Mise-en-place: The Most Important Part of Any Task is the Beginning

A wonderful piece in Harvard Business Review argues for the technique mise-en-place. The piece highlights chef and best-selling author Anthony Bourdain, for whom the ritual is more than the latest time-saving trick; Bourdain starts his day the same way every time—and so do the chefs who work for him—because it’s an invaluable professional practice. 

Because Anthony Bourdain prepares early, he has plenty of time to relax.

“Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks,” Bourdain wrote in his runaway bestseller Kitchen Confidential. “As a cook, your station, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system… The universe is in order when your station is set…”

Mise-en-place

Chefs like Anthony Bourdain have long appreciated that when it comes to exceptional cooking, the single most important ingredient of any dish is planning. It’s the “Meez” that forces Bourdain to think ahead, that saves him from having to distractedly search for items midway through, and that allows him to channel his full attention to the dish before him.
So what is it?

Mise-en-place  translates into “everything in its place.” In practice, it involves studying a recipe, thinking through the tools and equipment you will need, and assembling the ingredients in the right proportion before you begin. It is the planning phase of every meal—the moment when chefs evaluate the totality of what they are trying to achieve and create an action plan for the meal ahead.

Avoiding the worst thing

If mise-en-place can plausibly be described as the best way to start one’s day, what’s the worst? What’s the thing to avoid at all costs?
Glad you asked.

Shane Parrish, author of the irreplaceable blog Farnam Street, made a similar point in the LinkedIn piece ‘9 Habits You Need to Stop Now’. Second on the list was: Do not e-mail first thing in the morning or last thing at night.
Parrish cites Dilbert creator Scott Adams as thinking, “One of the most important tricks for maximizing your productivity involves matching your mental state to the task.”

In fact matching skills to the time of day is one of the most important changes you can make to improve your working habits.

Why?

Parrish has answers, “You want to get out of a reactive loop. If you move creative and thinking work to the start of the day, when we’re at our peak, you’ll have the rest of the day to be reactive.”

Of course, utilizing the ritual mise-en-place at the day’s beginning will allow for the early part of the day—before fatigue sets in—to be used for creative work. The kind of creative work Rafael Nadal does in between points—toweling off, examining a series of balls, um, adjusting his pants—is an elaborate set of rituals that allow him to take stock, to buy time for the mental (and sometimes physical) process of going through a mise-en-place. And once the points start, there are few in the history of his sport more creative or more powerful than Nadal.



And all that work before points lets him do stuff like this during them:



Plato was right—the most important part of any task is the beginning. Starting the day with mise-en-place (and not email!) will assist in many good beginnings.

Why Can't Andrew Sullivan be Secretary of State?

U.S. diplomacy in Iraq skewered

The Borowitz Report has some fun with the demands the U.S. would place on Iraq

Andy Borowitz’s latest satire is characteristically funny. And insightful. Normally, I wouldn’t post about anything like U.S. diplomacy vis-a-vis the Iraqi political situation, but this one illustrates one of Charlie Munger’s major arguments. Well, that and I somehow landed on the topic of Elie Kedourie’s Oakeshottian take on nationalism in a recent post (I get to Kedourie is about midway through the post).  

Borowitz sends up Secretary of State John Kerry’s rather stringent demands on the Iraqi government, writing, “In a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry stressed the importance of forming a unity government in Iraq but refused to commit to a timetable for creating one in the United States. 

The sensitive topic of a unity government for the United States came at the end of a thirty-minute meeting, during which Secretary Kerry lectured the Iraqi Prime Minister about the value of a government ‘where people of different parties put aside their differences, make meaningful compromises, and work together for the good of the nation.’”

Hilarious. 

Or it would be if the situation is lampoons didn’t imperil people’s well-being. Or if the situation he sends-up didn’t stem from a continued miscalculation about the social, political, and religious situation ‘on the ground’. Michael Oakeshott was too conservative in some ways—perhaps most glaringly in his belief that it’s nearly impossible and nearly universally unwise to try to import a political tradition from one part of the world to another[i]. But, honestly, if ever there were a perfect case to highlight the stupidity of attempting to foist democracy on a group of peoples and a country, it’s got to be Iraq[ii].

Andrew Sullivan's more serious take 

Andrew Sullivan provides perspective on Kerry's Iraq position

Andrew Sullivan, who wrote his wonderful dissertation on Oakeshott and penned an even better follow-up book—and likely did as much to popularize the towering British theorist in the U.S. as anyone or anything else, makes a compelling case as to why Kerry’s position is so fraught with difficulty. Citing a piece by Michael Gordon in the New York Times that states Kerry’s case for intervention [iii] , Sullivan argues, “So we’ve gone from 300 military advisers and a new government before any military action … to a threat of potential airstrikes regardless in less than a week. When you think how long it took to ramp up the Vietnam disaster, that’s pretty damn quick. And check out what Kerry just said about ISIS: “they cannot be given safe haven anywhere.” That presumably means that their advance must not just be checked but reversed, a massive undertaking which is about as likely as a multi-sectarian democratic government in Baghdad.

From where I’m sitting, I see no way to achieve the ends John Kerry just outlined without a new war. And who will fight it? That shoe is the one that is yet to drop. My view: not a single American soldier, not a single cent, to build an Iraq that never existed and, at this point, never can. If Obama tries to do it, there has to be an insurrection from his supporters and from all sane Americans. If the Saudis and the Sunni states cannot rein in ISIS, then let the Iranians fight them.”
Right? 

And this tack, Sullivan notes, comes even after the U.S.’s singular foreign policy achievement of the past 12 months: the dismantling and relocation of Syria’s chemical weapons! So, the one-percent doctrine isn’t in play as a rationale for Kerry to use.
Sullivan is as right as he is truculent with his observation, “If Obama wants to find a middle ground, he’ll be the first Westerner ever to discover it in Iraq.”

While I’d admire the chutzpah and independence such a self-confidence requires, I only wish it were based a little more in reality.

Audacia et prudentia

Charlie Munger evinced an even more outrageous display of audacity when he showed up to a meeting of economists to present a paper on what’s wrong with their discipline, without ever having taken a single econ class. While opening with a compliment, “It’s my view that economics is better at the multi-disciplinary stuff than the rest of the soft science,” Munger’s flattery didn’t last too long. His subsequent sentence was,  “And it’s also my view that it’s still lousy, and I’d like to discuss this failure in this talk.”

Of course, if Munger were wrong about everything, no one would die—or even deploy. So he had that going for him. That and a pretty strong fallback position: immunity from the “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” argument.

While I don’t agree with Kerry or his cavalier position regarding Iraq, I do respect the courage it takes to go out on a limb for one’s convictions (I do realize that Kerry, in this instance, is more likely to deserve praise not for sticking to his own convictions but for the convictions of the administration he works for. So, perhaps rather than Oakeshott and Munger, we’ll get Josiah Royce and James Carville to plump for him). Whatever Kerry’s motivations, there’s certainly something to be said for exhibiting the individuality to hold a (drastically) divergent opinion. It’s one of the things Michael Oakeshott was best at.

You have my consent; do you want my soul as well?

As was another of his students, Richard Flathman, who—more than Kerry and perhaps as much as Munger—exhibits a fiercely independent streak. Harvard political theorist Richard Tuck tells one of my favorite stories about Flathman:

“My students at Harvard treasure a story that Richard Flathman told about himself when he came to give a paper to a political theory seminar.

“He said that many times in departmental meetings he has been outvoted on some issue, and like a good colleague, he has agreed to go along with the result. Other members of the department have often tried to persuade him after the meeting that he had been wrong in his original position. ‘I tell them, you have my consent; do you want my soul as well?’”

Tuck takes from this account that one of Flathman’s chief virtues as a thinker was his commitment to preserving people’s souls from capture by their fellow citizens. Flathman’s “most interesting targets have not been the obvious and familiar threats to individual liberty, which all modern right-thinking people can more or less agree on (and most of which ceased long ago to be much of a threat to the communities where right-thinking people tend to live).”

Flathman, like Munger, set his sights on disciplinary orthodoxies—though he set out to radicalize his own discipline. The crooked thinking Flathman set about righting were what he has called “virtue liberalism,” such as Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (“who in my judgement is no liberal at all”), John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls, and by a certain kind of rights theorist who is, at bottom, principally concerned with using rights to secure a civil order; John Locke is his prime example of this.

Against these writers, with their visions of communities united in the pursuit of widely disseminated and reasonable common goals, Flathman has pleaded for ‘willful liberalism,’ in which individuals are per-mitted and encouraged to make themselves, not to be made by the civic order. As he has admitted, [W]illful liberalism has affinities with libertarianism and especially with various strains in romanticism. The notion of liberation from state and other forms of power is reminiscent of libertarianism and even of individualistic anarchism, and the notions of self-making, selfenactment, and self-fashioning have manifest affinities with major tendencies in romanticism and expressivism.”

Flathman’s thought is trying to do what’s impossible in contemporary Iraq—provide for the conditions in which most people care for themselves. I wonder how, short of acquiring a fortune as vast as Charlie Munger’s so as to insulate oneself from criticism, might we cultivate the disposition to act independently—but without falling into the kind of wrongheadedness Kerry seems to be mired in.

Sullivan’s and Flathman’s teacher Michael Oakeshott has an idea

Oakeshott asks, “How does a pupil learn disinterested curiosity, patience, honesty, exactness, industry, concentration and doubt? How does he acquire a sensibility to small differences and the ability to recognize intellectual elegance? How does he come to inherit the disposition to submit to refutation? How does he not merely learn the love of truth and justice, but learn it n such a way as to escape the reproach of fanaticism? And beyond all this there is something more difficult to acquire: namely, the ability to detect the individual intelligence which is at work in every utterance, even those which convey impersonal information.” 

Michael Oakeshott served in France and Belgium with the British “Phantom” reconnaissance unit during WWII

His answer: “The intellectual virtues may be imparted only by a teacher who really cares about them for their own sake, and never stoops to the priggishness of mentioning them.”

After all, Oakeshott argues, it’s “not the cry but the rising of the wild duck impels the flock to follow him in flight.”

---

[i] There’s a kernel in Oakeshott’s piece “Political Education” of the arguments in favor of cultivating diversity as articulated by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his piece “On the Uses of Diversity”. Oakeshott, though, instead of embracing the possibility that cultures might borrow and learn from each other more fruitfully in exchanges that would leave all sides richer, instead opted to advance a theory that limited a politician’s or theorist’s activity in seeking out ideas from cultures outside of his or her own only in cases of explicit, recognized need.

Interestingly, 538 recently published a pretty compelling piece that argues that the U.S. Men’s National Soccer team has had such limited success because of it’s comparatively limited exposure to different traditions and leagues that have forced other nations and their national team coaches and players to innovate their style of play and tactics. (Though, in fairness, the fact that U.S. kids have long had other ambitions than the beautiful game that lead to quicker and more fame and money might have something to do with it, too).

[ii] Middle Eastern literature is actually rife with the word ‘primordial’. Geertz in another piece defines ‘primordial attachment’ that, “stems from the ‘givens’…of social existence: immediate contiguity and kin connection mainly, but beyond them the givenness that stems from being born into a particular religious community, speaking a particular language, or even a dialect of language, and following particular social practices.” Geertz didn’t have the Middle Eastern region in his sights per se while writing that, but the concept gets used with a frequency and force in literature and analysis about that area unmatched by anywhere else in the world.

[iii] The full passage Sullivan has in mind, “Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that the Sunni militants seizing territory in Iraq had become such a threat that the United States might not wait for Iraqi politicians to form a new government before taking military action. “They do pose a threat,” Mr. Kerry said, referring to the fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. “They cannot be given safe haven anywhere.”

“That’s why, again, I reiterate the president will not be hampered if he deems it necessary if the formation is not complete,” he added, referring to the Iraqi efforts to establish a new multisectarian government that bridges the deep divisions among the majority Shiites and minority Sunnis, Kurds and other smaller groups.

The 2014 San Antonio Spurs were anti-fraglie. Charlie Munger knows why.

No time for self-pity

Many of Charlie Munger’s ideas don’t really require superhuman insight to realize. He’s so good at reducing issues to their most simple core that his wisdom often looks like nothing more than common sense. 

His approach to setbacks is one of those commonsensical ideas. He writes, “Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge and self-pity are disastrous modes of thoughts.”

And self-pity might be the worst of all.

“Self-pity gets fairly close to paranoia, and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse. You do not want to drift into self-pity,” Munger said. Here’s why: “It’s a ridiculous way to behave and when you avoid it, you get a great advantage over everybody else or almost everybody else because self-pity is a standard condition.”

Best of all? Despite it being so much a part of our human experience that Munger (exaggeratedly) calls it a ‘standard condition’, he’s right on the money that it’s something each of us can train ourselves not to do.

It's all about practice 

The Spurs would have only 4 trophies if they'd fallen into self-pity

But knowing that it’s possible is a lot different from doing it in practice.

We may all know what Munger calls the grandma corollary: that it’s a good idea to eat one’s vegetables before having desert. Anyone not aware that empty calories are bad and consistent sleep and exercise are good?

There’s a lot more to it, though, than knowing. GI Joe was wrong, knowing isn’t even close to half the battle with Munger’s best ideas.

The San Antonio Spurs just provided an perfect an example as I’ve ever seen of a group of people working together and embracing Munger’s insight against self-pity. 

Spurs as anti-fragile

Grantland editor Bill Simmons makes a case for the Spurs’s anti-fragility nearly as eloquent as the lived experience of the organization he covers.

Q: What’s the best lesson of the 2014 Spurs that wasn’t ridiculously obvious?

Five words: Don’t feel sorry for yourself.

Instead of moping around after blowing last year’s title, they looked at everything logically and wondered, “Hmmmmm … why did we REALLY lose?” The conclusion: They weren’t good enough at small ball; they couldn’t play two point guards at once; they didn’t rest their veterans enough; and they didn’t exploit Diaw’s offensive skills enough. They spent the regular season working on those issues and transforming themselves into a superior version of the Seven Seconds or Less Suns. The end result: They treated the 2014 Heat the same way those slash-and-kick international teams treated American basketball in the mid-2000s. It almost looked like they were playing a different sport.

One good reason to CrossFit

Just in case you needed one more reason to CrossFit, The Economist magazine provided a great argument in graphic form today.

The Economist looks at the percentage of people with Body Mass Index more than 25.

Looking at Body Mass Index (not a great—or even decent—measure, to be sure, but still) for people across the globe, a new study in Lancet indicates, “waistlines are widening everywhere.”

Overweight or obese adults as a percentage of the total population went from 29 percent in 1980 to 37 percent in 2013. While people just about everywhere are getting bigger, the trend is most pronounced in Africa, the Middle East and New Zealand and Australia. 

The World Needs CrossFit

While rich countries are slowing down in weight gain, poorer countries are speeding up. This is especially bad news, because two-thirds of the world’s 2.1 billion overweight adults live in poor countries. Startlingly, 335 million people in China are overweight.  

And it’s not just a factor of China’s huge population (where it’s said that if you’re one in a million, there are more than 1,000 people just like you). Twenty-five percent of adults are now overweight compared with just ten percent in 1980.

And We All Need CrossFit Kids

Fat isn’t just for adults. The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington showed that children are fattening at a faster pace than adults. Last week the World Health Organization (WHO) set up a new commission to curb child obesity. 

The Economist argues, "it will be some time yet before the world reaches peak fat." 

Childhood obesity rates. Not good.

Instead of releasing a bunch of studies, the WHO would have been better off to just open up a bunch of CrossFit Kids gyms. If the gyms are outside of the United States, be sure to invite the boys.

On The Other Hand

Perhaps increased body mass isn’t bad after all. What could be better than this:

CrossFit: More money, more problems...more solutions?

More money, more problems?

CrossFit, it seems, has a target on its back. The world of fitness can be polarizing. When you’ve got a movement with a founder who proclaims to have revolutionized the industry, you can bet people will take shots. When that founder is actually right, you can bet those taking shots will number in the hundreds. When he’s both right and builds a global behemoth that grows geometrically, the numbers of detractors will increase correspondingly. 

Sometimes CrossFit provides the target, sometimes it is the target.

Erin Simmons ignited an internet firestorm when she posted her piece, Why I don’t CrossFit. Here’s my rejoinder. 

Erin Simmons Doesn't do CrossFit

Perhaps the biggest complaint lodged against Crossfit—and, frankly, the most important—is that it’s dangerous. This blog is interested in two guys’ ideas: Greg Glassman and Charlie Munger. I think their respective notions of general physical and intellectual preparedness are amazing. And very similar. But Glassman’s do run a risk that Munger’s don’t: physical harm. (Glassman might rejoin that sitting on one’s ass for hours on end doing nothing more than reading is likely to produce a lot more physical harm than his program ever would…and he’d probably be right!)

CrossFit can be dangerous. Poor coaching is always bad; coaching that ignores movement that is inherently dangerous is worse than bad. No doubt, there are some CrossFit coaches who fail to protect their clients. But there are a lot more CrossFit gyms and CrossFit trainers who never fail their clients that way. Scroll down to the Hackenbruck stuff for a wonderful counterexample to Simmons’s rant happening at Ute CrossFit.

Lift Big Eat Big’s Brandon Morrison, though makes a wonderful point, any physical activity comes with risks. When people are ambitious in their physical goals and training, then there’s inherently more risk. Anyone familiar with the story of Icarus—the guy who borrowed his dad’s chariot to try to fly to the sun—is aware that doing stuff that others can’t or won’t do necessarily runs risks that those others aren’t exposed to. (Of course, poet William Blake’s point, “No bird soars too high / if he flies with his own wings” is a helpful corrective).

Let he without stiffness or injury cast the first stone

Morrison, who doesn't do CrossFit, but is fed up with those who would criticize the program, notes that, “it is very easy to call something dangerous, when you are on the outside looking in.” Of course CrossFitters get hurt and they get sore. Morrison offers some perspective, “but think about it this way: a race car sitting in the garage may require no maintenance, but it also isn't going anywhere. Wear and tear is normal across all strength sports, and let he who is without stiffness or injury cast the first stone.” 

What a great line.  

Brandon Morrison Doesn't do CrossFit...but likes it anyway.

Of course, no one who walks in a gym for the first time after 20 years of doing nothing more strenuous than sitting on a coach should not be doing Olympic lifts or heavy loads on their first visit. While I doubt very much that has ever happened in any CrossFit box, I’m sure some questionable stuff does in some gyms on occasion.

I follow Morrison in not holding, “the entirety of Crossfit responsible for the irresponsibility of the minority of new Crossfit coaches.”

CrossFit is hugely popular. It will continue to grow in popularity so long as it continues to produce results for people, and as long as it keeps producing facilities, athletes, and coaches like those found at Ute CrossFit. I love CrossFit. I think Greg Glassman’s definition of fitness is amazing and has produces truly incredible results. The notion of developing general physical preparedness in response to life’s unpredictable demands is as good a fitness idea as I’ve ever come across.

CrossFit on magnanimity

Because of CrossFit’s status and profile, it is in a position to be generous, even magnanimous. CrossFit’s and CrossFitters magnanimity is on display in activities like fighting for a cure for children’s cancer, providing clean water for Kenya, supporting the families of fallen firefighters, and making sure kids are safe around water, just to scratch the surface. It can even (especially?) be seen in supporting athletes injured while participating in CrossFit, like Kevin Ogar.

As great as their work in fitness is, it’s this kind of altruistic work that makes CrossFitters, including founder Greg Glassman, live up to an even higher ideal than the libertarian dream of non-interference.

Morrison points to another way CrossFit is generous, writing, “I challenge all non-Crossfit strength athletes to think of another fitness movement with thousands of gyms around the world, where we can bring in our Strongman equipment, have a big open floor to do whatever we want, and most importantly, not be surrounded by treadmills, mirrors, and ‘no deadlifting’ signs. LBEB lifters are eternally grateful to all the Crossfit gyms that have let us use their space in the past, because without them, we would be screwed.”

How am I grateful to CrossFit? Let me count the ways…

How are you grateful for CrossFit?

The lower back is to strength as reading is to intelligence?

After yesterday’s piece that considered Erin Simmons’s reasons for not doing CrossFit, here are some thoughts on a more positive take by muscle buildingsite T Nation. Christian Thibaudeau wrote a nice post apologizing to CrossFit, and CrossFitters, for his previous misconceptions about the program.

 

As a guy who once made fun of CrossFit—believing the movement a fad performed by neophytes with horrible form who would never get strong or build muscle, he admits he had it wrong. What changed his mind? Working with CrossFit athletes. Yep, just the kind of anecdotal evidence Erin Simmons used in her piece.

Thibaudeau found that, next to the powerlifters, CrossFitters are the strongest group of clientele he has. “Oddly enough, for a group that has a reputation for using bad form, they have probably the best form among the people I've trained,” he said. What attributes make this so? “Serious CrossFitters are perfectionists and really work at their craft. Sure, they might have a slight technical breakdown during WODs, but most of the time their technique is very solid.”

Thibaudeau started wondering what was going on when a bunch of his CrossFit athletes started making gains in months that took him years to achieve. One of the female clients he trained even hit a 190-pound snatch faster than he did (he shouldn’t feel too bad…I’ve yet to hit a 190-snatch).

The volume CrossFitters were getting in training wouldn’t have been enough to make those kinds of gains, in his experience. So how did Thibaudeau explain it?

Here’s what he learned from coaching CrossFit athletes.

The Good: CrossFit’s secrets

1: Strong Lower Backs

Stuff that taxes CrossFitters lower backs is part of just about every WOD. So, they use their backs every day, whether to deadlift—either high reps or heavy weight—kettle bell swings, or overhead squats and the other Olympic lifts.

The takeaway: CrossFitters have amazingly strong backs and work their lower back every day in different ways. Working this way makes the back stronger and carries over to Olympic lifting, deadlifting, and squatting—the mainstays of any strength or power building program.

2: high rep work

CrossFitters do a lot of high rep work, and this high-rep work on the big basic lifts builds a lot of muscle mass while also leading to decent strength gains.

“Yes, doing 21-15-9 on deadlifts and pull-ups sucks while you're doing it, but I must confess that it does work,” Thibeaudeau said. Rather than parrot the conventional wisdom among body builders that CrossFitters are making strength gains only because they do a lot of ancillary strength work outside of the WODs, Thibeadeau acknowledges that WODs alone are working for many. 

CrossFitters “deadlift, squat, front squat, and push press (the Olympic lifts are a given) a lot more than the average commercial member,” he said. The result?  CrossFitters achieve superior gains than those who specifically train to get bigger and stronger by doing "bodybuilding work."

“What I like about the CrossFit-style high reps is that they do not define it in ‘sets.’ If you have 21 deadlifts to do with 355 pounds, you can get those 21 reps in 2, 3 or 4 ‘sets’ as long as you try to do them as fast as possible. That gives you a high density of work with a fairly heavy load, and that will build a lot of muscle mass.”

3: healthy mental outlook

“One thing I noticed with many CrossFit athletes and even among recreational CrossFit participants is that they don't have the same respect for the weight as powerlifters, Olympic lifters, or bodybuilders do,” Thibaudeau said. “They don't seem to realize how hard a certain weight should be.”

He provides an example of a “friend who was deadlifting 405 pounds who set a goal to deadlift 535 in four months…[who] didn't seem to realize that a 135-pound increase on a lift in four months was insane.” His friend, a CrossFitter, achieved his goal. And Thibaudeau said he sees that kind of thing all the time from CrossFitters. 

“That's the weird thing with CrossFit,” he said. “In powerlifting we look at the big guns deadlifting and squatting 900-1000 pounds and think, ‘These guys are inhuman; I'll never get there.’ In CrossFit they look at the guys who qualify for the games that have cleans of 315-375 pounds and think, ‘Man, I need to get there, quick.’” And so they do. Because they believe they can.

I Believe in Baptism Because I’ve Seen it Done

Charlie Munger likes to tell a joke about the man from Alabama who, when asked if he believed in baptism said, “Of course.” And when asked why responded, “because I’ve seen it done.”

That may not be a very sound strategy for religious belief, but it can do wonders in the weight room. Thibaudeau uses himself as an example to illustrate how. Long stuck at 275 on his bench press, he couldn’t even conceive of achieving a 315 press. Until he moved into a ‘cave’.

“I started training at a little hardcore gym in the basement of a church,” he said. “The manager was a former Canadian record holder in the clean & jerk and his son was a strongman competitor. All the powerlifters and strongmen in the city trained there. There were at least 10 guys bench pressing 405 and a few had gotten over 500 pounds raw. It wasn't exactly Westside, but compared to my previous gym it was a slap in the face. Within a few weeks I was up to 315 and it wasn't that long until I could hit 365 and then 405 came within less than a year. 

What changed? Something in the new gym’s water? Not likely. It was being around guys stronger than he was and seeing how they worked. Watching as they routinely accomplished stuff he’s previously believed to be impossible And Thibuadeau said he recognizes the same principle at work wih CrossFitters. “You see so many competitive CrossFitters hitting 345-380 pound cleans and 265-285 pound snatches that 300-315 and 225-235 becomes ordinary (even low) and thus seems ‘easy’ to reach. The funny thing is that because of that perception, they really do become much easier to reach.”

It’s all about the application

Use it or lose it may well be a mantra for Charlie Munger. Applying what you know is that important to him. Of course, it’s no different in the physical realm than the mental.  

"It's much harder to teach you how to apply a mental strategy than a training strategy," Thibeadeau said. But he does have one suggestion, "if you want to get strong, the best thing you could possibly do is move to a gym where super strong guys train." And if you want to get super smart, it's probably a good idea to surround yourself with ideas from the very brightest. The way that happens, is to read. 

 

A great insight Thibeadeau offers is not to unduly limit the pool of people to draw from. One of the defects a too-strong ideology causes--whether as a powerlifter/body builder like Thibeadeau or a thinker like Charlie Munger--is that it limits your potential sources for learning. Perhaps the most important insight in his article was to learn from everyone. Thibeadeau has a healthy approach to learning and a robust respect for what others have to teach him.  As a result, he’ll be great at learning and taking the best of what others have to offer.

CrossFit develops General Physical Prepardness: Lessons from Epictetus to Hackenbruck (no matter what Erin Simmons says)

Avoid Intense Ideology—or at least it’s bad effects

Erin Simmons posted an interesting piece on why she doesn't do CrossFit recently. 

Erin Simmons has a thoughtful take on why she doesn't do CrossFit

I agree with a lot of what she writes. I find some aspects of her critique shortsighted. One feature of her writing that I find completely unassailable is her attempt to get people to think things through carefully instead of blindly buying an ideology.

Simmons has lots of friends who CrossFit. Recognizing that many of them might get upset at a critique of the popular workout program, she sets her sights not on making friends, or even worrying about not alienating people. Rather, her “goal is not to simply go along with what is popular or to avoid tough subjects so that people won’t ‘unfollow’ me. The goal is to educate people about fitness and health and to warn against potentially harmful or unhealthy diet and exercise practices.”

To the extent that she gets people to examine the quality of instruction they're receiving, to consider the potential for benefit and harm their workout program is doing and can do, Simmons is on the right track. 

CrossFitters are often accused of being in a cult. So are devotees of this blog's other subject: Charlie Munger. Munger himself often levels the charge (good-naturedly) at those who attend Berkshire Hathaway's annual meetings to hear him and partner Warren Buffet speak.

If you've ever read this blog, you're aware that I agree with much of what both CrossFit founder Greg Glassman and Munger say and do. And I think being in wide agreement with them and following their prescriptions for physical fitness and worldly wisdom will lead most of us to exceptional results. But blindly following them, taking their opinions and outlooks as gospel, or never formulating one's own opinions or reexamining their positions in light of experience--or own or observed in others--is stupid. 

Munger, in no uncertain terms, announces that such uncritical adherence to ideology is extremely harmful.

CrossFit (and Epictetus) has it right

Why? Because Olympic and power lifts are not meant to be done in sets of 30 or for time. They are extremely technique-oriented and are meant to be explosive and powerful over very short periods of time with plenty of rest.

True. Kind of. Greg Glassman has said that the most important adaptation CrossFit offers happens between the ears. In my opinion, the best thing CrossFit does is cultivate grit in its participants. Thinking that CrossFit gets Olympic lifts ‘wrong’ because they’re designed for power and only power misses the mark.

Glassman’s point behind developing general physical preparedness is that life is unpredictable. Because we can’t know what life will throw at us, the workout program that forces us to tackle what’s in front of us—no matter what that is—is desirable.

Charlie Munger has lauded the importance of assiduity. And he likes it for the same reason Glassman likes general physical preparedness: because you just don’t know what’s coming. “I like th[e] word [assiduity] because it means: sit down on your ass until you do it. Two partners that I chose for one little phase in my life had the following rule when they created a design, build, construction team. They sat down and said, two-man partnership, divide everything equally, here’s the rule: if ever we’re behind in commitments to other people, we will both work 14 hours a day until we’re caught up. Needless to say, that firm didn’t fail. The people died very rich. It’s such a simple idea.

Epictetus on assiduity

 
“Another thing, of course, is that life will have terrible blows in it, horrible blows, unfair blows. And some people recover and others don’t. And there I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He said that every missed chance in life was an opportunity to behave well, every missed chance in life was an opportunity to learn something, and that your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow in constructive fashion. That is a very good idea. You may remember the epitaph which Epictetus left for himself: ‘Here lies Epictetus, a slave maimed in body, the ultimate in poverty, and the favored of the gods.’”

CrossFit’s Real problem: Iatrogenics

Despite her misdiagnosis of CrossFit’s unconventional use of Olympic and power lifts in metabolic conditioning workouts, Simmons’s charge that coaches do harm is well taken.

The CrossFit coach, like the medical professional, should be concerned with the phenomenon of iatrogenics: damage from treatment in excess of the benefits. Iatrogenics “caused by the healer,” iatros being a healer in Greek.

Nassim Taleb points out how painfully slowly the medical profession has been to deal with the fact of iatrogenesis, writing calling the discipline a ‘slow learner’ on the subject. Even worse, though, he writes, is that  “the very notion of iatrogenics is quite absent from the discourse outside medicine.”

If the maxim, ‘first do no harm’ should apply to medical professionals, it should just apply just as much to trainers. And, no doubt CrossFit trainers are sometimes guilty of doing the bad stuff Simmons writes that they do.

Success Leaves Clues

Charlie Munger is famous for saying, “success leaves clues.” He and many who admire his thinking believe that careful study of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual letters would be more valuable than an MBA. Learning from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger is learning from the best at what they do.

CrossFit’s motto is ‘Forging Elite Fitness.’ Though he formulated a workout program that is ‘universally scalable,’ CrossFit founder Greg Glassman designed his workout program with an eye toward the elite athlete. His thinking in doing so was that people aspire to emulate the best. It’s not a new idea, Aristotle compared the practice of setting laws just above what’s possible to a conductor providing a pitch a half-step higher than the note he wanted his chorus to sing.

Munger has his own reasons to be elitist, too. In his piece, “The Need for More Multidisciplinary Skills from Professionals: Educational Implications,” Munger explicitly gears his arguments to ‘elite academia.’

He begins his piece by recognizing that ‘broadscale professionals’ need more multidisciplinary education. But then he gears his comments toward elite institutions and their elite students. Some of that makes sense; his address was to the fiftieth reunion of Harvard Law School’s Class of 1948. So, when he asks, “Was our education sufficiently multidisciplinary?,” he’s asking an appropriate question for his audience.

Munger’s subsequent exclusive focus on the elite, though, isn’t as necessary. He goes on to ask, “In elite broadscale soft science…” and “how far has elite academia progressed…” He clearly isn’t concerned with what the masses are up to. Partly, I think he shares Glassman’s motivations: changing what’s done at the elite level often has a galvanizing effect on what the rest of us do. You don’t have to look past the phenomenon of kids continuing to wear Jordan brand shoes more than 10 years after Michael’s retirement to figure that out. Munger’s elitism, though, runs a bit deeper than Glassman’s.

Consider his response to the question of what the most important of the 24 causes of psychological misjudgment is most important. Munger begins by saying it’s the way the factors combine to have a multiplying effect. He then goes on to posit why psychology as a discipline hasn’t latched on to this hugely important idea, after suggesting that he was like a truffle hound taking what he wanted from the discipline, he opined, “I don't think it's good teaching psychology to the masses. In fact, I think it's terrible.”

I’m not sure either Glassman’s or Charlie Munger’s elitism is always helpful. I may explore why later, but for now, I’d like to consider the kernel of their elitism that is absolutely valuable.

Correct. I am elitist.

Thomas Hackenbruck: Correct. I am elitist.

That quote doesn’t come from either Glassman or Munger, but from Ute CrossFit owner Thomas Hackenbruck. Hackenbruck exemplifies how strict adherence to elitism is a good thing.

He recently found himself in a bit of a Twitter kerfuffle, in which the charge was leveled against him that he’s ‘an elitist.’  Here’s the charge, “So you're saying there's no truth to "Anyone can CF?" The cost is what makes excellence? That is so elitist”

Here's what made Hackenbruck mad: getting his business undercut.
5 @CrossFit gyms within 20 miles all offering groupings right now. It's called the race to the bottom folks #NeverUs

His response? “Correct. I am elitist.”

Twitter exchange between Thomas Hackenbruck and Eric Kiv and Matt Riffe

It’s his rationale that’s interesting. Remember all of Erin Simmons’s critiques of CrossFit. Read her piece again. Most people will probably recognize some legitimate concerns. I certainly did. Whatever concerns you have about CrossFit after reading Simmons’s piece, consider how many apply to Ute CrossFit’s practice.

Simmons’s assertions that CrossFit coaches get certified in a weekend, that the only barrier to opening a gym is money and that trainers don’t have any real knowledge of proper form, especially regarding Olympic and power lifts, are undoubtedly accurate in some instances. But they’re not universally applicable, either, as Hackenbruck’s example makes clear.

A different set of anecdotal evidence

Thomas Hackenbruck and his wife Bobbie Jo decided to open a CrossFit gym largely on the basis of exactly the kind of anecdotal evidence Erin Simmons pointed to in her recent piece. In an interview with Stack, Bobbie Jo cited the lack of results clients at the corrective exercise clinic where she worked were getting to being a major factor in her deciding to open the gym. Clients were paying $300 to $400 per month and “No one was really getting fit at the corrective exercise clinic," she said. Especially compared to the results she was getting and her friends were getting from CrossFit.  "I thought, 'These people are paying a lot of money and not getting any real results.'" 

Hackenbruck’s practice: Do as I do

Hackenbruck gears the training offered at his gym to those who will receive it. 

CrossFit Ute has about 400 members; about 10 percent of whom are interested in competing in CrossFit. Not only are the 'regular' people numerically greater, they're the main focus for the gym. “They are the heart of your box and community," Bobbie Jo said. "We try to keep the CrossFit Games aspect separate. Training for the sport of CrossFit is a completely different thing than real CrossFit."

Thomas echoes his wife's sentiments, if "you have five or six people that are really asking for [competitive CrossFit courses] and want it and want it and want it but it’s only five or six people. You create a whole new class. You could have 15 people doing the regular class or you have four doing the competitors’ class. That’s not good business." 

Ute CrossFit minimum standards for 2013 CrossFit Games

To each according to his need; to each according to his ability

So, his solution was to treat different people, who have different goals and expectations, differently. "The thing that we’re really lucky here is we have the two spaces so we can do a competitors’ class over there and a regular class here," Thomas said. "We never ever want to cancel a regular class to do anything else unless it’s more important. Having two spaces has worked really well to do that stuff. I think your bread and butter has to be just CrossFit." 

Not only are the Hackenbrucks good at providing opportunity and instruction tailored to the different clients with different abilities and limitations, they're good at being up front with them as to why they get treated the way they do. 

"It was really important for us to make this known to everybody: if we’re going to have a separate group at a separate time with different workouts we need to explain to everybody in the gym why we do that so they don’t walk in the gym and look over and see someone doing that and think that person’s in better shape, what’s up with these secret workouts and how come we don’t do them if these are really the best things to do? I think it all comes back to taking care of your clients and developing trust with them. 

If we make a big change in the gym or we make a big decision or we add a new program it’s important to explain to every client this is what we’re doing and this is why we’re doing it and then they can make the decision if they want to do it or not. You never want to alienate your big client base. If you have this little secret group going on and people don’t understand what it is then it could be an issue."  

The Hackenbruck Secret to injury prevention  

The Hackenbrucks have a 'secret' that is especially applicable to the ten percent of their clients who are interested in CrossFit competition: the 1-to-1 Injury-Proofing Rule.

According to this rule, every one hour of training means a corresponding one hour in recovery and restorative work. 

And Thomas is no exception to that rule. “He gets in body work, he foam rolls, mobility exercises and the like,” Bobbie Jo said. “After his morning endurance workout—even though it’s at an easy effort—he takes a 20-minute ice bath.” 

The 1-to-1 training-to-recovery ratio works in preventing injuries. And when Ute CrossFit athletes complain of sore muscles or being tired, they're prescribed a bodyweight-only training program until they're right again.   

One final anecdote  

Before the 2013 CrossFit Games, which Thomas led his team Hack's Pack to its second consecutive win in the team competition, Hackenbruck had a 550-pound Back Squat, ran five kilometers in under 22:00, and had a 285-pound Snatch. 

 


Not everyone will be capable of those kinds of results. Even if Greg Glassman is right (and I think he is) that CrossFit is infinitely scalable, CrossFit may not be for everyone. But Thomas Hackenbruck is a wonderful example that CrossFit can bring out one of our best qualities: assiduity.