Methods vs. Results

Yeah…what I was saying has nothing really do do with methods. It's not that we're "discounting" methods it's that I view them as nothing more than a simple tool.

Let's come at it a different way. I always compare it to woodworking or carpentry in my head.

I'll tell you a story. My plumber was installing something and we found that the cabinets in the kitchen needed to be moved which opened a whole can of worms at first because we didn't know how difficult it would be to nudge a cabinet over because most kitchen cabinets just sit on the ground but sometimes they are bolted. Anyway turns out mine was no problem.

But in order to move the cabinet I had to remove a tiny piece of baseboard between a cabinet and a door frame and we were in a hurry. So I went and found this brand new thin wood chisel because it was the only thing I had small enough to pry off the base board. After I used the chisel I looked at it and said, damn, don't like to treat a brand new chisel like that (they aren't meant for prying!).

He said, "do you actually use them for woodworking?" I said, no, no, they are for getting into cracks and removing paint from hard to reach areas…I used them as a scraper. And I said, "I know what you're thinking, that I'm precious about the tools. Not at all I just always hate to see that new chisel edge go, lol. But I don't really care."

See my plumber is the same way. Tools are just tools. Whatever it takes to get the job done. But both of us no plenty of people that are more into their tools than they are the work they do!. These guys will be fancy computer driven equipment and then refuse to use it for certain things because they don't want to "mess it up". LOL. In reality you can do the same work with hand tools or fancy power tools and the results are the same. And there are some who are "purists" right, who refuse to use anything but "primitive" tools…yet, again, it's only the final results that matter.

Say you are joining two pieces of wood in a piece of furniture. A real join will give you much better results than just butting two pieces together with screws are something. It doesn't matter what tools you use to make the joins only the joins themselves.

But THAT is the why. When you say, I want to produce this sort of join, you have a choice of tools, but you have narrowed down those choices considerably. It ain't a hammer, or a wrench, or a saw you need, after all.

When it comes to training most people pick methods and then post facto decide what they are using them for! I'm not kidding you. This is how most coaches and trainers think and pretty much all amateur trainees. I decide what it is that needs to be accomplished and then try to pick an efficient tool. Sometimes the same tool that worked one time may not work this time or even ever again. So being results oriented means looking at what it is that needs to be done and THEN analysing and choosing the path to get their. Not the other way around.

As you say, for me a driving need is to build up work tolerance at a certain work range before moving on and that makes that next jump in absolute strength possible and safer.