Who is Ivan Drago

Ivan Drago is a world-class Russian boxer played by Dolph Lundgren in the Rocky/Creed franchise. He first appeared in Rocky 4 back in 1985. Ivan Drago looks fucking ( sorry Mom) awesome in Rocky 4. He is obviously the bad guy in this film for various reasons but I want to discuss his training and nutrition regime.

This was the time of the soviet union and some of the best training advice has come from this era. The Soviets were ahead of their time with their training, nutrition, and even drug use ( more on that another day). Rocky 4 does a fantastic job of showing how the Soviets pumped endless resources into producing the biggest, fastest and strongest athletes they could. Ivan has multiple of the world's best sports performance doctors around, the best equipment, and even government officials watching him train to ensure he was getting the best from everything. Enough of me talking about it here is one of the many training montages from youtube.

You are not Ivan Drago

Unless you are a professional athlete, olympian, or D1 athlete you will not have your life revolve around training. They are the 1% of the 1% for a reason. They are allowed to focus on optimal training because they worked their asses off to get to where they are and the team/organization has the resources to let them train that way. The rest of the 99% of us need to work a job, have a family, and manage a social life. We cannot dedicate endless resources, time, and effort into training. We simply have too many other things going on.

You do not need to have the best training plan, facility, or training partners to make progress. Yea those things help but it's not going to determine any sort of progress you make. I forget where I heard this but

“ a bad training plan done consistently will always outperform a good training plan done inconsistently”

How to avoid falling into the optimal trap

I was having a discussion with one of my nutrition clients the other day. She was asking me about trying a new probiotic because it has “ cleaner ingredients”. After some back and forth and questioning she finally had a lightbulb moment. She realized that her current probiotic was working well why would she want to switch it up and possibly hinder progress?

We have all tried to adjust our lives to make training better, we have all tried to find the best plan that works for us, and we have all tried to find the best supplements to help improve workouts. All of these activities are great until they aren't. Once they get in the way of actual training or take away mental energy from other things you need to do, you start getting stuck in the optimal loop.

The easiest way to avoid this trap is to take a step back and see if you are still making progress. 9/10 times we are all making progress it is just not visible. If you feel good, feel energized, move pain-free, and are getting stronger, those are all signs of progress, you don’t need to change anything.

If you think supplementation is the reason you arent making progress. Stop right now and go look at what you ate instead. $100+ worth of supplements wont move the needle as much as you think it will. A cheaper alternative is to look at your nutrition.

Those are the two biggest reasons I see friends, family or clients fall into the optimal trap. If you think you are falling into that trap shoot me a message Id love to talk things over with you and see where you can make some easy improvements!

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