As Good As It Gets
YOUR GENERIC PROGRAM
8.57 am. Zero words written.
It’s been one of those weeks where I haven’t come remotely close to getting any writing done, and now, as I finally get to it, I have about as much inspiration as I do words.
The muse, it seems, has slept in, so you’re getting a reheated version of an older post. This one has been sitting in the archive long enough that most of you won’t have seen it, and for those who have, it bears repeating.
I’ve been beating the Youniversity drum of late, and if any of the recent posts have landed, this is where it goes next. It’s not quite as fundamental as what we’ve been covering—nothing is— but every bit as universal.
Displaying the human talent for post-rationalisation — justifying behaviour after the fact—we typically dissect our fitness and dietary struggles as some failure to perform the impossible, or at least the difficult.
That our success would be a given were it not for want of:
More discipline.
More effort.
More motivation.
More suffering.
There is much talk of trying one’s best. The obligatory reassurance that this is all one can do.
Uh huh.
Except failure is generally for want of nothing other than the same generic training program. Yes, I did just say that. And I am not even kidding. You’ll know me as rightly derisive of these cookie-cutter boilerplates, but in this instance, the pattern is snoringly predictable.
So here you go, a generic training program promising health and well-being for all. And we’ll follow it up with a quick assessment.
Ready?
• 3 x SETS OF GETTING OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY
Why 3 sets?
Because while this will never be a cure-all— you can’t ‘cure’ what is fundamentally the human condition— an awareness of it means you can at least mitigate it. As with any of our blind spots and biases, seeing the thing is most of the work.
But doing it once tells us nothing, and next to any well-worn alternative will be too easily brushed off as a fluke. As will the second. The third time, as they say, is the charm.
If we can overcome our natural inclination to resist something (resistance in this case to what is) and subsequently enjoy the benefit thereof—feeling much better— we start to take a harder look at our default settings, suspect they may not always be acting in our interest, and wonder if we might better start a new one.
And, the good news is you already have; 3 times is the beginning of a habit. And a habit will change your life.
This works both ways, of course, so beware the 3rd strike. Decide you're going to eat something one evening — a bowl of ice cream, or a bowl of anything — and one evening is no big deal. Two evenings, ditto. But after just three evenings, as I discovered recently with a nightly bowl of muesli, repetition rapidly becomes expectation and surprisingly hard to stop.
So that explains the 3 sets. What do I mean by getting out of your own way?
Well, rather than meekly accepting that health, fitness or dietary change is some bridge too far, the less comfortable reality is that most of what people claim to want is entirely achievable if you do nothing other than those things you can do. Easily.
Sure, we want to ask questions of ourselves— but we can ask them. A failure not of capacity but application, and one most bizarrely apparent in our— also human— predilection to spend considerably MORE time, money and effort in NOT doing the absurdly easy.
Like this:
Most of us carry tension in our shoulders and neck. We spend a lot of time hunched over a screen, shoulders creeping ever closer to our ears as fatigue and stress accumulate. Cue, pain. This likely describes ALL of you reading this at one time or another, so let’s conduct a little experiment:
Try this super-simple drill and help your shoulders learn to relax.
The clip is less than 3 minutes. Well less than half of you will even watch it. For those who have made it this far, now set yourself a reminder to do this drill every few hours while you’re at work— even just twice a day. Including the time it takes to set the reminder, you're looking at under a minute of effort upfront.
I reckon we now have roughly 5% of our starters remaining. People who, I’ll remind you, are in regular, if not daily, discomfort for precisely this reason
Of whom perhaps 3% are likely to see it through to any meaningful outcome— i.e. ‘shoulder no hurt now.’
Translation: Near invisible effort = No more pain.
Any takers?
Thought so.
But this only describes half the problem. Because precisely 100% of you will, at some stage, find yourself in front of a doctor, physio, osteopath or chiropractor, explaining this pain in your shoulders and how ‘you’ve tried everything’. You’ll receive the relevant treatment modality thereof, and then you’ll be given a series of rehabilitation exercises that will look, more or less, exactly like the drill above. Except you’ve paid 150 dollars for them.
You’ll typically shop around at this level, getting treatment and seeking second and third opinions, all at 150 bucks a pop, but you won’t do those exercises either.
So eventually you’ll end up in front of a specialist, where you’ll now pay 500 dollars. This time with no treatment, but the same exercises.
To be clear, I am not conflating a trainer’s advice with that of a qualified medical professional, and to get the obvious disclaimer out of the way: where pain is present, you should seek appropriate medical advice.
I am pointing to a standard and predictable pattern - a pattern in which many ills reside. But nor do I pretend to be an exception, and if I am any less guilty, it’s only because I am made more aware of this through seeing it in those I work with.
- I don’t like doing —insert X — so I’ll seek another answer.
What do you think the specialist is going to do? Specialisation confers a rarefied level of expertise, not magical powers.
- Don’t worry about those pesky exercises, I’ll just touch here and here, and voila, pain-free.
The price tag suggests it, but no, you’re getting exercises. The same exercises you haven’t been doing from 6 months and many hundreds of dollars ago. The same exercises that, done diligently, would have had you sorted by now.
There is but one exception: You need surgery. Okay. Guess what you're getting (ideally before and) after that.
Exercises.
One factor does make a difference: each link further up the chain carries more professional weight, and thereby makes advice ‘easier’ to follow in that you are more assured of its efficacy.
Fair enough. But your body would have given you the same answer faster and cheaper than anyone else. Besides, if you follow a protocol diligently and don't respond, that's useful information and informs decision-making up the chain. But not the outcome.
You’ll get different exercises.
Because exercise fixes the problem. Not reading about it. Not doing it a few times and giving up. Not even doing it until it stops hurting. But doing it until it’s fixed and a pain-free, full range of motion is restored.
Exercise is as good as it gets. And it ain’t getting any better. Nobody, no matter how high you climb, has a better answer for you.
At some point, and in some instances, they may have a different answer for you, but not a better one. Because if you recognise that exercise is curative— as opposed to palliative— it’s something for which you can only be grateful.
You’ll save yourself a lot of everything if you stop looking for an escape clause. And stop looking to others for things they can’t give you.
Steel yourself and take inspiration from the fact that every fitness and aesthetic goal that anybody in the ‘general fitness’ population (i.e., you and me) might be striving for is achieved through nothing other than doing the easily doable.
But it won’t do itself.
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The 2026 intake for Leftfield Youniversity begins June 19th, applications close Friday, June 5th,
Enjoy your weekend
- OLI