DAY 011: đ đď¸ All aboard! The DADBOD.REHAB T.R.A.I.N. is about to depart!ăDADBOD.REHABă We actually donât know exactly why DADBOD.REHAB is so successful. We evolved the mechanics of the program, essentially, through several years of trial and error. But we think a major reason it succeeds for so many people is that it is fully automatic. You are going to make some choices up front, but then once you get rolling, you train repeatedly and automatically. You donât have to think about it. You just do it.
The key to DADBOD.REHAB is how it uses a tactical regimen of activity and individualized nutritional improvement, generating a comparatively appealing and manly physique.
OH *cough* sorry, damn it, we said that wrong.
What we *meant* to say was, the key to DADBOD.REHAB is how it uses a Tactical Regimen of Activity and Individualized Nutritional Guidance, Generating a Comparatively Appealing and Manly Physique.
Also known as aâŚ
The tortured acronyms are getting a little hokey, though, and this is a truly important concept for the program, so henceforth weâll just refer to these as âtraining campsâ.
Many kinds of athletes use training camps to prepare for competition. They are intense, focused, and of a fixed-duration. They are widely acknowledged to be extremely effective, from MMA fighting to NFL football to the Olympics.
Youâre not doing any of that shit in DADBOD.REHAB, though. Still, we copy that core idea because we accidentally found out that it is unreasonably effective.
At the elite levels, MMA fighters and boxers do training camps â often 12 or 16 weeks â to get in peak shape. For them, peak shape means they are in such good shape on the night of the fight, itâs not even possible to be that way year-round. They are literally getting in better shape than it is possible to consistently be.
They gut it out, and it sucks. They hire coaches who yell at them, make them run faster, farther, and in the case of the MMA fighters, even kick them in the face and shit. They hire nutritionists who make them eat chicken breast, broccoli, and weird vitamin goop and donât let them eat anything else.
They are able to do this because they want to win that fight, and they know they only have to do it until then.
We arenât aiming anywhere nearly so high. We also arenât trying to get in better shape temporarily â we want this to be permanent. But the one thing that is the same, and the entire reason DADBOD.REHAB is 100% built around the idea of training camps, is that the knowledge that âI just have to do this until the end of campâ works the exact same way for a typical 27% body fat desk worker as it does for an elite combat sports athlete.
Itâs just so much easier to accept that you canât have more high-carb food right now than it is to accept the idea âI donât eat carbs any moreâ.
Likewise, it is so much easier to get up early and do that run, or get on that bike, or whatever (youâll choose from these or some other options soon), when you know, Only 13 more days of this camp, and then I am gonna sleep in and order a pizza for breakfast from my phone while I am still in bed.
Youâll normally do 12- or 16-week training camps. The camp is the unit of success or failure. You will fail some camps, eventually.
You might nail your first year or more of camps, or you might be a total pussy and fail your first five in a row. This also âdoesnât matter, for the programâ. The D.E.R.P. accounts for both ends of that spectrum, and everything in between.
Once youâve completed a training camp successfully though, thatâs in the books. It canât be undone or taken away.
Elite athletes sometimes fail their training camps, too. Just ask Nancy Kerrigan. She was training for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit, but some piece of shit hired a thug to hit her in the knee with a billy club! Fucked up her knee, and she had to withdraw.
But she healed up, did another training camp, and ended up skating in the Olympics and getting a medal.
Draw your own lessons about perserverance and shit. But we can tell you one thing: nobody in the history of DADBOD.REHAB ever failed a training camp because somebody hit them in the knee with a fucking billy club.
There have been a few injuries, yes. It could be an unrelated injury like you weâre trying to show off your skateboard skills, forgot you were a middle-aged overweight dude, and fell on your head or twisted your ankle. That shit happens. You canât keep training until you heal up.
But, unlike for Olympic athletes, the main reason people fail DADBOD.REHAB training camps, and fitness/diet programs of all kinds, is that they just donât show up. The most common failure pattern is the âI fucked up once/a few times, so waah, I give upâ.
DADBOD.REHAB is designed to try to accomodate fuckups. This is the *dad* bod rehab program, so we all have kids â shit happens, we know. So the D.E.R.P. expects and accomodates some level of failure. Failure sets you back, sure, but a typical failure only sets you back a day or two.
If you fail too many times, then yes, you will fail the whole training camp. But even when you fail just because you suck â and be clear, we all suck sometimes in life, unless weâre John Carmack â thereâs a key difference between that and failing because some criminal asshole hit you in the knee with a billy club.
And that difference is: you can just get your shit together, and as soon as you do that, you can start the training camp again.
There is one training camp that we really hope you donât fuck up and fail, though: the first one. That starts in four days, on DAY 015
Thatâs not only the first training camp youâll do for DADBOD.REHAB, but it is also the shortest one. It is only two weeks, so we call it the minicamp.
During the minicamp, you will only do the minimal DADBOD.REHAB exercise program. Weâll figure out what that means for you personally over the next two days, as we show you how to do it, and get your baseline.
But basically, the minimal DADBOD.REHAB exercise program is a very simple (and perhaps very boring) set of exercises that work for any qualified participant. And to be qualified to do DADBOD.REHAB you just basically have to be able to walk and climb stairs, and not have any health conditions the contraindicate exercise (such as being a pig heart transplant recipient, or having two broken legs).
You will do this minicamp, by which you will:
And youâll end up healthier than when you started. Fitness is a long game, and body recomposition to rehabilitate a dadbod is an even longer game. But itâs like cigarettes: to quote Pappy Vanderhaegen, âevery cigarette you donât smoke mattersâ.
Well, every week you donât spend sitting on your ass accumulating adipose tissue matters, too.
Two weeks isnât enough to fix your dadbod, but it is just enough to get just a taste of what being healthier and fitter feels like.
When itâs over, weâll have you take a (short, since the camp was short) break, and then help you plan your first full training camp.
See you tomorrow!
P.S. Hereâs your checklist for the time until then:
NOTE: you donât need a separate fitness app to do DADBOD.REHAB, but you totally can use one, if you want. We wonât use it for the minicamp, but your training camps can be based around an app, or a real gym, or even a personal trainer. This program can be standalone, but it can also work with any other tools/programs capable of giving you enough of the basic required types of exercise â which is most of them.