Secondary Effect Delusions and Bicep Curls

Why You Need to Keep the Goal the Goal

A question I have received often of late is from young men who will list 3, 4, 5, 6 different "goals" they have for training, and what should they do and how should they train.

If that sounds a bit confusing, its because it is.
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I've gotten many schizophrenic questions in this style
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​"how can I train for boxing? But at home, or should I join a gym? Also I want gain muscle, I am wondering if fighting can be cardio, Also what do you think of BJJ x number of times a week, do I need to do extra things to improve mobility?? In your opinion, is boxing good for fat loss?..."

These questions have no good answer.

The reality is that you cannot reasonably train for multiple goals at once.

You can do anything you want, but you cannot do everything at once.

A common misconception and obstacle people create for themselves in their health and training is not being Clear and HONEST about what their priorities are

When you cannot identify and determine a specific goal, your sense making and critical reasoning for what your actions should be becomes murky

If you do not know what you want, then all choices are equal. You do not want all choices to be equal. You need to be able to filter choices and actions contextual to whether they serve the priority/goal/mission.
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A defined priority is an orientation and filter towards an outcome.

If you want to increase the probability of of success then, prioritize ONE goal at a time.

I'll give a very simple example of this.

Imagine you want bigger biceps.

This would SEEM straightforward; you should do bicep curls.

Biceps curls train the biceps. There is a linear, 1:1 relationship between biceps curls and bicep muscle growth.

But people fuck this up.

Some years back in the fitness industry, it became trendy to be "anti-arm training". Arguments were made that you didnt need to train arms to get big arms, you could instead do chinups, tricep pushups, dips, etc, and that would be sufficient.

Did this approach work? NO. For the majority of people, barring the genetically gifted, compound movements alone are not going to maximize arm muscle growth. Compound movements by default are not directly working the biceps or the triceps.

Why did people fall for this trend though?

Its something I call the Secondary Effect Delusion

Its a phenomenon when a person avoids taking direct action on their hypothetical goal, but still HOPES for an outcome as if they were.

So you’ll have someone whose goal is fat loss, but they are insistent on running a marathon or half marathon or 10k or 5k as the means to accomplish this.

This may seem conducive to losing fat, but these are in fact two different goals. Training for cardiovascular race versus learning How to train and eat in order to unfat yourself and be a healthier person…are not the same thing.
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​Another Delusion is the "Magic Program".

This is more fitness specific. This is the belief that there is a magical program which delivers on every single possible goal/desire one has, and that ALL things can be improved at once. Strength muscle power fat loss bringing up x bodypart flexibility mobility endurance, surely there must be some way to improve EVERYTHING together?

NO. There is NOT. You need to choose ONE, and train towards that ONE goal.

This is not about fitness or health, this a lesson for Life.

Life is complex, but it is less complex when you can identify the most fundamental and linear Laws that govern it. ​
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This requires paying attention and directing FOCUS to ONE THING at a time.

Learning Cause and Effect relationships is relevant across every domain of skill.

Those relationships, those laws, those principles, these things are only learned in a focused state.

From One Thing you can learn 10,000 things. That is a lesson itself, and is the essence of knowledge and mastery

From learning ONE thing you now have the model of mind to learn ANYTHING, as learning the one thing taught you what is required.

If you are not willing and resistant to Focusing on ONE thing at a time, your probability of success in anything declines considerably

Magical thinking is believing you can solve problems without intentionally solving the problem.

Or accomplish a goal without intentionally working to accomplish the goal.

Beyond fitness, magical thinking predominates in many many many areas of life.

Person A has a problem.

Person A identifies the problem.

Person A does not want to take direction action on solving the problem.

Person A instead wants to WAIT, and HOPE that some kind of non-direct, seemingly magical change takes place that solves the problem for them
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and/or/alongside

Person A chooses a non-direct, inefficient, unclear path of action that is more comfortable, familiar, non-confronting, and hopes that THIS line of action will have the secondary effect of solving the problem, without actually being oriented towards solving the problem.

Magical thinking is not doing SHIT FOR YOU other than wasting your time.

How much time do you want to waste?

IF your goal is Clear to you, then everything should be oriented towards supporting that goal.

I have now reached the point of redundancy in stating the lesson over and over again.

So ends the lesson