The Question that Broke the Internet: Ten Years Later

In a year where we’ve celebrated our tenth anniversary, I found myself reflecting on a question I posed early in our evolution. The question was meant to stir some thoughts and spark some questions on social media and it did. Here’s the question:

Which is better? In one case, the subject lives his/her entire life without training or making any considerations for nutrition. In the other case, the subject lives his/her entire life without training or making any consideration for nutrition, except for two years of meticulous attention to detail with the finest training and nutrition practices. 

Now, back when I posed this question, some folks took to the comments and answered a-matter-of-factly that, of course, “some training is better than none.” Naturally, the purpose of the question wasn’t to get to that very mathematical answer. The question forces us to consider a greater timescale and when we do so, those two years begin to lose their significance on health and fitness over the course of the entirety of the subject’s life. 

The question above is intended to have a follow up question, which is this:

If I asked you to begin a meticulous continuous stretch of quality training and diligent nutritional practices for the next two years, would that feel like a profound undertaking? 

Given the prevalence of six and eight week challenges and things like 75 Hard, I’d venture to guess that a two year challenge feels overwhelmingly long. Yet, even if you really got after it for two years straight, it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the timescale of your life.

Now, this thought provoking question isn’t meant to disempower or overwhelm you. It’s quite the opposite. There is a remarkable opportunity in removing the “emergency” from your current training motivation. If you can show up for yourself in this way with nearly any level of diligence for ten or fifteen years, you’ll be invincible. However, if you get excited for a couple years and aren’t around beyond that, you get almost nothing for that profound effort! Let’s just say in our ten years in business, there are more folks who came in hot and aren’t around than the other way around. Like Louie Simmons says:

“The brightest stars burn out the fastest.”