Enough Is Enough, Too Much Is Too Much

When I was growing up, my friend's dad liked to say, "More is better and too much is just about right." He said this in the context of engine power and always with a good helping of sarcasm. Unfortunately, I see far too many people say this in the context of physical fitness and with no sarcasm whatsoever. Fitness influencers are the biggest culprits of propagating this attitude and because they look shredded, a lot of people take them seriously. The problem is that the attitude of more is better leads to injuries. If you're lucky, they're temporary injuries you recover from with rest. If you're unlucky, they're permanent injuries or injuries severe enough to require surgery and physical fitness to correct.

A classic example of this are people who take perfectly good programs created and tested by trainers who have a track record of getting results for clients and athletes and then ruin them by adding more. For example, let's consider Geoff Neupert's free Dry Fighting Weight program. It's a solid program. I've run it with good results. It consists entirely of kettlebell clean and presses and front squats. This isn't enough according to some Internet experts. They complain that it doesn't work X, Y, and Z where X, Y, and Z are whatever their pet movement or muscle group is. Their complaint is followed by recommended additions. Some additions might be innocuous. They might recommend adding a few pull ups. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Then they'll recommend doing a bunch of swings or snatches after the day's routine. You might ask why since the program's cleans already handle the hinge movement. Then they'll tack on push ups because Dry Fighting Weight doesn't have any horizontal pushing. Now the program has morphed into something absurd. It's too much.

If you listen to Dan John's podcast, many of the questions he gets are listeners asking how to add things to his programs (as of late it's usually to the Armor Building Formula). This often results in Dan talking about the problem with chasing too many rabbits. If you don't focus your efforts on catching one or two rabbits, you won't catch any of them. If you focus on hypertrophy, you can achieve hypertrophy. If you focus on running faster, you can run faster. If you try to work on hypertrophy, running faster, throwing farther, jumping higher, swimming further, etc., you'll accomplish none of them. You'll put in a lot of effort for no appreciable gain. You'll be doing too much.

Too much in the context of this post means your effort interferes with your progress. Muscle isn't built at the gym. It's built in the kitchen and in bed. The gym is where you cause the damage. Recovery is where your body repairs the damage and bolsters the damaged portions to adapt to the new stresses they're experiencing. If you keep damaging your body without giving it time to recover, you'll eventually become injured in such a way that you can't continue strength training. Most of the people complaining about proven programs not having enough work aren't running their "improved" programs for very long. Funny enough they always seem to forget to post about how they were wrong and that they were unable to complete their "improved" program. I'm sure it just slipped their mind. Many fitness influencers also have an ace up their sleeve that allows them to do the absurd amount of work that they recommend: steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. Fitness influencers and those in their spheres of influence are often juicing. Some disclose it, but most don't. Juicing has severe long-term side effects, but in the short-term is greatly improves their ability to recover. It allows them to be stupid with their training and push the consequences down the road.

To use a tautology, enough is enough, too much is too much. You don't need to do an ungodly amount of work in the gym to realize strength and endurance gains. Performing clean and presses and front squats for half an hour three days a week is enough for most people whose goal is general physical preparedness. My strength training sessions as of late have been performing sets of clean and jerks for half an hour. Despite not doing enough according to a lot of Internet experts, my strength and endurance continue improving. It's also sustainable. By that I mean I'm recovering between sessions and haven't had a lifting related injury in quite some time. In other words, it's enough and enough is better than too much when it comes to physical fitness.