ON TRUTH

by Rita B Bermudez, MD, MSEE

Board Certified in Sports Medicine, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

“You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.”   John 8:32

Of all sports, Natural bodybuilding is one that can be particularly vulnerable to yielding poor results when there is a lack of truth.  Others have steroids to fill in the gaps, but natural bodybuilding takes a special kind of discipline, determination, desire and “tru’ ‘dat”.  

The truth of potential. Each person has their own genetic potential, motivation level, social environment, and other factors that affect their achievable potential. We are all governed by physical laws that must be obeyed. My genetic code is programmed from birth.   I do not have any control over my DNA, but I can mold it to its optimum expression.  It must be accepted that some people build muscle faster than others.  Some people recover/repair faster than others.  Some people can build their legs better than their arms and vice versa.  So, while I may wish that I looked like . . .(insert bodybuilder of choice) . . following that person’s routine, posing style, etc. is not likely to be best for me.  My physical assets will be different and will not respond the same way.  Just as some people can digest lactose and others cannot – we will not all respond the same way to a training regimen.  That being said, one needs to be positively honest about their goals.  I say “positively” because individuality is a great thing.  It is a joy to find our own strengths and develop them, strike the pose that best reflects your assets, build muscle in a way that best complements your body type.  However, because people often have a difficult time stepping outside of themselves to make objective observations, it can be extremely helpful to have a personal trainer to help in the assessment process.  Much like visiting a doctor who is trained to observe for certain patterns and diagnose a disease, a great trainer can pick up on certain physical patterns and help pull the most out of your genetic framework.  

“When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth.”

~The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The truth of data (tru’ dat).  I have often found that if a person stops losing weight, I can put them back on track merely by having them log everything they eat.  There is no substitute for writing the food down on paper in order to keep the brain focused on how many calories have really been consumed. Similarly, even a person who works out regularly will still be pretty hazy on what they really did a few days ago.  Unless the program is written on paper, there is no trend.  If you don’t keep track of where you have been, how can you really know where you are headed?  At some point, you may wake up and realize that you have not gone anywhere. But how do you figure out what went wrong, unless you have a map of the path you took?  Truth requires record keeping.   If you are not keeping a record of your training program, then why not start? If you have specific goals, you need a plan to reach them and specific parameters to track the progress.  As a sports medicine physician, there is nothing that irritates me more than to send a patient to physical therapy and get a report back from the therapist that says, “Patient tolerates the exercises well and feels she/he is making progress”.  This tells me nothing.  I want to see a set of short-term goals and a specific plan of exercises to meet those goals with objective measures of progress along the way.  We are not in the business to tolerate exercises, but to get results.  So be truthful, what do you want to see? Focus in on a few short terms goals and work the plan. 

“When you tell a lie to yourself, you confuse your soul and stunt your growth.”

The truth of being accountable.  I have often heard that you have to be accountable to yourself.  While this is true, it is rather difficult to be objective about yourself.  It is easy to play mind games.  For instance, I do squats twice a week, and I figure I am making progress because it is getting easier, but fail to realize that the squats are getting a little more shallow or that I am leaning a bit too far forward. Suddenly, I’m not even training the same muscle groups anymore.  Every once in a while your head needs to be cleaned of its biases in order to see things objectively.  The only way to do this is to have some gold standard to use as a gauge.  A mirror may help, marks on the wall may help, and a videotape session may help.  However, I think it is also very important to have someone look over your shoulder every once in a while too.  So, being accountable to someone else is not necessarily a bad thing. 

The Truth in Food.  This is probably one of the hardest areas in which to be completely truthful.  It is so easy to skip eating before a work out or miss the target protein goal. But, to do the entire strength training program and to get the body all revved up to synthesize protein and then to not provide the building blocks needed to make muscle, renders the work ineffectual.  It’s like turning on the machine to make ice, and not putting any water into the machine.  Be honest about the nutrition.  More often than not, when a person is not making strength gains, it is because they are not eating optimally. 

The Truth in Self-Awareness.  Sometimes, you get to the gym and nothing seems to flow. The body is tired and you know things are not coming together today.  Perhaps you have been ignoring that persistently nagging hamstring for a couple of weeks. A training program does not have to be resolutely written in stone.  The key to success is taking what you have, the circumstances of the day, and using them to your best advantage.  It’s okay to occasionally exchange a power day for a hypertrophy day.  If the problem is more serious, such as a constantly aching muscle, don’t ignore it.  Most injuries are born of ignoring some chronically inflamed tendon that finally reaches its snapping point.  That said, most overtraining situations are born of ignoring your own stress levels and finally reaching your snapping point. 

Which brings us to the last point: Truth in Perspective.  Life isn’t all about bodybuilding, or power lifting or body fat or any other physical parameter.  Life is about being physically and spiritually content while not raining on someone else’s parade.  Sometimes, you have to check to see if you are still spiritually intact on your current course, or if you need to re-tune and eliminate some dissonance in your life. Sometimes you realize that your current goals conflict with other objectives or relationships in your life. So like periodization with weight training, it is good to take a respite from the high intensity intervals of every day life and see if it is all still working for you.  Hopefully, you can say that “It is good”. 

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” Martin Luther King, MD

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