The 4 Stages of Mental Mastery
by Chris Shugart

4 People, 4 Stages



Jason
Seventeen year-old Jason bench presses four days per week. He
does three sets of everything to "hit all the chest muscles"
including flat, incline, decline, flyes, dips, and push-ups. His
chest workout takes two hours to complete. Meanwhile, his entire
back workout consists of three sets of pulldowns.

Jason is in stage one: Unconscious Incompetence.



Martin
Martin needs to lose 40 pounds. His love handles spill over his
jeans and he's beginning to look eight months pregnant. Not a good
look for a 35-year-old male. Martin hasn't seen a woman naked for a
while.
But Martin is no idiot, and he's not lazy in the gym. He reads
articles about diet and nutrition; he knows all about calories,
macronutrients, TEF, satiety mechanisms, and the insulin
index...
...but he eats tacos, french fries, and ice cream anyway.

Martin is in stage two: Conscious Incompetence.



Larry
Larry is in Hell. And Hell, for Larry, is his local Olive
Garden, sitting with his wife and family.
In front of him is a basket of steaming hot, butter-glazed
breadsticks. Unlimited breadsticks. All-you-can-eat. And Larry has
been known to eat a lot of freakin' breadsticks.
To his left is the dessert menu, a laminated fantasy list of
culinary porn. Across from him is his wife... who will no doubt
order from that dessert menu after she deep-throats a whole basket
of those glorious, garlicy breadsticks.


Larry lifts weights and eats right to support his goals. He's
lost 20 pounds of lard and he plans to keep it off. But shit, those
breadsticks are speaking to him! And what is that on the
dessert menu? Black-tie cheesecake with a crust made of chocolate
chips? Are you fucking kidding?!

But Larry will resist the fat-soaked flour and sugar-bomb
dessert... barely. He's in stage three: Conscious
Competence.

John
John is on vacation. Five days in Ochos Rios at an all-inclusive
resort. Sweet.
After check-in, John heads to the gym to check it out. He'll
need to train three times while on vacation to keep up with his
schedule. This doesn't bother him. In fact, he's looking forward to
it. What would bother him is missing a workout.
Next, he and his lovely companion for the week hit the buffet.
John loads up on chicken breasts and vegetables and skips the
mountain of "all included" desserts. This doesn't bother him
either. He's anxious to see how the Jamaicans grill up his chicken.
And after that long plane ride, he's salivating for something green
and perfectly steamed.

John is in stage four: Unconscious Competence.



The 4 Stages Defined
Sometimes called the "Learning Ladder," the four stages
illustrated above are borrowed from the field of Neurolinguistic
Programming (NLP). This concept has been applied to everything from
success in business to success with bedding supermodels. Here's a
breakdown:

Stage #1: Unconscious Incompetence – You're doing
something wrong and you don't even know it. Blissful
ignorance.

Stage #2: Conscious Incompetence – You're doing something
wrong, you know it, but you either can't or won't change.

Stage #3: Conscious Competence – You're doing something
right or productive, but it's a struggle. You make the right
choices and do the things that will lead you to your goal, but it's
a daily mental battle.

Stage #4: Unconscious Competence – You're doing everything
right without really having to think about it. The right actions
and decisions are now second nature.





Explication and Application for Physique
Transformation
What can we learn from each stage? How can we progress to the
last, most desirable stage? Let's find out.

Stage #1: Unconscious Incompetence
You're screwing up and you don't even know you're screwing up.
Well, ignorance may be bliss, but it's also limiting and even
destructive.
In the context of bodybuilding and physique transformation, this
is often a newbie error. In the example above, 17-year-old Jason is
just ignorant: He trains his chest and "mirror muscles" a lot more
than he trains his back. He just doesn't know any better.
It's a common mistake, and most newbies learn pretty quickly to
correct it. But there are exceptions...


The "Newbie-Vet"
Here's a guy who's been training for over a decade... and is
still doing things incorrectly or suboptimally. In some cases this
is caused from ingrained habits or the fear of stepping outside the
comfort zone.
For example, the newbie-vet may always start his chest/back
workout with the bench press and always use a narrower grip because
he's a triceps bencher. It would be best if he sometimes began his
workout with back training and switched up his grip. But he does it
the way he's always done it. It's a habit he doesn't even realize
he has, and it could be holding him back or causing imbalances.
This behavior is reinforced because he can bench a lot more with
his grip choice. He's comfortable and emotionally safe; his ego is
gratified... but his chest development may be suffering since
the close grip isn't optimal for pecs. All of this, however, is
below his level of conscious awareness. He's stuck in stage one,
even though he's been training for years.


The Cure
The cure for unconscious incompetence is often a combination of
several things. Education can cure some of it. If you're going to
lift weights your whole life, crack a frickin' book occasionally
and read this site.
There are 40-somethings out there training the same way their
coach showed them in the 8^th grade. Unless your coach's
name was Vince Gironda, there just might be better ways to train
for your current physique goals.
Next, seek an outside push. Get a coach and do what he says. Or
adopt a program that's very different than how you've been
training: different exercises, different sets and reps, etc.

Force yourself out of your comfort zone. You can't grow and
progress without challenge and pressure. A diamond without pressure
is a piece of fucking coal.
Even the best coaches, trainers, and nutrition experts in the
world seek the teachings of others. Funny how Charles Poliquin and
Dave Tate are open to the info and coaching of others in the field,
while some shipping clerk on a forum thinks he's a training expert
with nothing else to learn. And by "funny" I mean pathetic and sad.
For physique transformation and aesthetic bodybuilding, the cure
for unconscious incompetence may involve a photo or video. How many
times have "big" guys seen a photo of themselves and suddenly
realized that half of their bigness is really just fatness? It's a
harsh wake-up call, a cruel but beneficial slap in the face.
Stand up now and take an unflexed, non-sucked-in pic of
yourself.

Hint: If you are, at this very moment, thinking of a dozen
excuses why you're not going to do this, then what is that telling
you?
The lesson here is to force the awakening. Step out of the
comfort zone, learn something new, and apply it. There's no excuse
for unconscious incompetence.

Stage #2: Conscious Incompetence
You know you're screwing up, but you screw up anyway. In the
example in the intro, Martin knew what his problem was and he knew
what he had to do to fix it... he just didn't do it.
This is perhaps the most common stage. For example, fat people
generally know why they're fat. No one really thinks that fast food
and junk food is good for them. Ignorance isn't the issue. Most
fatties are conscious of their problem and the things that
cause their problem, but they're incompetentbecause they
choose not to do anything about it.
This isn't just a fault of the typical, electric scooter riding,
Wal-Mart land whale. It can affect the avid gym-junkie as well. He
may know that a deep squat is the best exercise for his particular
goals, but he doesn't do it often. It's hard, and he's embarrassed
at the load he has to use compared to the half-squat in the Smith
machine. He's consciously being incompetent.
He may also know that a properly formulated post-workout drink
would greatly accelerate his progress, but he chooses to spend his
money on video games and $4 Starbucks coffees instead.

Conscious incompetence is often justified by the individual
who's choosing to screw up. He can't squat because he has a bad
knee. After all, he tweaked it once playing freeze tag in the first
grade. And he can't buy a post-workout drink because it's too
expensive. Apparently, $4.25 is fine for a morning coffee, but
$2.06 is way too much for a workout drink that would accelerate his
gains.
This is known in the field of psychology as rationalization: the process of creating false but plausible
excuses to justify negative behavior. I prefer my definition:
self-bullshitting.