The Greenhouse Effect
A FITNESS HABIT NURSERY
Much of modern life is a problem disguised as a solution. A truth we all know, a truth we can feel, but a truth that, if it ever surfaces above the noise, is only immediately subsumed by more of the same.
A world that flatters, flattens, abstracts, and distracts—reducing us to passive consumers of our existence with shattered attention spans and aching bodies courtesy of systems promising ease but delivering exhaustion.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in fitness. A quality fundamental to our engagement and enjoyment of life, reduced to a commodity with all autonomy outsourced to devices, apps, and experts. We follow protocols without understanding why they work, or even if they're working, forgoing all understanding and connection to body and mind in favour of meaningless metrics or mimicking madness.
A perfect storm of influences and influencers combining to, intentionally or otherwise, lead us down a fitness garden path, to near-universal frustration and failure that is not a bug of this formula but a feature.
We interface not with our bodies and minds but with ‘solutions’: an infinite range of diets, programs and services that promise results— saving time, money and effort— but are only a further, frictionless, estrangement from ourselves.
With body and mind scrambled— should we desire it at all— we treat fitness like a series of disconnected tasks, chasing quick results with fleeting motivation that, besides not leading to any desirable physical outcome, only fuel a corresponding collection of self-defeating mental traits — impatience, anxiety, insecurity, fragility and dependence— making fitness ever more unlikely but further bleeding into every other facet of our lives as well.
So if we’re clear-eyed enough to acknowledge it’s not only what we intend but everything in our lives that elicits an adaptive effect—that produces an outcome in body and mind— such that everything, all the time, is training, the starker reality still is that under this conventional approach to fitness we are making a concerted effort only to be physically and psychologically worse.
To be so disconnected from our bodies, from any understanding of them, that the idea of ever being fit, much less staying there, doesn’t just seem unattainable but something unreasonable.
A fond memory, if that. But something for other people.
Not someone like you. With your life.
And that is a dreadfully sad conclusion to reach, but one that, like all endings, can signal a beginning.
The start of a very different garden path.
And by different, I mean the polar opposite of everything described above. Not another ploy or panacea to slot into an already broken framework, but an antidote to the entire way of thinking that got us here in the first place.
MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY
How does your garden grow?
The same as every garden grows: seeds, sunlight, water, soil, and time.
All of them. In the right dose, at the right time.
What might be the analogs to your body and mind? Sleep, food and exercise, for starters.
All of them. In the right dose, at the right time.
There are more, of course, but that will be our approach. Not to be different for the sake of it, to be clever or contrarian—nor even because this metaphor closely maps the reality of gardening. But because it isn’t a metaphor.
It isn’t like that, it IS that. You can stress and strain, and you can huff and puff until you blow your house down, but you cannot change your body.
You can only create the conditions under which the desired change will occur.
And if you want the TLDR— as this approach is merely the observance of all relevant realities, this is not a solution, it’s THE solution.
Everything else is, in some shape or form, a sideshow.
You set the stage for change, and by a focus on inputs, you trust the outcome will take care of itself. Like gardening—assuming quality inputs, it will.
And they are quality inputs. Exercise, nutrition, sleep, recovery, play, stress-relief, just to name the movers and shakers, in quantities that can’t yet be described as enough.
I am not going into the specifics here— that’s for participants— but I will make the point that this is NOT about realising your fitness dreams— at least not in this program.
It’s about building the means to all ends.
It's about experiencing the power of collective and cumulative actions all pulling in the same direction.
It’s about reaching an escape velocity that will free you from the mire of the mainstream approach because every other way seems inferior.
Because it is.
It’s about building a practice from the ground up and nursing a series of habits from seedlings to the point they begin to take care of you. So the end is just the beginning.
And that is the promise of the practice. Not that you’ll get fit— but, of course, you will— but that you will never be unfit again.
The standard predictable pattern, forever restarting, the grand gesture and episodic on/off cycle is not a descriptor of fitness—even of the temporary kind.
Symptomatic of the absence of skills and the requisite mindset, this signals unfitness.
Here, you don’t finish. You get cut loose.
The idea of stopping will seem ridiculous.
Because it is.
All sure signs that this quiet administering to the needs of body and mind has done what it always does.
By following a clear order of operations, you’re connecting tactics to principles. You’re no longer a black-box. You’re learning. Not with a textbook or even a teacher, but simply by tuning in.
It’s the short-term implementation of strictly long-term behaviours. You can modify any or all of them and, indeed, that too is the point of a practice— that it’s yours. Not so that you can do what you love—or any other nonsense— but that you can meet the demands of your body and mind in a manner that suits you best.
And you will love that. But, like any first draft, sketch, or prototype, the idea here is to give you something to edit, modify, and shape.
Not because it needs ‘fixing’. But because that’s what you will do forever. That IS the practice. That makes it yours. Never set in stone, but always addressing your needs. In your life.
We all have different ideas about fitness and want different things, and because of this, the mainstream approach to fitness offers a world of variety. But whether they’re programs and diets or secrets and miracles, when not aligned with fundamental principles—or not aligned closely enough— this variety invariably leads to the same place: right back where you started.
But it’s not at all paradoxical to realise not only that if we all start on the same road we can get to very different places, but that this freedom only comes from constraint. From understanding that there is only one road.
You get an oak tree or tomatoes from the same things.
It’s not about grinding harder or doing more, it’s about connecting to body and mind in ways that are obvious. Undeniable. But before this connection is obvious and before you enjoy the ‘results’, you’ll first find that this is all about giving, not getting. You give what you need. And when you’ve done so, what else is there?
And immediately, the superficial, thin, empty, endless chase is over.
Replaced by a stable, enduring, enjoyable and intrinsically driven process of bottomless depth.
And, as sad as the idea of fitness seeming unreasonable is, it’s a sentiment frequently paired with the idea that we are too busy giving due care and attention to everybody else to save any for ourselves.
But if that’s the case, remember you too are a model.
By embracing the lie of my independent desires, I deceive only myself. But by rejecting the truth, I deny the consequences that my desires have for other people and theirs for me.
Luke Burgis
And you can be a useful model for those you care about, freeing them from the downward spiral described simply by demonstrating another way.
A better way.
And remember, followed faithfully, that can be the only possible outcome.
Not a theoretical idea, but the exact system that forms the foundation of my own fitness practice, and has been used, in whole or in part, for hundreds of clients for over a decade: A system that promises ease. And delivers.
Get your practice starter kit here. And with an unbelievable deal.
It starts Friday—of course— April 11.
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Enjoy your weekend.
- OLI
PS Your fitness test is on Tuesday. That rolled around quickly!