The Peak Condition Project - Alex R

On the Cult of Patrick..

When you are shown results that impress or amaze its easy to think the person who showed you these results have some kind of magic answer.. I liked a tv show in the UK which showed how vunerable we can be to this.. (Im sure its on Youtube if you can be bothered Wikipedia's take on it below)

Derren Brown: The System (2008)The System, in which Brown shared his "100 percent guaranteed" method for winning on the horses,
The show was based around the idea that a system could be developed to "guarantee a winner" of horse races. Cameras followed a member of the public, Khadisha, as Brown anonymously sent her correct predictions of five races in a row, before encouraging her to place as much money as she could on the sixth race. After Brown had placed a bet of £4,000 of Khadisha's money on a horse in the final race but before the race was run, he explained that "The System" did not really exist. He had started by contacting 7,776 people and split them into six groups without any of them knowing each other, giving each group a different horse. As each race had taken place 5⁄6 of the people had lost and were dropped from the system. Brown had a different person backing each horse in each race, and one individual, Khadisha, won five times in a row. He then explained to the losers the experiment. Brown expressed the opinion that the principle behind "The System" (essentially confirmation bias or survivorship bias) is what is behind belief in spiritualism or homeopathic and alternative medicine. Her face when she realised a race was about to start with her life savings on the line was the great realisation that she had done something she knew made no common or statistical sense but was blinded by the previous results shown to her.

Point being we're all seeing results, its easy to just attribute this success to Patrick and Chen having a system rather than try to understand whats happening and ending up more dependant than ever in fitness and exercise terms.. "how many grams of carbs should I eat normally?".. theres a natural tendancy for us to want to totally place our faith in someone providing these results.. Madoff investors and footballers thanking Jesus spring to mind.. I thought at the start Patrick slightly encouraged this through the mystical nature of the emails and the drip feed approach to sharing the information.. That they had some information on fitness others didn’t and that if we followed them we too would learn these secrets..

What I have come to realise about the PCP is that Patrick and Chen really havent told me anything new at all.. Theres some stuff but really that’s not the important point.. I had watched a film based on the Michael Pollan article and was familiar with principals. The structure and portion sizes and how to deploy them over the 3 months certainly work and make Patrick and Chen worth their relatively for this kind of thing modest fee, but revolutionary? Magic? My mum told me I should eat more veg!!! The exercises again.. With the exception of the kung fu situp Id done these all before and whilst as per my previous posts I have been impressed by the way Patrick builds these up I don’t credit him with anything other than being a good trainer on that front.. So theyre clearly knowledgable fellows but whilst I and others wonder why we have achieved more on PCP than any previous attempt at fitness the cult of patrick approach and that they have some kind of knowledge others don’t.. Well that just doesn’t sit easy.. But I still wondered why ?

My answer is that the PCP provides the same kind of self-help that Allan Carr does for smokers.. Allan Carr died of lung cancer having smoked 80 cigarettes a day for a large part of his life then one day gave up to become a prophet to those looking to quit.. His approach doesn’t look to tell smokers of how bad smoking is for them or try to give them some form of substitute, the method is based on you finding out how good the alternative is, how good being a non-smoker is, how good it feels and gradually opens you up to that so you ultimately don’t want to smoke because you prefer the alternative rather than try to replace cigarettes with patches and therefore having the feeling of "sacrificing" cigarettes. Same with being fat.. The guy who has to buy a business class seat coz he is too fat for economy knows McDonalds isnt healthy.. He isnt dumb.. but feels like its a great sacrifice to change his diet. Likewise I was overweight and felt depressed about it, I knew what I was doing wrong but the alternative seemed like such hard work.. So what I credit and thank the creators of PCP for.. Is helping me realise I enjoy the alternative to my previous lifestyle. There are elements of the PCP I would now choose as a preference. Chatting to Clive and he tells me about what he and Tracey have cooked up and how good it is, Allan C and Shoana always have great PCP recipes as well and chatting with Arnie about what we will carry on enjoying once were done are all signs to me that you go from feeling this is a sacrifice and planning your first normal meal when you finish to enjoying the alternative to the previous diet/exercise regime and enthusing about the future..

So whilst this project is very well thought out and clever... I like the carefully thought out motivational message last line of every email before you start your day from Patrick, hypnotists would be proud of that one but the idea you need Chen to determine the number of grams of carbs you need from a flickr photo sounds impressive.. Its just not as powerful a long term plan as you making those healthier choices yourself based upon preference which I am far more impressed they managed to encourage in me.. As is my mum