Hello everyone,
Hopefully you haven’t missed that I launched a podcast last week and hopefully you’ve already listened to it, if not what are you waiting for?! While the idea (initially at least) is to drop roughly one episode per week I decided to cheat and do a quick start so there are actually already two episodes up! Both are interviews with Dave Tate who’s a former powerlifter and nowadays the owner of elitefts.com. Next week a new guest with a very different background will be on the show. He’s truly a pioneer in every sense of the word but that’s all I will say for now. You will find all the podcast episodes in this sub-section of the website: http://everlifting.com/category/podcast/
It’s also available on all major podcast platforms. If you like it please support the cause by sharing it and giving a 5 star review. It really does help.
Fresh from the presses at everlifting.com
http://everlifting.com/articles/training-multiple-times-per-day/
http://everlifting.com/articles/supersets-tri-sets-giant-sets-and-pre-fatigue/
Train to win
What I want to talk about today is so simple and basic that everyone should know it and understand it, yet that’s clearly not the case. In fact, for years I ”forgot” about it. The topic? Train to win.
If you’re an athlete you might think ”I always train to win”. But do you? If you’re just a meathead or going to the gym to be fit or get in shape (whatever that means) you might ask ”win what?”. What I’m talking about is winning in training. You want to direct your training sessions towards success.
Don’t mistake what I just wrote as always maxing out in order to post cool videos on social media. I’m not talking about impressing people other than yourself with results.
If you haven’t progressed in your training for months you’re not directing your training to success and not training to win. If you’re constantly banging your head against the wall because of your training you’re not training to win, you’re training to fail and towards a mental breakdown. Whatever it is that you’re doing right now doesn’t work and you’ve lost your path. Take a step back and assess.
I think now is a good time to give an example. I had hurt my back and couldn’t snatch and clean & jerk. Anyone who’s serious with their training knows that the physical pain from an injury is one thing but the mental aspect can be even worse. The only way I knew I could deal with it was trying to find motivation in other lifts while recovering from my injury. I also knew that if I constantly faced hurdles in this already bad state it would be awful for me. What did I do? I set out to try and break 20 personal bests in 10 weeks... While being injured. If that sounds crazy it is because it is. I didn’t make all of them but I broke new personal bests every week.
Of course this wasn’t always in lifts that I trained regularly, in fact it was quite the opposite. I set goals in many exercises that I might not have done for years so “personal bests” comes with an asterisk. Did I get stronger? Hell yeah, and I did end up breaking my squat record which is a huge deal for someone who has been squatting near maximal weights on a near daily basis for probably two years. The overall strength increase of course wasn’t ”20 PR’s stronger” but it certainly was a physical strength increase. More importantly it was a mental strength increase because I continuously saw personal bests fall. I was gearing my training towards success instead of failure.
Whenever I’m getting a little bit burned out by training and I feel that it doesn’t go the way it should I think about redirecting my training to win. That doesn’t mean I go to the same type of program again. It might mean backing off from heavy singles and going for some repetition bests at lighter weights. It might mean switching out an exercise for another in order to progress that. There are many ways, the one thing they have in common is I stop banging my head against the wall and start doing things that build the confidence and gives me momentum towards more success.
So ask yourself: are you just going to the gym and going through the motions or are you on your way towards something worthwhile? Are you banging your head against the wall or are you training to win
You just read issue #3 of Everlifting.