Goldilocks and Barbells

Most children learn the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Goldilocks finds the bears’ home, and tries out random things there. Pretty much for everything she tries, there will be three versions (each belonging to one of the bears), with one being <too extreme>, the second being <too extreme at the other end> and the third being “just right”.

The basic message can be summarised as “extremes bad, means good”. In fact, even if you didn’t learn the story as a child (I didn’t), the message of “doing everything in moderation” gets impressed upon you from various quarters. “Don’t eat too much, don’t eat too little, eat in moderation” is possibly the most prominent example of this.

And in some way we have all internalised this messaged. That both too much and too little of everything is bad, and it’s the middle path that is the right one.

And then on the other side, a concept that has always existed but formally articulated fairly recently, is the “barbell“. First articulated by Nassim Nicholas Taleb as an investment strategy, it talks about investing in a combination of extremes and eschewing the means. In Taleb’s original case, it was about an investment strategy that is a mix of low-risk bonds and high-risk (long) out-of-the-money options, that together give a low-risk winning portfolio in the long run. This ran contrary to “modern portfolio theory” that tries to get a mix of assets that maximise expected returns and minimise standard deviation (note I’m saying standard deviation and not “risk” – they’re not the same).

And this strategy applies pretty much everywhere in life. There are a lot of things where the only way you can benefit is by “being all in”. Doing things in moderation can actually be hurtful, and combinations that have a “little bit of everything” can be suboptimal to a simple superposition of extremes.

My breakfast is a barbell, for example. I either skip it completely (nearly zero calories from black coffee only), or have a big breakfast with at least two eggs. A light breakfast completely messes up my day.

My exercise is a barbell (no pun intended). I either lift heavy weights (attached to a barbell) or do nothing. Exercises with light weights make me feel miserable.

In my nearly eight month long return to corporate life, I haven’t taken many days off. My philosophy there is that if I take off, I should be able to completely take off (no “one email here”), and have done so only when it’s easy to do so.

You can think of corporate strategy and a company’s focus being a barbell.

The list goes on. The point is – life is full of barbells, or we can make the most of life by using barbell strategies. Do either this extreme or that extreme, but don’t get confused and do something in the middle.

The problem, however, is that we get brought up on goldilocks, not barbells. And think that the middle path is superior to the extremes. It isn’t always so.

Ramayana and Weight Training

There are several interpretations of the Ramayana. As AK Ramanujan compiled, there are more than “three hundred ramayanas“. In some versions, Ravana is Sita’s father. In others, he is her brother. Yet others have been written from Sita’s point of view. And some from Hanumantha’s. And some from Ravanas.

In fact, the Ramayana (contrary to the sanitised Ramanand Sagar version we were fed by Doordarshan) is a fascinating enough epic that there can be millions of interpretations of the story. So let me add mine.

In my opinion, the Ramayana is a shining example of the virtues of Strength Training, especially barbell training. I’ll illustrate this with two key episodes from the epic.

The first is Sita’s swayamvara, where Rama beats off all competition to be able to marry Sita. The test is rather simple. There is a rather heavy bow that the suitors should lift and then string. My interpretation is that most other suitors who had come to the swayamvara were “convenational gymmers” who spent hours every week honing their biceps and triceps and ignoring training their large muscles.

Basically, like most “gym rats” you see at most conventional gyms, these suitors focussed on the lifts that made them look good rather than those that gave them real strength. Rama, on the other hand, practiced simple barbell lifts, and was especially adept at the deadlift. So after all the shower-offs had failed, Rama walked up and deadlifted the bow (the weight was such that no other lift was possible) and strung it. And married Sita.

The other episode comes much later in the epic, when the scene of action has shifted to Sri Lanka. Angada, the monkey prince, has gone to Ravana’s court in the form of an advance party to negotiate Sita’s release before Rama declared war on Lanka. Ravana insulted him, and so Angada refused to budge until he had had an audience. Various members of Ravana’s court tried to physically dislodge him (as Angada had challenged them to do so), but Angada remained firm, with his feet firmly planted in the ground.

Clearly, Angada did squats, and members of Ravana’s army who fooled themselves into strength by solely concentrating on the arms didn’t realise that someone (who squatted) could have such heavy and firm feet. And so they failed to dislodge him.

Now to find episodes from the epic that show the virtues of the press and the bench press.