Get Your Fucking Head Right, Part Four: Goals Are For Soccer Players and Other Small Children

In a previous blog, I posted a quote from the seminal grindhouse film Planet Terror, in which a retardedly hot, pole-dancing, ass-kicking, peg-legged Rose McGowan stated that "goals become the thing you talk about, rather than the thing you do."  That's a fairly accurate summation of my opinion of goals with regard to weightlifting (an life in general), and I thus view the myriad posted goals on Bodyspace and similar sites just as I do a wheezing, sweaty, pre-diabetic, allegedly human mass of fat cells with eyeballs purchasing a supersize meal at McDonalds with a Diet Coke- they're laughable and pathetic.

Arild Haugen pities a fool.

Why?

Because most lifters will abandon lifting inside a year, and the vast majority of the rest will bag their goals in addition to whatever vogue program led to their creation long before they reach the ridiculous and hyper-accurate goals they've set for themselves, due to anything ranging from apathy to injury to outright sloth.  Think I'm bullshitting?  Consider this: gyms with contracts have them because they know, for a certainty, that roughly 75% of the members who sign up at a gym will quit going within 3 months.  The dropout rate for lifting makes South Central LA's public school systems look like bastions of excellence and efficiency.  As such, most lifters might as well keep their bullshit and usually disgraceful goals to themselves, consigning themselves to (at most) writing them in a journal they can consult when looking for a reason to open a vein while listing to This Mortal Coil's "It'll End In Tears" album while pounding Double Doubles in their parents basement.

This chick used to be a Suicide Girl... and then decided to hit KFC rather than the gym a few too many times.

Putting aside the obvious pointlessness of most goal setting with respect to lifting, the issue generally lies with the fact that most people set goals far beneath their actual capabilities.  Though one's initial inclination might be to consider this a good thing ("but, then you're always a winner!"), upon reconsideration you'll find this logic to be just about as sound as that with led batshit-crazy evil scientists to create the EATR battle robots.  In case you're unaware, the EATR robot is a heavily armed autonomous metal killing machine designed around a biomass engine that can convert copses into energy to continue their automated killing sprees.  Granted, robots that consume human flesh like bullet spitting whirlwinds of zombie death are a far worse idea than setting goals beneath one's potential, but setting pissant goals that prevent you from reaching greatness still might garner you some sort of conciliatory medal in the World Championships of Suck.  They'll prevent you from reaching greater goals due to the fact that humans have been conclusively shown to adjust their performance to their goals, motivating or demotivating themselves in according with perceived difficulty.  I can attest to the veracity of this claim, due to the fact that I managed to pull down a D and a B in Astronomy and Collegiate Algebra as a senior in college, in spite of the fact that I took both classes in the 8th grade.  Because they were pointless exercises in wasting my fucking time with shit I'd learned in middle school, I expended no effort whatsoever in those classes, and only avoided failing the Astronomy class by scoring perfect on the two tests.  As I'd never been to class otherwise, I'd never collected the syllabus and never learned that a college class had fucking homework, as if I'd suddenly become a fourth grader.

Cleanse.

Were you to lack the experience I've had, you might be tempted to set those kinds of goals... especially when you're surrounded by monuments to mediocrity erected by people entirely bereft of pride all over the internet. If you allow these idiots, who've posted their unbelievably embarrassing numbers online in a multitude of places, to program your subconscious into believing that those number are what you're likely to reach, you're fucked.  Their Facebox updates and forum signatures are the internet's equivalent of the Persian assault on the Greeks at Thermopylae.  They're repetitive, toothless, and generally fucking sad, but the sheer weight of numbers can leave you well and truly fucked if you're unprepared to deal with them.  Just as those hapless turbaned were driven onto the spear points of the Spartans by the swords of their officers and covered the Grecian landscape like locusts, so do the ambassadors of suck online.  Thus, it's important that you look to more inspirational sources and leave those idiots to their discussion of which brand of sock/briefs/shoes/supplements might pus them to a 400 lb shitfest of a back squat.  This is especially important at night, when the defenses your conscious mind erects to outside influence on your subconscience are at their weakest. (Van Fleet 54-55)

If only they were online posters... one can dream.

So, what should you do?  Aim for the fucking stars!  It might seem like some hokey bullshit, but it works.  As I've stated before, all it takes is one person to show that something's possible, and you're primed for success. Priming your brain with the knowledge that an achievement is doable turns your subconscious into an irrepressible, cold, calculating smashing machine hell-bent on victory.  Another tidbit with which you can program the T-1000 your subconscious has become is the fact that the "closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role of innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play."(Gladwell 38)  Researchers have found that neither the people like the nerdy slacker in Roadtrip, nor the stereotypical, nose-to-the-grindstone, generally unintelligent, but well meaning pseudo-nerd in popular culture ever reaches an elite status in their respective fields... instead, it's the average person who busts their fucking ass inside out at whatever they're doing who kicks ass all over the fucking place in anything ranging from playing the violin to chess to computer programming.  (Gladwell 38-40)  That's the fucking secret- keeping your mouth shut and busting your ass inside out.  Posting bullshit on some forum about your plans is pointless- in fact, it's worse that fucking pointless.  Instead, you have to actually do the thing you've planned in your head, and keep your goals to your fucking self.

How much harder do you have to work?  Researchers have determine that the magic number for hours at a given activity to become elite is 10,000.  That's right- you have to spend ten thousand hours at lifting if you want to truly be elite.  In one study in Berlin, they broke down the levels of skill into hours spent at it, and it worked almost invariably:

Elite: ~10,000 hours
Good: ~8,000 hours
Future teachers: ~4,000 hours
Amateurs: ~2,000 hours

I guess you better turn off your fucking computer and go lift something, shouldn't you?

Sources:
Gladwell, Malcolm.  Outliers.
Langer, Ellen.  Counterclockwise.
Van Fleet, James K.  Hidden Power.