This past weekend I was remotely coaching my friend Jane through baking her first loaf of sourdough bread. There were several points at which it was just impossible for me to describe the exact right step to take or how long to wait exactly between one thing and another. It made me think of another situation…

I’ve been looking at picking up a very old vintage Vespa as a restoration project. Something I’ve noticed play out over previous projects is that I do as much research as I know to do beforehand, but no matter how much I seem to do as soon as I actually get my hands dirty on the project I end up learning things that I wish I had known before I got started. The problem is, I don’t even know what questions to ask before I get my eyes and hands on it.

It all goes back to this concept you’re familiar with if you’ve been reading my writing for awhile: metis.

There exists an entire category of knowledge that is impossible to make legible and transfer from one person to another. No more can I describe all the subtle visual, olfactory, and tactile cues you’re paying attention to throughout bread making that you need to make adjustments based on than someone can write down all the specific possibilities and variables that could exist in a Vespa (or whatever) restoration project that could help you avoid a costly mistake down the road.

These are things that can only be learned through direct experience.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t find an answer to specific questions, but often times you don’t even know what questions to ask before gaining the experience.

What ever could this possibly have to do with fitness?

Your body and physiology is the ultimate example of metis in practice. No one will ever have or be able to have more direct first-hand knowledge of how it works, what it responds to, and so on than you. The only way to gain more metis is to go through the process, experiment, pay attention, take notes, analyze, and repeat. You’re only going to get so far, if you get anywhere at all, by looking for answers in articles or other forms of traditional, legible knowledge.

The only way to even know what questions to ask is to start the process.

The other day when I was at the airport I did something I haven’t done in quite a while, picked up a Men’s Health magazine for some light airplane reading.

Fitness people love to rag on the big magazines, and some of it is deserved for outrageously incorrect or faddish reporting. But I’d hold MH up as one of the better ones, with consistently great, useful content. If you were to pick up any random Men’s Health and do the workout(s) from it consistently for a month or two, you’d see results.

I happen to know this for a fact because over a decade ago I really got my start by tearing out a 12-week program from MH and doing it with religious dedication and consistency.

Anyway, the gist of one of the articles was that it’s beneficial, maybe even necessary, to force the body to adapt with extreme stressors. Holding your breath under water, extreme hot, extreme cold, etc.

This is a perennial idea in fitness that people talk about all the time, and find new and different ways to implement.

I’m not going to say it’s wrong, but I’d like you to question the premise for a moment.

Is it even possible to force adaptation?

Well to be able to force it would imply that it stops at some point. But does adaptation ever stop?

Was it forced to get the shoulders-rolled-forward, tight hips, rounded back posture of a desk worker?
Was it forced to gain fifty pounds of body fat over a decade?
Did Roger Federer force his right arm (dominant side) to be bigger than his left?

We could come up with countless examples of how adaption isn’t forced, it “just happens.” Adaptation is always happening, whether you want it to or not, and whether you think the changes that are happening are good or bad.

And if it can’t be stopped, then it doesn’t need to be forced.

To speak of forcing adaptation is just a catchy way of saying you’re operating or training at the extreme edge of your limits, which we know extremely well is not physiologically a good way to approach training. Even if you could force it, which you can’t, would it be a good idea?

Have you ever met a powerlifter who just trains at their 1 rep max all the time? Of course not. Strength sport athletes know that their money is in the sub-maximal training.

Think for a moment what it means if you’re always adapting, to everything you do? Doesn’t this apply just as much to the opposite end of the spectrum? To resolving movement issues that have developed after injury, or accumulated over time? Of course it does. You don’t need to force it, you only need to create the stimulus you want and the adaptation will happen.

This is something to think about the next time an article or someone is talking about forcing adaptation. If you can’t stop it, you certainly don’t need to force it.

I’ve never been particularly fond of “challenges” because of the mentality with which most people approach them. Too often, people approach a challenge with an outcome in mind. They do a Whole30 because they want to lose 10 pounds. They run a marathon because… they want to lose 10 pounds.

In most cases the structure of an arbitrary challenge isn’t the best way to approach the goal. A carefully considered strategic plan built around your own individual starting point and needs makes more sense.

But what challenges can be really good for are the things you learn in the process when you’re stuck into arbitrary constraints.

Take the Million Pound November challenge for example. Doing 33,333lbs of volume every single day for a month is at the upper end of most people’s capacity, if it’s within their limits at all. For where I am right now, it’s definitely at my upper end. The last time I completed the challenge it wasn’t, I was training a lot more and a lot harder and I was able to easily knock out 60k and 90k days to create a bit of a natural “wave” in my training – the way physiology actually works.

But now since I’m bumping up against my limits almost every day I’m learning some interesting things. Plus another arbitrary constraint is that I’m going to be traveling the rest of this week, which means I knew I needed to complete 500k by the 12th, so I could take 5 days completely off, and finish the other 500k in the last 13 days of the month.

And I’m smoked.

My hips are exhausted, my lower back is fried, and I’m more than ready for the break.

If not for that arbitrary constraint, I would have already taken a day or two off. But it’s interesting to see how my body is reacting to pushing on even when I know it’s not ideal. I’ve still been testing, and it has continued to test well, but I know that I’m on the edge.

What I’m curious to see is how my body reacts to a full 5 days off after such an intense push. My hunch is that it’ll be enough time to have a pretty substantial recovery, and I’ll come back to find hitting the same kinds of lifting days is way easier than it was over the past two weeks. Only one way to find out, as these things go.

Ultimately, I don’t care what the “outcome” of this challenge is because the reward is in the process and what I learn from it.

How’s your Million Pound November going, or what’s the last challenge you learned something from?