It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a decade since the first time I completed the Million Pound November challenge. I honestly had no plans to do it this year, wasn’t really ramped up and ready in terms of volume, and wasn’t even convinced I’d be able to finish it when I committed myself to it. Would I be able to do a high stress, long-term challenge that I last did when I was under 30?

Quick recap in case you have never heard of MPN. The goal is to lift a million pounds of volume in 30 days, ideally November. This can be an individual challenge, or a group effort like we do it at The Movement Minneapolis. For perspective a typical strength or circuit workout tends to be in the 10-15,000 pound range. So you’re looking at doing two to three times typical volume every single day for a month. It’s eminently possible, but it’s not easy.

My hope whenever someone undertakes a challenge is that they’ll learn something from it, regardless of whether or not they actually complete it. Million Pound is one of the favorite programs we run  Throughout the challenge I try to foster this by asking people what they’re noticing, how they’re feeling, what seems different, and so on.

This time around I noticed some things that were distinctly different than the last time I completed it. I should note, I’ve only really committed to it twice, and completed it twice. There have been fits and starts over the years where I didn’t dedicated myself to it, but I never tried and failed due to not being able to complete it.

Due to a week of travel smack in the middle of the month, I was forced to compress all of my training into two bouts of twelve, and eleven days consecutive days with a gap in the middle of six days with only one training day. So basically 23 total training days in two streaks.

This was, in a word, not ideal.

By the end of each of the two streaks I was feeling almost insurmountable fatigue and lack of desire to train. Under any other circumstances I would have taken days off before I even got to that point, but it was interesting to see how far I could actually keep going, and continue to find things that tested well via biofeedback. I don’t remember feeling that sort of fatigue last time, which I don’t know if I can attribute to not taking days off along the way or to simply being almost ten years older.

Perhaps the only thing that kept me healthy was that I respected the significantly increased need for sleep, and I made sure to get to sleep early, and take a mid-day nap if necessary.

So the big lesson for me was that if I’m pushing volume to the limit, about five days is where things start going downhill.

Whether or not you succeeded is irrelevant in this. What did you learn?

This past weekend I was remotely coaching my friend Jane through baking her first loaf of sourdough bread. There were several points at which it was just impossible for me to describe the exact right step to take or how long to wait exactly between one thing and another. It made me think of another situation…

I’ve been looking at picking up a very old vintage Vespa as a restoration project. Something I’ve noticed play out over previous projects is that I do as much research as I know to do beforehand, but no matter how much I seem to do as soon as I actually get my hands dirty on the project I end up learning things that I wish I had known before I got started. The problem is, I don’t even know what questions to ask before I get my eyes and hands on it.

It all goes back to this concept you’re familiar with if you’ve been reading my writing for awhile: metis.

There exists an entire category of knowledge that is impossible to make legible and transfer from one person to another. No more can I describe all the subtle visual, olfactory, and tactile cues you’re paying attention to throughout bread making that you need to make adjustments based on than someone can write down all the specific possibilities and variables that could exist in a Vespa (or whatever) restoration project that could help you avoid a costly mistake down the road.

These are things that can only be learned through direct experience.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t find an answer to specific questions, but often times you don’t even know what questions to ask before gaining the experience.

What ever could this possibly have to do with fitness?

Your body and physiology is the ultimate example of metis in practice. No one will ever have or be able to have more direct first-hand knowledge of how it works, what it responds to, and so on than you. The only way to gain more metis is to go through the process, experiment, pay attention, take notes, analyze, and repeat. You’re only going to get so far, if you get anywhere at all, by looking for answers in articles or other forms of traditional, legible knowledge.

The only way to even know what questions to ask is to start the process.

The other day when I was at the airport I did something I haven’t done in quite a while, picked up a Men’s Health magazine for some light airplane reading.

Fitness people love to rag on the big magazines, and some of it is deserved for outrageously incorrect or faddish reporting. But I’d hold MH up as one of the better ones, with consistently great, useful content. If you were to pick up any random Men’s Health and do the workout(s) from it consistently for a month or two, you’d see results.

I happen to know this for a fact because over a decade ago I really got my start by tearing out a 12-week program from MH and doing it with religious dedication and consistency.

Anyway, the gist of one of the articles was that it’s beneficial, maybe even necessary, to force the body to adapt with extreme stressors. Holding your breath under water, extreme hot, extreme cold, etc.

This is a perennial idea in fitness that people talk about all the time, and find new and different ways to implement.

I’m not going to say it’s wrong, but I’d like you to question the premise for a moment.

Is it even possible to force adaptation?

Well to be able to force it would imply that it stops at some point. But does adaptation ever stop?

Was it forced to get the shoulders-rolled-forward, tight hips, rounded back posture of a desk worker?
Was it forced to gain fifty pounds of body fat over a decade?
Did Roger Federer force his right arm (dominant side) to be bigger than his left?

We could come up with countless examples of how adaption isn’t forced, it “just happens.” Adaptation is always happening, whether you want it to or not, and whether you think the changes that are happening are good or bad.

And if it can’t be stopped, then it doesn’t need to be forced.

To speak of forcing adaptation is just a catchy way of saying you’re operating or training at the extreme edge of your limits, which we know extremely well is not physiologically a good way to approach training. Even if you could force it, which you can’t, would it be a good idea?

Have you ever met a powerlifter who just trains at their 1 rep max all the time? Of course not. Strength sport athletes know that their money is in the sub-maximal training.

Think for a moment what it means if you’re always adapting, to everything you do? Doesn’t this apply just as much to the opposite end of the spectrum? To resolving movement issues that have developed after injury, or accumulated over time? Of course it does. You don’t need to force it, you only need to create the stimulus you want and the adaptation will happen.

This is something to think about the next time an article or someone is talking about forcing adaptation. If you can’t stop it, you certainly don’t need to force it.