How 90% of the details matter very little.
Have you ever wondered why training and nutrition advice is so all over the place?
Why some recommend low-carb yet others swear to a high-carb diet?
Why some say short rest periods are the bomb while others spend 5 minutes chilling between sets?
Why people are all across the board, yet everybody is ripped and everybody is swole and they’re all busy shamelessly flexing in mirrors and posting their transformation stories on here/Instagram/Tinder?
People are getting in the shape of their life training and eating in all kinds of different ways, not because what they’re doing is the most effective way of doing things, but because most of the variables around training and nutrition don’t matter much.
One look at the fitness section here on Quora can make one feel like training is as complicated as space travel.
There’s probably hundreds of thousands—maybe millions—of questions on here about the best tips, tricks and tweaks to gain muscle and lose fat.
Heck, there’s probably a million questions just on “how to get abs fast” or “what’s the best foods for losing belly-fat?”
The sad and confusing part is this:
Pretty much everyone knows enough to get great results.
Training hard, eating a healthy, high-protein diet, sleeping enough, sleeping well, and not stressing the fuck out will provide 90% of the available results.
Fitness is like t-shirts; the essentials are still king. Also, being good looking helps.
Yet I’m sure that 90% of the people asking about rep-ranges, rest intervals and supplements aren’t doing these things.
They aren’t perfecting the basics, yet they’re obsessing over accessories.
They’re homeless men browsing Rolexes, sailors being lured by the sirens call.
The sirens are an especially apt metaphor. Because there’s something alluring about looking for hidden secrets that’ll skyrocket one’s results, right? Finding the one true secret, the hidden variable that’ll drastically improve one’s gains. Just writing about it get’s my blood pumping.
Perfecting sleep quality and stress levels is rarely that exciting.
There’s one question I’ve yet to see here on Quora. It’s one that should be asked before all others:
“How is my training, nutrition, sleep and stress? How can they get better?”
The answer to that is worth more than those of every other question put together.