Fragmentation and the Transformational Matrix

Your Fitness Efforts Fail Because You Are One-Dimensional in a Four-Dimensional Universe

Our transformational matrix: four disparate disciplines simultaneously set into motion with numerous subsets.

No matter how sincere the effort, no matter how well you adhere, flawed strategies cannot be overcome.

Why do people exercise? Why diet? Why jog, why do Pilates, pump iron, or join the local YMCA? It all stems from a psychological dissatisfaction with our current physiological reality. This dissatisfaction with our physical self is so deep and profound that thought morphs into action. The internal visualization of our transformed self is so strong and motivating that it spurs a person to take remedial action.

Why Sincere Fitness Efforts Fail

The serious individual intent on renovating their physique establishes an exercise regimen and supports it with a diet plan. In most cases, the transformational effort lasts a few months, longer for the strong-willed, before the serious individual quits. Why quit? No gains.

Trainees quit because the effort is not worth the result. The resultant cost-benefit ratio is badly out of balance: lots of time-consuming exercise and lots of dutifully restrictive dieting that, in the end, produce negligible results. How disappointing. You rearrange your life and make a serious and determined effort. You follow all the diet and exercise guidelines. You follow the procedures and expect the promised results — results that never materialize.

We rightly expect dramatic changes in and to our body in exchange for disciplined and determined exercise and dietary efforts. In most instances, those high hopes and determined efforts are doomed before commencing. As the old line goes, effort is no substitute for success. No matter how sincere the effort, no matter how well you adhere, flawed strategies cannot be overcome.

Too Little, Too Much, or Badly Fragmented

At one extreme are the flawed diet and exercise strategies that demand too little. Submaximal training effort and mild dieting using the wrong foods do not produce the mind-blowing results sought. The body does not favorably reconfigure itself — building muscle and strength, melting off fat, getting fit — in response to mildness, ease and sameness. Limit-equaling or limit-exceeding exercise effort is required at the right time and in the right way.

Moderate exercise has value. The point is not that mild movement is useless. The point is that mild, unperiodized, one-dimensional effort rarely triggers the radical physical transformation the trainee imagines.

Likewise, fat loss is not controlled by one simplistic hormone slogan. Elevated insulin can blunt fat mobilization, but the larger body-composition picture is governed by the total diet, total training, food quality, adherence, sleep, stress and time.

At the other extreme are flawed strategies that demand too much. You can spend hours riding the stationary bike at submaximal effort and live on 800 calories a day. You can have the willpower of Nietzsche and maintain this slow torture for months on end. In the end, you are beaten down, listless, skinny-fat, and weak.

If the exercise is endless and submaximal, if the diet is starvation-style, if the foods are wrong, and if resistance training is missing or toothless, you end up with a starvation-and-drudgery physique: overworked, underfed, weak, and flat. That is not transformation. That is depletion.

The Four-Dimensional Transformational Matrix

In addition to flawed methodology, transformational efforts are doomed by being one-dimensional or two-dimensional instead of four-dimensional. To trigger a radical physical transformation, four disparate yet interrelated and intertwined disciplines need to be in place and practiced: synchronized, periodized, and launched simultaneously.

Each discipline has its own preplanned strategy. A multitude of mini-strategic periodization programs are implemented beneath the overarching process premise.

• Techniques: highly specific signature exercise techniques using full range of motion.
• Tactics: periodize everything; set the techniques into motion.

The four disciplines are practiced simultaneously. Each of the four has a periodized game plan set inside a defined timeframe. Each has a strategy for progressing.

The Four Disciplines

• Progressive resistance training: three distinct strength types — absolute, explosive, and sustained. Apportion available training time between the three strength types.
• Cardiovascular training: the cardio tool or mode is secondary to the protocol. Practice both steady-state and burst work. Sweat is the coin of the realm in effective cardio.
• Nutrition: clean up the content. Favor quality proteins, produce, and minimally processed foods. Organic, seasonal and locally sourced are excellent when available and practical. Learn to cook. Basic life skill. Simple preparations of power foods.
• Brain Train: address psyche, adherence, and habit force. Tangible gains generate enthusiasm. Enthusiasm causes the trainee to redouble their efforts.

Iron Zen: Not One, Two, or Three — Four

Better to practice a little of each of the four transformative disciplines than a whole lot of any one or two. A man can become strong as an ox, fit as a fiddle and still carry too much body fat. A massive football lineman can be fantastically strong and well-conditioned for his sport while still lacking the body composition a bodybuilder would demand.

A long-distance runner can be wonderfully lean and aerobically impressive while still lacking strength, muscle mass, and low-end torque if he never trains those qualities. The specialist is impressive inside the narrow specialty. The transformed human needs the matrix.

• Unless all four interlocking transformative disciplines are in place and practiced, results will always be less than they could have been.

Contrast Is the Solution to Stagnation

There are subtle and overt subsets, nuance and variation, within each of the four disciplines. These subsets create the possibility of contrast. Contrast is always the solution for physical stagnation.

To power out of the mire of inertia, dramatic change needs to be instituted. Switch out a stale diet or exercise regimen for something new and vibrant, something completely different and contrasting. How might a 12-week, preplanned periodized resistance-training protocol look?

General Rules for a 12-Week Periodized Resistance-Training Cycle

• Most lifts start off at approximately 50% to 65% of current capacity.
• Beginner cycles may aim to end 15% to 25% above current starting capacity; advanced lifters require smaller jumps.
• All lifts use pristine technique.
• In early phases, multiple top sets can be used when recovery allows.
• Never start off too high or too low.
• Beginners make the greatest gains when measured as a percentage.
• It is not realistic to expect large percentage increases past the first few cycles.
• Gains of this magnitude are not unusual for those new to cycling.
• The stronger the lifter, the smaller the percentage increase at cycle’s end.
• Small weekly poundage jumps work best.
• These periodization charts are uber-basic; sophisticated variations exist.
• Other factors can be periodized: bodyweight, calories, cardio modes, and more.

Create Your Own Linear Periodized Training Template

In a nutshell, the way to periodize or cycle any lift is as follows:

• Create a realistic goal.
• Establish a realistic timeframe.
• Reverse engineer: work backward with a calendar or computer.
• Place realistic goals within the specified timeframe.
• Work backward to establish weekly poundage benchmarks.
• Every 3 to 4 weeks, alter the variables.
• Be on alert for stagnation.
• When instituting changes, make them dramatic, not minor.
• For optimal results, periodize bodyweight up for mass or down for leaning out.

Fragmentation fails. The matrix works because the body is not one-dimensional. The body is a system. Train the system.

Equipment Notes for Supporting the Transformational Matrix

The transformational matrix is not about equipment collecting. Equipment is secondary to the plan. Still, the right tools make it easier to practice the four disciplines with consistency and progression.

For cardiovascular modes, lifters and facilities can compare exercise bikes and treadmills. A fan-bike option such as the Assault Air Bike Classic can support hard burst-cardio work, while a curved treadmill such as the AssaultRunner Elite can support running-style conditioning when used appropriately.

For the resistance-training side of the matrix, readers can compare dumbbells, plate-loaded leverage gym equipment, and selectorized gym equipment. Examples include IRON COMPANY urethane hex dumbbells for simple free-weight work and the Body-Solid plate-loaded flat bench press for focused pressing in the right facility setting.

The equipment does not create the transformation. The synchronized matrix — resistance training, cardio, nutrition, and Brain Train — creates the transformation.

Safety Note for Aggressive Transformation Efforts

Radical transformation is not a crash-diet manifesto and not a license to train recklessly. Very-low-calorie dieting, high-intensity resistance training, burst cardio and rapid bodyweight manipulation are not appropriate for everyone.

Scale effort to age, health, training history, recovery, medical status and technical ability. Stop or seek qualified guidance for chest pain, faintness, dizziness, sharp pain, numbness, unusual shortness of breath, disordered eating patterns, severe fatigue, repeated technical collapse, or any symptom that falls outside ordinary training discomfort.

People with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, kidney disease, eating-disorder history, pregnancy, underweight status, medication concerns, major injury history, or significant medical conditions should seek qualified medical, nutrition or coaching guidance before aggressive transformation programs.

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW transformational matrix philosophy. It is not individualized medical, nutrition, rehabilitation, or programming advice.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.