This is a VERY important yet overlooked topic in fitness. This idea alone stops millions of people each year from getting into shape.
I call it “special snowflake syndrome”. The idea is that so many people think of themselves as a special snowflake, and since they are such a uniquely special snowflake, certain things won’t work for them.
Since they’re a special snowflake, the standard approach won’t work for them. There are too many examples to list, but they all share a common theme: they are an excuse used to justify not doing something that people don’t want to do.
For 99% of you, your hormones are not permanently messed up, you don’t have some genetic mutation that stops you from building muscle or losing fat, and you don’t have some anatomical anomaly that prevents you from squatting.
I once had a guy tell me that he can’t squat because he had some minor injury playing soccer in elementary school! I wish I was making this up!
Most of the time, people use these excuses because they are afraid of one of two things: discomfort or failure. It ultimately comes down to fear.
I’ve been there myself. For years I didn’t squat because I was afraid of failure. Squatting was hard, and if I didn’t try, then I couldn’t fail. Granted, it took me years to realize this truth. At the time, I told myself the same bullshit excuses that most people live by:
- Squatting is bad for my back
- I’m too tall to squat
- Squatting isn’t that important
- Etc, etc, etc
These are the things I told myself, but the truth is that I was just scared. I can admit that to myself now. It’s not a bad thing to be scared of something that’s good for you. It is a bad thing to let that fear control you. Eventually I decided that, even though I’m scared, I’m going to stop making excuses and just do it anyway.
The moral of this story is to stop telling yourself that you’re a special snowflake because you’re almost certainly not. The fundamentals and basic principles that work for everyone else will work for you too.
Now go out there and get after it.