Hi, My name is Frankie.
I am THE MOVEMENT.

The question is,
“Are you the movement?”

Well, you’re probably wondering,
“What is the movement?”

THE MOVEMENT is a collection of people who study and practice the science of better.  We do all kinds of things.  We lift kettlebells, clubs, barbells, dumbbells, cables and bands.  We do bodyweight exercises.  We do gymnastics.  We do feats of strength.  We do combatives.  We do Martial Arts.  We do all things fitness.

We do nutrition.
We do emotions.
We do thinking.
We do beliefs.
We do life.
We do better.

The MOVEMENT was something I conceived when Marty Lotspeich and I were composing the first version of this treatise called THE MOVEMENT MANIFESTO.  “We need a movement, a new movement, about movement.”

Craig Keaton made this a local reality by opening up the first of THE MOVEMENT studios in Dallas, TX.

Adam T Glass took the message online and became the most prominent of messengers of THE MOVEMENT. When he did, our little tribe became a little bigger.

Many other tribes build their tribes around a particular tool, particular exercises or a particular sport.  Not so in The MOVEMENT. What connects us is not what we do.  What connects us is how we do it.

The reason why we don’t follow a particular tool, sets of exercises or a set of movements is that: we are all different. Different people need different things.  Some people need to lift heavy things, some don’t.  Some people need to be vegan, some don’t.  Some people need to be religious, some don’t.  Every person needs something different.  Everyone needs to find their own path.

We find out what we need through following our body’s information – our biofeedback.  Sure, plenty of people use biofeedback…but we do it better.  We have discovered a way to progress – perpetually.  We do it so much better that we can PR, or establish a new best, daily. We move forward…in whatever direction we can.

I developed this particular protocol of biofeedback.  While looking for a way out of chronic pain, I found a way to perpetually progress.  Being a gym trainer, I applied this protocol to the weight room and called it The (GYM) MOVEMENT PROTOCOL.

We test our exercises
We test our implements
We test our loads
We test our reps
We test our rest periods
We test our sets
We test ourselves
We test everything.

The fitness industry has found itself in a dark age.  It is filled with broken people teaching their broken beliefs and breaking other people.  They are gurus.

The gurus want to lead you.  They believe only they are qualified to lead you.  We know only you are qualified to lead you.

The gurus believe and teach that in order to be better you must use effort.  You must try, toil, you must labor, you must sweat, you must bleed.  We have found that getting worse or getting better doesn’t have to be about trying at all.

In fact, trying to be better only slows down the process.  Better is your birthright; better is your biological destiny.  You need only get out of your own way.

The gurus want you to fit your body into what they believe is better.  They have the answer and you are not allowed to question.  We want you to question everything.  Question the gurus, question yourself and most importantly – question us.  We know the only way to have an answer for anything is to question everything.  Find your answer.

We know that if you follow anything other than your body, you will break your body.  Your were not meant to break your body.  To fulfill your destiny, you need only break those broken belief systems so that they cannot break you.  Rebuild those beliefs…but this time base your beliefs on results.  Results first, beliefs second.

We will help you.  We will not lead you.  THE MOVEMENT has no universal leader.  How can it?  That is the antithesis of following one’s biology.  Utilizing biofeedback is about learning to lead yourself.

Are you ready to break those beliefs that have been breaking you?
Are you ready to rebuild yourself but this time better?
Are you ready to become a scientist?
Are you ready to lead yourself?

My name is Frankie.
I lead me.
I am The Movement.

What is your name?
Will you lead you?
Are you The Movement?
Are you?

I love post apocalyptic media:
movies and books particularly.

God, demons, zombies, disease, war, aliens…
plenty of things bring about an apocalypse
and I enjoy apocalypse for all its causes.

Don’t get me wrong,
I don’t dream for a thinning of the herd.
I don’t want first world problems to disappear.
Over all, I think that would slow down humanity’s progress.

What I enjoy most about the apocalypse
is what comes after, hence
“post-apocalyptic.”

What will be the New Order?
How will man reorganize himself?
Will man completely devolve into “beast”
or will man reach new levels of civilization?

Post apocalyptic is simpler to understand
simpler to follow
than the densely layered modern world.
Less moving parts are incredibly satisfying
to my simple mind.

What gets me interested in every post apocalyptic story
is what emerges.

Does anyone figure out how to balance
the rights of the individual with the rights of the group?
(Because no one in our time has figured out how to do so.)

Until someone-
some author, some big thinker
demonstrates how to balance the rights of the individual with the rights of the group,
our group, THE MOVEMENT,
will keep on experimenting.
It’s not easy.
It’s not elegant.
It’s not efficient.
Not yet.
But it will be.
It will evolve.
And it won’t even take the end of the world to get there.

I recently watched the ESPN documentary on the Marinovich’s.
In MMA, the Father, Marv Marinovich, has come to some acclaim
as a Strength and Conditioning Coach for BJ Penn.

But before he was a S&C coach for BJ,
he was engineering a professional athlete in his son, Todd.
Todd had a successful High School and College career
before it all came crashing down in the NFL.

Marinovich has received a lot of criticism from the public
for his role in Todd’s issues.
I think the general consensus is that Marv pushed Todd too hard
and Todd broke under the pressure.
But Todd didn’t break under Marv’s watchful eye.
Todd broke when he was on his own.

But what in Todd broke?
Did he really break on the field
where he was so well trained?
No.
Todd broke off the field.

Is that any wonder?
How much training did Todd get off the field?
How much could he have gotten?

While I think there are far better and more efficient ways
of developing an athlete than Marinovich’s Russian inspired methods,
no one can disagree that they worked.

But as in every athlete’s training,
the limiting factor is time.

And for all the great stuff Marv did,
it took up all of Todd’s time
and displaced any other preparation
for life outside of football
and life after football.

It wasn’t as much what Marv did,
it is what Marv didn’t do…
which dovetails well with principles
we teach in The Movement.

I’m sure there are things you’re doing
which you don’t want to do
but before you address those, ask,
“What it is that I’m not doing?”
or even better
“What it is that I’m not doing that I can do?”

There is only so much time.
When you are doing what it is you need to do,
there is no time to do what it is you don’t need to do.

There is a pathology in many schools of thought,
including many of those in fitness.

It is exemplified in the popular phrase:
“Just another tool in the toolbox.”

There is a problem with that:
Your toolbox weighs you down.
Not just in a metaphorical sense.

Hick’s Law is something I first heard from Eric Cobb
and come to find out it was something Tony Blauer used, as well.

It deals with options.
In short, the more options you have,
the more it slows you down.

When Adam T Glass speaks of THE MOVEMENT’s purpose,
he describes it as,
“We’re not here to give you another tool,
we’re here to empty your garage.”

THE MOVEMENT offers an overarching lens to look at science
and in doing so cleans out the intellectual garage
and etches into memory where all useful tools are at
so that when you need them, you can find them
(Hope that was a clean enough metaphor, for you).

But in looking at fitness (and other sciences),
we cannot do what others do when making our offering.

Others say,
“Yes, and…”
Yes (that’s great), and..,(we’re great, too).
Unfortunately, many say this disingenuously so that they, too, might be included among the herd. But those they educate are made slower. The educated can’t find their tools because their garage (their brain) is a mess.

And so we take another approach.
Sometimes it is, “Yes, but…”
but even more often it is simply,
“No.”

Let me leave you with an adaptation of a Bruce Lee quote (which was likely an adaptation of another).
“The height of cultivation leads not to complication but to simplification.”

What can you prune from your principles and practices?
How clean is your garage?

Godin’s Purple Cow

I read a blog post from Seth Godin recently
where he was encouraging people to make remarkable work,
or art, as he puts it.

When we hear “remarkable,” I think we often find it synonymous to
words like “extraordinary” or “amazing.”
But it’s not…at least, specifically.
The key to what it means is in the word itself:
remark-able.

If something is remarkable,
you talk about it.
That is what makes it remarkable.
Better synonyms include “noteworthy” and “notable.”

Right after “Better,”
remarkable is the metric that matters
whenever I am choosing:
something to listen to
something to watch
something to read
something to do
something to think about
something to plan for
etc
etc

Will doing that thing
make we want to:
talk about it?
write about it?
hear about it?
video about it?
etc
etc

If it doesn’t,
more than likely
I’ll change directions.

There was a time when
if I ever started a book
started a movie
started whatever
I damn sure was gonna finish it.
I thought meanly of myself
if I ever quit.
No longer.

Now, I have less time than before (that’s always true)
and I know it.
And so, if I find myself in an unremarkable position,
I do my best to change my position
to one more remarkable…
a position worthy of my time and hopefully your time, as well.

Compared to others on the Autistic Spectrum,
I am an advocate of change…of variety.
I think it is important.
Especially in one’s fitness practice.

I am not the only one.
The rise of Crossfit for the last ten years
has helped to perpetuate more variability in fitness.

I think this is a step forward.
Doing the same thing over and over again
(Let’s ignore for the moment it is a physical impossibility to completely replicate any condition)
has incredibly deleterious effects to one’s body
and variety can help to mitigate those effects.

But variety isn’t the last step forward.
While variety is a step up from the same old, same old,
there is something more advantageous than different,
and that is better.

Same < Different < Better

For some, better is a nebulous term.
For us, in The Movement, better is a concrete reality.
Better is measured in terms of Personal Records
doing more than before
more than we’ve done before in things we have done before
as well as things we haven’t done before.

It is possible to do something different, albeit only slightly different, all the time and none of those times it be better for you.

But is also possible to do something different, albeit only sightly different, and have it be better for you, every time.

So while doing something different all the time
could possibly be better than doing the same old thing,
consider that if you’re not doing more than before
you’re not doing better.

Better > Different > Same

Tony Blauer has a course called BYOB (Be Your Own Bodyguard). I love the spirit behind this. While I am a strong advocate of specialization, there are skills everyone should have a baseline competency in, with one of the foremost being defense of one’s self. But what must precede that in the human? That is what we will be exploring here.

We humans are pack creatures and one way the pack organizes itself 
(and just about everything organizes itself) is hierarchical with Alphas, Betas, and Omegas.

Within a pack, at any moment, there is a leader…and followers…
and there can be only one.

Unfortunately, those roles are generalized and people turn into leaders all the time and followers all the time…
and since no one is qualified to lead all the time,
no one is qualified to follow all the time, either.

We have to have the flexibility of character to know when to lead and when to follow. Odds are, in any social context, the role to gravitate towards is that of the follower.   But before one is even qualified as socially intelligent,
one must become personally intelligent…which is to say,
knowing how to lead one’s self.

But knowing what is good for one’s self and what is not…
is not enough.
It must be asserted and enforced with others.

And when, and only when,
one can leads one’s self
should one even consider leading others.

But the only leadership of others required
is teaching them to lead themselves.

Do you remember what IQ stands for?
Intelligence Quotient
This measures what some consider to be:
“Cognitive Intelligence”

But that isn’t what this post is about.
What about EQ? Know what that is?
Emotional Quotient
You may have heard it being described as “Emotional Intelligence”
but that isn’t what this post is about, either.

There is a factor that is glaringly obvious
and distinct from Cognitive and Emotional Intelligences.
What might that be?

It is probably the school of thought that has fallen the most out of fashion in psychology.
Still don’t know?

Do you know the ABC’s of Psychology
C is for Cognition
A is for Affect (a close relative of emotion)
and
B is for ????
Drum Roll….

Behavior!!!

While IQ matters and while EQ may matter even more,
why aren’t we talking about how we behave,
what we are doing,
how we are acting.

We talk a lot about our sensations,
our cognition and emotions…

There are books and books about how to increase mental performance
and yet another section of books on coming to terms with our emotions
but what if our cognitive and emotional bottlenecks
could be addressed through our behaviors?

We’ve been doing pretty well with sensations…
how about a return to action?
How about an AQ…
an Action Quotient?

I can’t tell you
how many middle aged people I see at the gym
who do the same lifts,
same resistances,
same reps
same sets
just the same
workout after workout.

I’d guess they’re doing all those same things
because they want to look different.
Some have huge aspirations…
they want to look better than before.

Others have less lofty goals
and simply want to look
as good as they did before
even though they didn’t think it was all that good then.

So let’s say they want to look as they did then.
What would be a good strategy?
What would get people today
in the shape they were in yesterday?

How about:
Doing what they did then?
Moving the same way
Eating the same way

What got most people in the shape they were in
has nothing at all to do with the gym.

Please bear that in mind,
the next time you are headed out to do your
3 sets of 8 reps.

When you do,
I want you to ask yourself,
“What is it that I used to do?”

Then I’d like you to go see if you can still do it.
Once you can, please feel free to return to the gym
or better yet find a gym who will not only help you do
what you used to do
but help you to learn what you have never done.

And if you can do what you used to do
as well as do things that you have never done
I think you will be pleased
looking like you have never looked before.

Progress isn’t linear.
It isn’t an up and to the right relationship.

Some think it is more like this.
But it isn’t.

Can you figure out why?

It is because that is just another version of up and to the right:
two straight lines, instead of one.

If you look at any one particular biofeedback directed metric,
whether it be a lift, or any activity measured,
over time it gets less linear
and more curvilinear.

The highs get higher
the lows get lower
and the trend between high and low
happen more often.
Graphically, it looks like this.

An M-Wave of ATG’s Squat…notice how the highs get high and the lows get lower and they happen more often.

I call it the “M Wave.”
It seems that our physiology
like our anatomy
is elastic in its nature.

It seems the only way to move forward
(to go both up and to the right)
is to go both up and down…

In anything,
if you want to go higher than ever before
you must be able to bounce back
from a lower low than ever before.

Sounds a little depressing, right?
It can be because at any point in time
when looking at one aspect of one’s life,
it’s around a 50/50 chance that you’re not in an upswing.

If you focus on only one aspect of your life,
you will more often than not feel like a failure
because from day to day
you are not doing more than before in that particular area.
Doesn’t sound like perpetual progress, does it?

In THE MOVEMENT,
we teach the principle of Perpetual Progress
but we know that progress isn’t linear in any one area.

And so the way to perpetually progress
must include multiple areas
to make progress in.

So while you may be low on the graph in one area,
you have the opportunity to be at an all time high in another…
at least, that’s the hypothesis.

And so, we teach our students
to use each day as an opportunity to find an area, or areas
where they can do more than before.

I think you can do it, too, if you
direct your attention from:
what I can’t do better in
and direct your attention to:
What can I do better than ever before?

If you can ask and answer that question,
time and time again,
integrating thinking, feeling and doing,
perhaps you can fill in the gaps between your existing personal records,
fill the gaps so tight that when the data is collated,
you see yourself approaching the asymptote,
expanding yourself, living the proof of perpetual progress,
evolving yourself, and evolving our species.

Time will tell what the limits of perpetual progress are
but as far as I can see the only limit is time
relative to the rate of entropy.

But through the the use of THE PROTOCOL
to help ourselves experience Perpetual Progress,

we save ourselves time and combat entropy
with extropy (or syntropy/exotropy /entaxy/ negentropy).
It is what evolution describes as always having been done
…and we can do it now.

I find no better way to be.
If the M Wave teaches us anything,
it is that living can be about better
and I would like you to be better with us.

As eusocial creatures,
being better personally is dependent upon being better interpersonally…
and if there were ever a thing to describe a tribe, ever a thing to describe us…
I hope it is better.

Who am I and why should you listen to me?
My name is Frankie.  I am better than I was before and aspire to be better in the future than I am now.  I can’t think of a better reason to listen to anyone.

Part 9
Part 8
Part 7
Part 6
Part 5
Part 4
Part 3
Part 2
Part 1