogging, and that, in turn, changed how she ate, worked, slept, saved money, scheduled her workdays, planned for the future, and so on. She would start running half-marathons, and then a marathon, go back to school, buy a house, and get engaged. Eventually, she was recruited into the scientists' study, and when researchers began examining images of Lisa's brain, they saw something remarkable: One set of neurological patterns - her old habits - had been overridden by new patterns. They could still see the neural activity of her old behaviors, but those impulses were crowded out by new urges. As Lisa's habits changed, so had her brain.
  It wasn't the trip to Cairo that had caused the shift, scientists were convinced, or the divorce or desert trek. It was that Lisa had focused on changing just one habit - smoking - at first. Everyone in the study had gone through a similar process. By focusing on one pattern - what is known as a "keystone habit" - Lisa had taught herself how to reprogram the other routines in her life, as well.
The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg
We all know people who have started the process of, literally, becoming different human beings by taking control of ONE THING. No, we're not curing cancer or eliminating world hunger, but it's not hyperbole to say that sometimes that single PR, or the confidence we've gained through increased competence in the weight room, can be the spark that lights the fire under us to transform our entire lives.

Related Reading:
Motivation Is Overrated - Squat Rx
Willpower (book discussion thread w. Dan John)
Free Will and Free Weights by Dan John

14 comments:

pantsaregood said...

I enjoyed this blog. Sometimes the smallest accomplishments can bring about huge changes in life.

I don't mean to be rude, but I was wondering if I could bother you for squat form critique at some point? I checked your YouTube channel, but it has been inactive for an extended period.

Boris said...

Not rude at all. Leave a link here if you want a prompt response - I don't use YouTube as often these days.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUl7VLoHO8o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX6b6zPYD3I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiCLbLSiVmM

I'm attempting to learn a proper low bar squat. The form Mark Rippetoe advocates gives me serious issues with GMing out of the hole, as well as quad-dominance.

Anonymous said...

Also, don't intend to double comment but my phone flipped out.

My cues are:
-Drive elbows under the bar.
-Sit back.
-Drive traps/head into the bar upon reaching the hole to force hip extension instead of knee extension.

Boris said...

I hope you're not disappointed, but it looks pretty good to me pantaregood. I noticed the duck-footedness right away, but it didn't look like an issue.

You mentioned GMing - I don't see that at all in those videos.

pantsaregood said...

I have incredibly overpronated feet. I have to squat in prescription orthotics or my ankles roll inward and make it impossible to "shove the knees out."

You're actually the first person in three years of form checks (of course, the previous years were long ago) who noticed my feet.

Thank you very much.

pantsaregood said...

I know you aren't the "DeadliftRX guy," but I understand you have some background in powerlifting. Would you mind checking my Deadlift form as well? I can't tell if I'm managing to keep my lumbar in extension.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlgjyOq6Xlw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APJlYj0dWpw


Also, today's Squats for good measure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzj78TWklzQ

Boris said...

Are the orthotics doing the job for you then? Do you wear them w. Chucks?

Those DLs look pretty good to me. Pavel talks about "prying open" a deadlift from the hips. Dan John talks about "the hinge". With heavier weights, things never look textbook perfect, of course, but focusing on keeping the back as ramrod straight as possible and feeling that tension build throughout the posterior chain before initiating the pull might be something to try.

The squats look solid. The set-up and re-rack are areas I'd be careful not to rush through, especially as the weights get heavier.

Anonymous said...

Well, the orthotics allow me to squat with proper knee tracking and walk without inducing awful plantar fasciitis, so they're working as well as I could expect. They allow me to push through the sides of my feet instead of my fallen arches while squatting, so it helps.

Thanks for the form checks. One final question: do you know of a way to build kinesthetic awareness in the lumbar? When deadlifting, I really can't tell if my back is locked.

Anonymous said...

Boris, wouldn't doing supermans help him feel the lower back activating? I think there was a Rippetoe article about this, people having a hard time feeling the spinae erectors tense.

- EdK

Boris said...

Thanks Ed. I had a long conversation w. Coach Rippetoe once on the phone and we talked about lumbar rounding etc. and one of the things he suggested was starting w. Supermans and then working from there. I think it's a good one to start with. Make sure you squeeze the glutes and external rotate and extend the arms to initiate the superman - some people tend to crank the lower back if they don't.

I have always felt that a "good morning/romanian deadlift stretch" , done properly, teaches most people how to feel the proper tension throughout the posterior chain. Even the "downward dog" (again, done appropriate to the purpose) can teach the lesson.

Anonymous said...

As a final question, what would you load my quads heavily.advise I use as a cue for my arms? "Elbows up" forces me to tip forward and load my quads heavily.

Any advice? Thanks for all of your help.

Boris said...

I have a post listed over on the right hand side of the site here entitled "Elbow Positioning When Squatting". See if that helps and get back to me.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY-wafs1T8w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPafVPCOR5o

Some deadlifts. The lightning is awful. I can see my back isn't set here. I'm getting frustrated at my inability to Deadlift properly. I can perform rack pulls, but I can't seem to get deadlifts right. Any stretching you would advise or alternate set up to try?

Thanks.