Give a guy a shovel....

Good friend and trainer Dr. Ellington Darden told me a story awhile back. I believe it was Arthur Jones, the Nautilus inventor, and Ellington's old boss, who told it to him. Basically, it goes something like this:

Let's say you walk up on a guy feverishly digging a hole with his hands. You ask him what he's doing, and he replies that he's digging a well. It just so happens that you have a shiny new shovel in your hand, so you offer to let him borrow it. He says, suprisingly to you, that he's never seen a shovel before. He's so excited, and lauds your praises as he begins to do three, four times the amount of work with the shovel that he was doing with just his hands. Satisfied that you've helped someone, you walk off feeling very good about the situation. A few days later, you come back to check on the guy's progress. Your shovel is tossed to the side, and he's back to using his hands to dig. When you ask him what's up, why did he toss the shovel, he answers " I just decided to go back to using my hands... I was used to them. I wasn't used to the shovel".

At least that's the way I remember the story. Basically, the moral that Jones was getting across is that people like to continue doing what they know, even when it's wrong and not producing results, rather than changing their ways and trying something new and better. It's the rare person who can stop what they're doing and do something new. We don't like change.

I've had a lot of opportunities in the past few months to see this story play out in my own life. Look, I'm certainly no expert on HIT training, and I have a ways to go before I'm where I want to be, but I've had countless people ask me how I've lost so much fat, how I've put on the muscle I have in such a short amount of time. When I explain HIT methods to them... about working out harder, working out shorter, working out less, no cardio, resting more, drinking a gallon of water each day, and eating smaller meals 5-6 times per day, you can see their eyes glaze over. Then, the very person that's been complaining to me how they can't make progress anymore with their workout or diet routines, starts telling me how great their split routine, heavy on the cardio, 3-5 days a week workouts are.

Huh? Oh well, Darden told me this would happen.