Best Intentions
by Ben Callcott
Ok, you read the article, or listened to the compact disks and you even took the time to apply those motivational rules to your own life. You have a list of goals taped to the fridge just like the rest of us. What is that list doing for you?
Motivational tools are designed to assist you in the achievement of your goals but they can’t force you to achieve anything. Regardless of the various methods, all motivational tools work in the same way. They are designed to encourage intensity.
Intensity is the secret to success. Intensity is the only secret to success. Intensity……… is just a word.
You can’t pick up a bodybuilding magazine these days without finding the word intensity written somewhere in a training article but never, have I seen the term defined. This is an analysis of intensity as it applies to bodybuilding.
Training Intensity
The word intensity is most often used in relation to training and yet even here it remains an enigmatic term. What we do know about the concept is that it applies equally to all training regimes regardless of the variation in training methods. Dorian Yates championed the cause while using extremely heavy weights for low reps and only a couple of work sets per exercise. At the other end of the scale Tom Platz performed massive sets on occasion with more moderate weight. Both approaches were intense and both yielded results.
We also know that intensity is finite. It has to be finite because overtraining brings an immediate halt to gains. Once a particular workout has stimulated all the muscle fibres that can be recruited, additional effort is counterproductive. Intensity therefore, does not equal effort.
Intensity means concentrating throughout each and every rep to feel the target muscle working. It means monitoring rest periods between sets to ensure that recovery is sufficient to allow maximal effort but brief enough that additional fibres have to be recruited to complete the subsequent set. It takes time to develop this kind of intensity; it doesn’t come in a bottle.
The key to controlling the intensity of your training is knowledge. The greater the store of information you can assemble, the more tools you have to manipulate your workouts for maximum effect. Training and food logs are invaluable in the process of analysing how your body responds and recovers under various conditions. Similarly, the research of external factors, such as diet and training techniques, provides an endless supply of data to analyse.
So there we have training intensity and advice on how to achieve it. Will that get you the results that you crave? According to many magazine articles on the subject, it would appear so. I believe that there is more to progress than training intensity and the disappointing results of many dedicated trainers would appear to bear me out.
Quiet Intensity
Training is only a small part of the bodybuilding equation and other areas such as diet and lifestyle are also subject to intensity or the lack thereof. Quiet intensity is simply a measure of commitment. How committed are you to the achievement of those goals taped to the fridge? Whether they relate to work, family or training, if you are not prepared to do whatever is required to achieve them then they should not be on the list. That ‘whatever is required’ attitude is quiet intensity and it can be identified in the habits of all successful people.
Quiet intensity creates discipline. Discipline is not easy to visualise. It does not involve screaming at the mirror during a set of squats. At the simplest level, discipline is an approach to decision making. When faced with a decision between alternative actions that will have an impact on your progress, it is your level of discipline that dictates what you choose. Champions choose to pursue their goals more often than the rest of us. Having no beers Saturday night instead of ten is an example of the discipline that flows directly from an intense commitment to the goal of building and maintaining muscle.
Everybody has their own goals in life and some require a greater departure from the average lifestyle than others. This simple notion has given rise to a multi-million dollar industry. The fact remains that no-one can make you really want something that you don’t really want. If you do want to achieve something, then intensity is a natural reaction. Perhaps that is why it hasn’t been defined, the people who understand the concept don’t realise that others may not.