Evolution
The Cutting Edge Guide to Breaking Down Mental Walls and Building the Body You've Always Wanted
As the sub-title suggests, this book is a guide to breaking down the mental walls that get in the way of building the body (and life) you’ve always wanted. Part motivational manifesto and part training manual. Big Ideas we explore include finding our extra gear, the magic # that can change your life (hint: 3:59.4), how to run a sub-4-minute mile (and achieve all your other goals), being strict + flexible and going from a 2 to an 8 by thinking less and doing more.
Big Ideas
- The Extra GearFind it. Evolve.
- 3:59.4The magic # of possible.
- How to Run a 4-min MileStep 1: Chop it up.
- Muhammad AliCould only do 8 push-ups.
- Strict Yet Flexible= Best approach.
- You Think You’re at an 8But you’re really at a 2. (Hah.)
- Think LessDo more.
- Commitment= Desire + Action.
“Changes can happen fast, but understand that this book goes much deeper than merely telling you which exercises to perform and the right foods to eat. This program is all-encompassing: mental, physical, and spiritual. What good is teaching you the physical side if you’re not supplied with the mind-set you need to push past the barriers and process the frustration that typically holds people back? I want this to be the book that changes your life. I’m living proof that it can be, because what’s contained here completely transformed mine.”
~ Joe Manganiello from Evolution
Gentlemen: This book will inspire you to train harder (and live harder). If you’re like me, your Ladies will enjoy the pictures. (At least mine did. Hah!)
Joe Manganiello is one of the stars of the Magic Mike movies, which, I’m proud to say, is one of the first movies Emerson watched as a baby. (Um, yah. It’s true.)
As the sub-title suggests, this book is a guide to breaking down the mental walls that get in the way of building the body (and life) you’ve always wanted.
It’s super intense and not for everyone—which is what makes it so great. Part motivational manifesto and part training manual. The first half is all about getting our minds right and the second half features a complete workout program. (Get a copy here.)
We’ll focus on some mental-wall-destroying Big Ideas from the first part. I’m excited to share a few of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!!
Download MP3
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Get the BookFinding that Extra Gear
“Looking back at my life, it was the obstacles, the shortcomings, and the failures that forced me to fight harder, to reach inside and pull something truly extraordinary out of myself that I didn’t even know existed. My failure was essential to my growth, because every time I failed, I learned that it was because I did not fight as hard as humanly possible.
Notice that I didn’t say ‘fight my hardest.’ There are a lot of people who try as hard as they can. But their ceilings and limitations are perceived barriers that restrict what they can achieve. We don’t know what we can really do until we push past the farthest point we’ve ever been and go where we’ve never gone before. There is a place beyond the conscious perception of what is achievable and that is where real success occurs.
After years of failure, I learned that there was another gear somewhere inside of me, and oftentimes it took failing to find the upshift. I began to believe that if, given enough time, and if I followed an intelligent and disciplined plan, I could change so drastically that you wouldn’t even recognize me. I had learned to evolve.”
Rule #1 of evolution: If you want to see how far you can really go, you have to push past the farthest point you’ve ever been.
There’s another gear within us. We need to find it.
William James tells us: “Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second. Give your dreams all you’ve got and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.”
And guess what? The only way to find that extra gear is to be willing to fall on our face a la T.S. Eliot’s wisdom: “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
AND… Often times the very thing that catalyzes our growth is our failure. It’s our greatest challenges that catalyze our greatest growth. IF WE LET THEM.
Orison Swett Marden tells us about the latent potential in a torpedo in the ode to self-determination called He Can Who Thinks He Can: “There is enough latent force in a Maximite torpedo shell to tear a warship to pieces. But the amount of force or explosive power in one of these terrific engines of destruction could never be ascertained by any ordinary concussion.
Children could play with it for years, pound it, roll it about, and do all sorts of things with it; the shell might be shot through the walls of an ordinary building, without arousing its terrible dynamic energy. It must be fired from a cannon, with terrific force, through a foot or so of steel plate armor, before it meets with resistance great enough to evoke its mighty explosive power.
Every man is a stranger to his greatest strength, his mightiest power, until the test of a great responsibility, a critical emergency, or a supreme crisis in his life, calls it out.”
Let’s embrace our failures and our challenges. Let’s blow through our perceived upper limits. Let’s find the extra gear.
3:59.4 ← The # That Will Change Your Life
“While this might not seem like much now, breaking this barrier was actually once considered impossible. The mile has existed since ancient Roman times. It is a unit of length equivalent to 5,280 feet (1,760 yards, or about 1,609 meters), originally used by the Roman army to signify the length of one thousand paces of a Roman legion, with each pace equaling two steps. For thousands of years, no one—not one single person—could eclipse the four-minute mark. For that reason, sportswriters and even physicists postulated that human evolution had certain limits and that running a mile in less than four minutes was one of those limitations.
Then Roger Bannister changed history.
Using innovative running strategies that focused on less running and more intense, shorter training sessions, in 1954 Bannister did the ‘impossible’ and became the first human being ever to run the mile in less than four minutes. His time: 3:59.4.
But the most amazing things happened after Bannister broke the record. Just forty-six days later, his record was broken—and then it was shattered again and again and again. The lesson is an important one, and it has nothing to do with running or the four-minute mile. Bannister had smashed through the real problem that prevents most successes. It’s a dark secret that few people ever discuss or admit: most of our barriers are mental. And those mental barriers can place physical and emotional limitations on what you can actually achieve in reality.”
We’ve heard the story of Roger Bannister before but it’s worth revisiting.
Joe tells us, “Every time you have a doubt about what I tell you in this book, I want you to think of Roger Bannister.”
He named his production company “3:59” as a tribute to Bannister and a reminder that anything is possible.
What are you telling yourself is impossible?
Is it?
Of course, some things are, in fact, impossible and we’d be wise to step away from those pursuits. But some stuff is just really really really hard. :)
Lest you think this is just Joe kinda going off into crazy-intense-ville, bare in mind that the eminent Harvard researcher and professor Ellen Langer tells us nearly the same thing in her classic book Mindfulness (see Notes).
Here’s how she puts it: “When we think of resources being limited, we often think of our own abilities. Here, too, our notion of limits may inhibit us. We may push ourselves to what we believe are our limits, in swimming, public speaking, or mathematics. However, whether they are true limits is not determinable.
It may be in our best interest to proceed as though these and other abilities might be improved upon, so that at least we will not be deterred by false limits. It was once assumed that humans could not run the mile in fewer than five minutes. In 1922 it was said to be ‘humanly impossible’ to run the mile in less than four minutes. In 1952 that limit was broken by Roger Bannister. Each time a record is broken, the supposed limit is extended. Yet the notion of limits persists.”
Plus: “Research like these vision studies highlights the dangers of setting limits for ourselves. For instance, I’ve asked my students: What is the greatest distance it is humanly possible to run in one spurt? Because they know the marathon is twenty-six miles, they use that number to start and then guess that we probably haven’t reached the limit, so they answer around thirty-two miles. The Tarahumura, of Copper Canyon in Mexico, can run up to two hundred miles. If we are mindful, we don’t assume limits from past experience have to determine present experience.”
She warns us not to be so quick to accept “false limits.”
What limits do you need to push?
#3:59.4
How to Run a 4-minute Mile (+ Do Whatever Else You Want)
“My approach is about breaking down perceived limitations by taking a goal, chopping it into smaller pieces in a way that is more easily manageable, and therefore infinitely more doable. …
Approach it like Bannister, who practiced his record-breaking-mile pace in a way no one had ever tried. He broke the mile into fourths. Once he ran a quarter mile in less than a minute, he then ran two quarters in less than a minute each. Eventually, when he could string together four quarters in a row in less than a minute each, he was prepared to show the world and make history.”
That’s how you become the first person in history to break the 4-minute mile.
Take your goal.
Chop it into smaller pieces.
Make each piece doable.
Re-assemble.
Voila.
So… What’s your impossible goal?
How can you chop it into achievable pieces?
Now a good time to do that?
Muhammad Ali Could only do 8 push-ups
“I remember a particular moment when it started to make sense. Moon Dog shared something that Muhammad Ali once said. A reporter came up to Ali after a workout and asked, ‘How many pus-ups can you do?’
Ali, a three-time heavyweight world champion, responded, ‘About eight or nine.”
The reporter looked bewildered. ‘What? Just eight or nine?’
Ali’s answer was along the lines of, ‘I only start counting when I can’t do any more,’ and then he blasts out another eight or nine.
That’s the mentality I had to learn, and it’s one of the most important concepts to grasp, in terms of training.
There is fatigue and exhaustion—the point at which most people quit. Those are barriers, not stopping points. You can stop and be good. But what if good is not enough? What if good is really just average? The other option is excellence and superior results. This is the place where few people venture.
Most see a barrier and think that the road is over, instead of realizing that roadblocks in life are really where success begins.”
So much goodness in there.
First, Muhammad Ali could only do 8 or 9 push-ups. I had no idea. HAH.
That’s one way to do it—only start counting when you can’t do any more.
*rubs eyes*
Reminds me of humanitarian/Navy SEAL Eric Greitens’s wisdom from The Heart and the Fist: “And this was one of the great lessons of Hell Week. We learned that after almost eighty hours of constant physical pain and cold and torture and almost no sleep, when we felt that we could barely even stand, when we thought that we lacked even the strength to bend over and tie our boots, we could in fact pick up a forty-pound rucksack and run with it through the night.”
Note to self: “Most see a barrier and think that the road is over, instead of realizing that roadblocks in life are really where success begins.”
Roadblocks = START signs not stop signs.
P.S. Drop down and give me 8 push-ups! :)
Best Approach: Strict Yet Flexible
“As I’ve mentioned before, this type of diet is meant to be strict yet flexible. While that might seem contradictory, it actually makes sense. In order to look lean and muscular, you have to follow a good diet. You have to be consistent, and you can’t make excuses. But if a plan isn’t flexible, odds are you won’t be able to stay on it for the long run. And since consistency is the foundation of success, you need a plan that you can adjust. Not to mention, if you’re on target every day for every meal, it makes it much easier to provide yourself with leeway to enjoy one meal every week without any restrictions.”
Two things I want to highlight here.
1. Strict but flexible. + 2. Consistency is the foundation of success.
First, Strict but flexible.
This is one of my favorite Big Ideas. We come back to it again and again.
Check out this Micro Class called: “Let’s Be Flexible (Rather than Rigid or Chaotic).”
Remember that (as leading therapist + neuroscientist Dan Siegel advises) the healthy human is FLEXIBLE.
Imagine a river flowing between two banks. On one side we have Rigidity; on the other, Chaos. The river of Flexibility flows between those banks—with enough structure but not so much we flood over into Rigidity AND enough spontaneity but not so much that we flood over into Chaos.
Strict but flexible.
And, the optimal human is CONSISTENT.
Are you?
You Think You’re at an 8. But It's Really at a 2. (Hah.)
“Truth: You think you’re working out at an 8. You’re actually working out at a 2. I don’t care how long you’ve been training; that’s just the reality. If that hurts your feelings, I’m sorry. It’s time for you to reestablish your baseline in order to define intensity.”
That’s funny. And, tragically true.
What level are you at in your life? Not just your workouts but your overall health, your commitment to optimizing, your family, your work, your LIFE.
You think you’re at an 8. But you’re really at a 2.
As Joe says, it DOESN’T MATTER who you are. You’ve got more to give. (I am looking in the mirror as I type that.)
We have ONE life. One *precious* life to live.
Remember: Water doesn’t boil until it hits 212°. Fire won’t ignite until it hits 451°.
Let’s turn up the activation energy, crank it up to a true, sustainable 8+ and SHINE.
P.S. If you’re *really* feeling it I guess you can go Spinal Tap on it and crank it up to 11!! :)
P.P.S. Remember: This doesn’t mean going so agro manic that we burn ourselves out. We’ve gotta pace ourselves and REST/RECOVER as hard as we push. And, we want to make sure our lives our dynamically balanced. But let’s be honest about how much we’re *really* giving. Go ALL IN. Make waves. Enjoy the ride.
Think Less and Do more
“It’s best in this case if you think less and do more. I try to keep my brain out of it, in terms of training. Because if I think about it, odds are I’ll overthink it. Keep it simple. I committed to a workout program, and there’s a reason why they call it a program. It’s not a workout feeling or whim.”
How’s your workout feeling coming along?
Crushing your workout whim?
(Laughing.)
It’s a workout PROGRAM. We commit and then we do it.
Let’s get clear on what’s important and then crush it. Think less and do more.
Commitment = Desire + Action
“In order to achieve a certain level of success, first find a certain level of motivation.
It’s the one thing I can’t give you in this book. I can teach you everything else, but I can’t teach that desire. Whatever your fears or blocks are, you need to find a motivation bigger than them. I can’t determine the thing most important to you that will keep that fire burning when you have those moments of doubt. Once you have that, I can help you. If you don’t have it, I can only match what you bring. Commitment = desire + action. The bigger the desire, the better the results.”
Strong commitment starts with strong DESIRE.
What’s your WHY?
Nietzsche tells us we can endure any how with a strong enough why.
Piers Steele gives us his motivation equation which starts with the potent combo of REALLY wanting something *and* REALLY believing you can have it.
Without those magical ingredients, we won’t be able to sustain our motivation through the inevitable ups and downs.
So, what do you REALLY want? You ready to stretch your belief of what’s possible and go for it?
Chop your goal down into the smallest possible doable pieces and go crush it.
About the author
