Like a voyeur, you keep scrolling through the wonder world of the Internet. All you see is perfection at every level, the elite work of the full-time athlete. Suddenly, you are no longer comparing your one rep max with the other guys in the gym, but with a female Russian lifter who is half your weight. The waistband of your shorts snaps back into place as you check your manhood, feeling the shrivel of defeat.

But performance at the elite level is built from a foundation of simplicity and consistency. The comparison between you and the young female is actually an insult to her dedication to succeed. Before you get all elite, understand you need to dial back to the fundamentals that exist in and outside the gym.

Performance at the elite level is built from a foundation of simplicity and consistency.

1. Earn the Right to Progress

Training is a lifetime pursuit. The mistake many athletes make is a lack of appreciation that every exercise stems from a certain base level of movement. Sliding your feet and catching the bar deep into a snatch comes from hours spent in a deep overhead squat. From practicing with a wooden pole when your whole body is screaming at you to skip onto the bar like your hero.

“Training is more than just a physical presence. It’s a mental practice of improving every aspect of your time spent in the gym.”

Regardless of the sport or skill required, a simple question must be answered. Where are you right now in that skill continuum? You have to be honest and find your own starting point and then progress incrementally.

What you have then is information you can implement into your own training plan. You adapt to the training response of your own body and don’t break down your body with the volume only a well-drilled machine of an athlete could handle.

2. Move With a Purpose to Improve

You don’t have the luxury of filling your day with all the nuances of training. So, let’s be honest for a second. Is that latest animal crawling pattern you see everyone doing benefiting that troubled ankle you always complain about when you struggle in the squat?

“Is that latest animal crawling pattern you see everyone doing benefitting that troubled ankle you always complain about when you struggle in the squat?”

From the moment you walk into the gym, have a definite purpose. Training is more than just a physical presence. It’s a mental practice of improving every aspect of your time spent in the gym.

Working on purposeful movement with Dmitry Klokov.

Does your movement prep deal with mobility issues? Is that core drill complementing a compound lift? Do you get lost in another world in your rest periods scrolling down your phone or do you focus on breathing drills to recover more quickly? The choice is yours.

3. Find Radiators, Not Drains

Life will expose you to two different types of people. On one side, that person who always has a problem, continually complaining. The type of person who drains the life from one person to the next with their negativity.

“Your training space should be filled with a community of radiators, who take not only training but your everyday life to the next level.”

Then you meet the boom of energy that radiates beyond a smile from another athlete in the last few seconds of a skin-tearing set of kettlebell snatches. This person is awesome to be around, and out of the two, will be the one who keeps you in the zone.

In a healthy and productive training environment, you leave life’s little mishaps at the door. Your training space should be filled with a community of radiators, who take not only training but your everyday life to the next level.

Radiating energy after 715km in a boat with friends.

4. Find the Right Coach

At some point you are going to have to make decisions for yourself. Once you step into the ring, onto the field of play, or onto the lonely platform, you are the one in control. This is not simply applied from reading a book. It’s an immersion into your training and sport with a coach who slowly leads you to asking your own questions.

“If you want to achieve more than you currently think is possible, then find a coach, preferably through a recommendation. Listen, and above all trust his or her process.”

Spending two weeks with 2004 Russian Olympic Gold medallist, Dmitry Berestov, endlessly asking him questions and watching the interaction between coach and athlete left me in no doubt. To quote Berestov himself, “The best athletes have been coached to think, not depend.”

If you want to achieve more than you currently think is possible, then find a coach, preferably through a recommendation. Listen, and above all trust his or her process.

Me with Olympic Gold medallist Dmitry Berestov.

5. Get a Life

You are more than just a six-pack or a good set of glutes. You are a living example of what you do outside the gym walls. Two hours of training will not undo a missed meal, endless nights of poor quality sleep, or a work-life balance that is stressing you more than the thought of a 2km rowing time trial when you are just over five feet tall (or is that just me?).

“Remember that there is such a thing as living, especially when your training isn’t a matter of life, death, or getting a medal.”

Joking aside, the build-up of all the little stresses will have a huge impact as you apply the pressure of volume and intensity in your training time. Something will give and it’s normally a body part. Remember that there is such a thing as living, especially when your training isn’t a matter of life, death, or getting a medal.

Conclusion

It’s easy to get stuck in the details of programming and the OCD-like sexiness of the numbers, percentages, tempos, and rep ranges that are shared all over the Internet. Realize there is more to being elite than time spent in the gym.

More Like This:

• Forget the Elite and Train Your Actual Clients
• Specialization Is for Insects: Why Mediocrity Beats the Elite
• Is Your Training Taking You Closer to Your Goals?
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

The post You’re Not an Elite Athlete, So Stop Acting Like One appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The concept of momentum can be applied to our dreams, goals, and aspirations, and it can affect us even when we are lying in bed at night. We do not necessarily need to move our bodies in order to keep momentum going, although that is a requirement for physical challenges. But we do need to keep our minds moving in order to keep our dreams alive and on track.

Momentum of the Mind

It is useful to conceptualize momentum as the speed at which a person propels themselves toward their goals. Those who achieve much during their lifetimes are also the people who constantly move toward making their dreams a reality. While the first part of a goal may be to visualize attaining that goal, it is far from the only action that must be taken. Those who have big dreams, but stop the process at the visualization stage, are an object at rest.

Psychological momentum borrows much from the concept of physical momentum, but with a few metaphysical properties mixed in. Researchers have defined it as:

“… a perceptual phenomenon that changes human behavior and performance. It is ‘experienced as a psychological force in which several factors or qualities converge in a synergistic way to enable one to perform at a level not ordinarily possible”

Once someone has enabled their own psychological momentum, they become more likely to string together successes and achieve multiple goals in a short duration of time.

Momentum Killers

Psychological momentum is every bit as important as physical momentum, and the two become intertwined when striving toward physical goals. However, there are several impediments that can interfere with your psychological momentum.

The most common and most powerful impediment to momentum is fear. While dreaming of significant success is necessary for achievement, those goals often require a large amount of time, commitment, and energy. These requirements tend to intensify the chances of failing at the goal in question. This risk of failure is often perceived as scary, as nobody wants to perceive themselves as a failure, or worse, have others perceive them as a failure. This fear stifles psychological momentum, which then stifles physical momentum, stopping a person from achieving their dreams.

Another impediment to psychological momentum is poverty of the mind. Questions like, “What if I am not good enough?” or “What if I try as hard as I can, but fail anyway?” indicate poverty of the mind, and it is a large part of why so many people fail to realize their achievements and accomplish goals. These obstacles are all mental, which means the only way to overcome them is to persevere, equip a positive attitude, and most importantly, never stop moving toward the ultimate goal, regardless of what it is or what it entails.

Fear and poverty of the mind are akin to the time of slavery and oppression. Slaves were given a sense of fear and poverty which made them stationary. Because of this, they were obedient and conformed to everything the slave master demanded.

Consider the relationships in your life. Who is injecting the virus of fear and poverty into you? Maybe it’s your work, gym, or school environment. Perhaps it’s the people on your social media networks. Regardless of the source, if you feel enslaved, it is because you are afraid and have been made to feel poor.

Reversing Inertia

While in Naval Special Warfare training, I suffered a career-altering injury to both of my knees. I immediately felt fear. I was afraid to take the necessary steps to regain my momentum, because I feared the probability of never achieving my vision of success. I fell into a dark place, gained a lot of weight, self-medicated with alcohol, and isolated myself from co-workers, friends and family. I viewed myself as a failure, and had very low self-worth. In short, I became an object at rest.

In order to climb out of the void I was in and free myself from the grips of all that stifled my momentum, I needed to change my environment and set aside limiting beliefs of myself. I surrounded myself with people who gave me courage and made me feel rich inside.

Believe that you are resilient. Find strength in past accomplishments, and see the value in failure. Past performance is not a predictor of future results.

The Tire Won’t Flip Itself

Through my Twelve Labors Project, I have pushed my body to the brink of exertion, and quite honestly, past it. I owe all my previous and future successes to the concept of momentum, both physically and psychologically.

Positive physical and psychological momentum is what allowed me to accomplish my second Labor, flipping a 250-lb tire for thirteen miles straight to raise awareness of veteran mental health issues. I performed this feat the morning after my father passed away, and I attribute my ability to do so to positive psychological momentum.

From a metaphorical perspective, the tire represented an impediment to both physical and psychological momentum. It also represented the heavy burden that some of our nation’s veterans carry from their service. If I stopped flipping the tire for even a moment, or if I put in only a fraction of the effort required, the tire would have fallen back on me, quite literally putting an end to my physical momentum, and putting a large dent in my psychological momentum.

But with enough physical and mental tenacity, that tire kept on flipping, and while the task was nothing like easy, it was much more manageable when I kept my mind and my body moving forward. If I had faltered, or allowed fear, hesitation, or the grief of losing my Dad stifle my momentum, that challenge would not have been completed.

Commitment and a concentrated effort are what allow psychological momentum to continue, and thus allow for the human body to continue moving forward.

Mind Your Mental Momentum

Momentum is something we all know about, but it doesn’t happen on its own. With enough psychological momentum, it is possible to accomplish anything, no matter how big or how small. Pay attention to your own internal momentum, because once it is stopped in its tracks, much like physical momentum, you’ll remain remain right where you are, instead of getting closer to your goals.

The post Mind Your Mental Momentum appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

“I think I can, I think I can…” We’ve all heard the story of the Little Engine believing it could puff right over that hill. We’ve all heard Henry Ford’s famous quotation, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t – you’re right.” But have you considered there could actually be a scientific reason for why this works?

Your brain’s number one priority is self-preservation. If it doesn’t function your body dies. So above all else, it prioritizes it’s own protection. Your brain knows what it needs (and doesn’t need):

1. Oxygen
2. Fuel
3. Avoidance of Trauma or Impact

As you can see running a sub three-hour marathon doesn’t appear in this list.

The brain subconsciously uses a number of pathways including the sympathetic nervous system (the “fight or flight” system) to enforce these priorities. Two pathways that are of interest from an endurance and athletic performance perspective are the vagus and golgi nerve pathways.

The Vagus Nerve

The vagus nerve is actually part of our parasympathetic nervous system, which controls all organs except for the adrenal glands (part of the sympathetic nervous system). Specifically of interest for us athletes, the vagus nerve lowers cardiac output. Ever wondered what actually controls maximum heart rate? That’s the vagus nerve.

When the brain senses (or more importantly “believes”) it is at risk – through, for example, decreased oxygen in the blood – it will decrease cardiac rate, essentially slowing us down so that more oxygen and blood glucose is available to the brain rather than the muscles. Basically, our brain slows us down whether we like it or not.

Interestingly, your brain will also produce serotonin when your body works hard. But this “runner’s high” isn’t actually meant as a reward; it is our brain’s way of trying to relax us so as not to work so hard.

Golgi Nerve

The golgi nerve controls the maximum contractional force of a muscle. Ever heard stories of people who never went to the gym becoming trapped under a car and suddenly lift a 100kg engine block off their chest? They tear muscles doing it. When this happens, the brain (survival mechanism) is overriding the golgi nerve.

As a personal trainer, I used to see this a lot. A client would struggle to do eight bench press reps and then quit. So, I’d say, “Let’s do four more. I’ll lift the weight off you, and you just lower it.” And then that’s is exactly what we would do – four more reps. Except I wasn’t lifting it off, and sometimes I wouldn’t even be touching the bar. But the brain was placated. It no longer felt at risk due to a bar being dropped on its blood supply (heart) or crushing its air supply, so the client’s muscles were allowed to do the work.

Another example: ever tried standing in front of a box and you really want to jump onto it, but something stops you? You squat down a bit, but physically can’t jump? That’s your brain stopping your muscles from contracting in order to protect itself from possible trauma.

It is pretty clear how this applies to endurance sports. In simple terms, if our brain doesn’t believe we can do something and thinks it is at risk, then it will slow us down and make us less powerful.

Overcoming Our Nervous System

So how do you overcome the parasympathetic nervous system? Is it as simple as just being like the Little Engine and saying, “I think I can”? No, although that doesn’t hurt. Saying something doesn’t mean you believe it, and frankly, your brain has no reason to trust you. You need to convince your brain that it is safe.

Here are three tools you can use to retrain your brain and push past your current limits:

1. Push the limit past failure in a safe environment. Do interval-pace and repetition-pace reps. Hard anaerobic efforts that push the boundary serve to convince the brain that it can safely allow the heart to operate at a higher level. This retrains our vagus nerve.
2. Do forced reps. Like the fake spotter, forcing reps with the help of a partner will also help placate the brain. In addition, negative reps, as well as over-speed work on the bike, on the treadmill, or in the pool all help convince the brain our muscles can work harder. This retrains our golgi nerve.
3. Believe. Self-belief is a hard thing to implement, so first, try trusting someone else. One thing I see in high performers in both business and sports is not a belief that they “can,” but more of a lack of belief that they “can’t.” In other words, high performers don’t have a strong self-belief, but they have a distinct lack of self-doubt. They trust in the science and their belief is in the logic. What is additionally interesting is that when I train these high performers, they are also the least likely to ask, “Why?” Asking why often indicates that doubt exists, which is then used by the brain to validate protecting you.

I like the quotation from the Spinervals guy (who also did a sub-nine Ironman at Kona) Troy Jacobson: “You pass out before you die.” It is often said that endurance sports are 70% mental. As you can now see, this is medically true. Training the parasympathetic nerve pathways can improve our performance more than hours and hours of comfort zone training.

The post The Science Behind Why “I Think I Can” Actually Works appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

But I bet there is at least one thing that you know and do not do, despite the best of intentions and desires. Someone may even call you out on it, and you find yourself responding, “I know, I know.” Tell me, if you really know, why aren’t you doing it?

Here’s the thing, there is a huge gap between knowing and doing. We know that massive action gets stuff done, but most of us don’t even make it to the action part. Why is that? Where is the disconnect? Let’s take a look some of the factors that are at play.

It Starts With Fear and Distractions

You know what’s totally okay? Being scared. You know what’s not? Being so busy or distracted that you aren’t even aware of the underlying fears that are holding you back. I’m talking about both conscious fears and the deeper, hidden fears and beliefs that may not float up to your conscious thought very frequently, if at all. It’s these beliefs that often shape our actions, or lack thereof, and if we don’t pause long enough to become aware of them and deal with them, we get stuck.

For example, if you do any type of creative work, I’m sure you know the fear that sets in right before you begin working. It may not come across as a conscious thought so much as a strong gut reaction; that what you do today won’t be good enough, that it will fail spectacularly. You may be afraid of the task because you don’t know where to start. I know I feel that way almost every time I sit down to write.

It’s super easy to find all these other little things to do to fill that time (Facebook, laundry, dishes – just to name a few). It is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy: Feel the fear. Numb it with something else. Fail anyways. 

Sometimes just the fear of getting started is enough to prevent you from doing anything. [Photo credit: J Perez Imagery]

Don’t do that. Don’t be that guy (or gal). Build some time into your life to do a gut check. Breathe deep and dig in on what fears you have that are causing you to falter or procrastinate. Write them down. Fears get less scary when you look them in the face. And when you know what scares you, you can take steps to avoid sabotaging yourself!

The idea of sabotaging yourself always brings me back to something I learned from skiing: If you want to miss the tree, don’t look at it. If you glue your eyes to the tree you will probably smack right into it. The same thing applies to the barriers the keep us from acting. We put our minds on the wrong things (our fears) and before we know it… Wham! It’s far better to know the fears are there and look at how we can act positively despite them. No smacking into trees for you!

Behavioral Goals vs. Outcome Goals

We know that goal-setting is key to success. It is well-researched and evident in the lives of highly successful people. Allow me to add a wrinkle to the typical talk surrounding goal-setting. We tend to focus on S.M.A.R.T. goals that are very outcome-based: lose 10lb, deadlift 400lb, run a marathon. All good stuff, but I’d argue that it’s still missing something.

Outcome-oriented goals are an end, not a means. Think of them as the road map for your end result. You have your ultimate goal and milestones along the way to measure your success. Outcomes, however, are not action; they are the result of it. It’s subtle, but there is a disconnect here. Outcome goals don’t necessarily account for actions need to reach a goal or the messiness that is life.

You see, outcome goals describe how we want things to be at the end of the process. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s perfectly fine to think about the things you want and start with the end in mind.

But you can’t stop there.

Wanting things isn’t enough. Even if you really, really, really want them. Here’s why: We often can’t control outcomes, at least not completely. Outcomes don’t operate in a vacuum. They are subject to outside forces like your job getting crazy busy or your gym closing for renovations.

In other words, you cannot control all the variables at play, but you can control what you do. That’s why it’s important to pair your outcome goals with goals that are based on behaviors. While life may get messy around you and things outside of your control can create chaos, you still have control of your every day actions. That’s empowering. It put’s you in the driver’s seat.

Let’s say you have a goal to add ten pounds of muscle over the next three months. That’s the outcome. The behaviors that drive that result can be simplified down to two primary areas: consistently lifting heavy loads and eating more calories, especially protein. Say you already eat pretty well. You can nail that down even further by adding an additional 20-30g serving of protein with each meal, and weight training 5 days per week. These are both behaviors that you can control and they’re both very measurable. It connects the dots between where you want to go and what you need to do to get there.

Willpower Is a Myth

Tangent to behavior is another common misconception that many of us have: if we can just muster up the willpower we can do anything. It’s as if we think willpower acts on demand. Hate to break it to you, it doesn’t.

Think of willpower as a gas tank: you start the day on full and burn through it as you go. Maybe you take a lunch break or a small nap midday. That’s like stopping at a gas station and refueling a little bit (but definitely not all the way) before going out for more. Either way, you are at your fullest when you start your day and gradually approach empty.

The reality is, you only have so much energy to use each day. The more of it you spend on making decisions, dealing with interruptions and distractions, or doing hard physical labor, the less you will have for other things.

Let’s dig in on this idea of decision fatigue more specifically. You spend energy on hundreds of tiny decisions each day can be poisonous. The antidote? Habits. Taking behaviors and transforming them into habits converts them from a conscious act of will to a subconscious routine that becomes part of your every day life. This spares your energy for other areas of your life. To those on the outside looking in, it looks a whole lot like willpower or great discipline.

Get in The Habit Loop

Knowing a little bit about how habits work (both the good and bad) goes a long way toward putting yourself in charge and shaping your behaviors. Habits tend to happen in a three-part loop: 

1. A cue: This is a trigger for your behavior to start, like your alarm going off or walking into the bathroom.
2. A routine: This is the actual behavior or habit, like brushing your teeth.
3. A reward: The benefit for taking that course of action (drinking a cup of your favorite coffee for breakfast).

All three pieces are key, but the reward portion is how your brain actually learns to want to continue doing a particular behavior in the future. Unfortunately, this works both ways. For example, the habit of smoking is often linked with the reward of feeling more relaxed or as a way to cope with stress.

Take a moment today to think on your own habits, bad and good. What cues do you have in place? What about rewards? How would you go about shaping a new habit or routine? Take control. When you can shape your cues and choose your rewards, the routine has a much better chance of sticking.

The sword of habit cuts both ways, so consciously create yours. [Photo credit: J Perez Imagery]

What to Do When You Get Stuck

Sometimes we know all of these things and still get stuck. The desire for change is definitely not black and white in the least; it’s a spectrum. If you don’t want to change, or just sort of want to change, your chances of failure are much higher. We are creatures of comfort and routine. When we are lukewarm with regard to making a change it is usually because we can see benefits on both sides of the spectrum. When faced with options like this, our brains will almost always default to what feels normal or comfortable (our old habits).

For example, lets say you have a habit of watching television before bed. It feels good, right? It’s kind of relaxing and you can turn your mind off after a long, hard day. But you also stay up too late, and don’t sleep as soundly. It’s causing you to struggle with waking up and you rely on coffee to power through your work day. Changing your nighttime routine to get better sleep would do a world of wonders for you at work. Can you see the dilemma here? Both sides have benefits, but your old steady TV habit already feels comfortable, so it continues. It is so easy to default back to what you know and get stuck.

How exactly do you combat this? The first step is to develop an awareness of your readiness to change and the ambiguity you face. Take a moment to stop and evaluate both sides of the issue. Note the forces at play. Write them down. Once you are clear on the situation at hand, it becomes easier to move yourself into action.

Don’t Over-Fantasize

A common theme is developing here. Cultivating mindfulness and envisioning what the future could look like are helpful in getting change to stick, but it can be taken too far. A study done by Gabriele Oettingen and Doris Mayer concluded that positive thinking about the future is broadly beneficial, yet too much fantasy can have disastrous results on achieving goals.

Why is fantasy so dangerous? For one, it’s easy and it feels good. A lot of folks get stuck because it feels nice to dream about wonderful things in the future: of beaches and yachts and quitting their job and starting a business. But by enjoying it vicariously, it can distract you from the here and now. It pulls your mind away from the actual steps and stumbling blocks you are sure to face along the way. In essence, it sets you up for disappointment unless you pair it with realistic expectations.

So go ahead and dream of the future, but do it with your feet on the ground. See where you want to go, but ask yourself what the journey will look like to get there. What kind of roadblocks will you encounter? How will you stumble? When you stumble, how will you get back up? These questions are important in keeping you from getting stuck in fantasyland and inaction.

Know and Do: Your Turn

This is only the tip of the iceberg on the gap between knowing and doing. My hope is that this inspires some good thinking for you or opens the door for some excellent conversation. Tell me, what do you think? What barriers do you see that hold you back from acting? Leave some thoughts in the comments below.

The first step to success occurs in the mind:

See It, Do It, Win It: Charge Up Your Visualisations

The post Why We Know, But Don’t Do appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Is the much-touted “attitude of gratitude” something you want to develop as you go about training your body and mind into its peak potential? I say yes, and not just because it’s that time of year. And lest this sound like Pollyanna, I’d go so far as to say that, although gratitude is wonderful to share with those around you, it’s also one-hundred percent, unapologetically selfish.

Gratitude as a Tool for Progress

We have a whole holiday dedicated to gratitude, and to me, that means two things. For one, on some level, we all acknowledge the importance of gratitude. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t all be getting together every year, keeping the Butterball company in business. But it also means that we need a reminder. We need a whole ritual, days off, and family and friends to support us in remembering to be grateful. It doesn’t come automatically, and it doesn’t always come naturally.

Gratitude is an emotional force that few have learned how to harness. Many of us know how to use emotions like anger or pride to give juice to our workouts and in our lives, but not many of us know how to use a basic attitude of thankfulness to further our goals. It’s like the thigh bone of a beast that we haven’t yet realized we can use as a weapon, so it just sits there while we beat our chests and ineffectually throw rocks at the monkeys across the watering hole.

I submit to you that gratitude can be harnessed in common, everyday situations to help you navigate your way through your workouts, on good days and bad—to help get you in the zone and keep you there. It’s a force like any other, and if you know how, you can make it work for you. And as Bluto said to Flounder in Animal House, it don’t cost nothin’.

When Things Are Going Your Way

Imagine it’s one of those rare perfect days, when you have one of those rare perfect workouts. It’s sunny, but not too hot. Your favorite shorts and t-shirt are both fresh out of the dryer. Your music sounds better than usual in your earbuds as you proceed into what happens to be your favorite day in your cycle at the gym. You’re hitting it hard, feeling the swell, the endorphins, your heart-rate going up, the sweat breaking, and you think yourself, yes, this is why I do it. And what’s this? A new personal best, without even trying all that hard. Absolutely nothing or no one can stop you. And everyone notices it, too. All eyes in the gym are on you, and you could get phone numbers and dates just by looking at people. Hold up a particular brand of deodorant, and they’d line up to buy it. For whatever reason, today is your day. You’re in the zone, and you know it.

I’m sure you’ve found yourself in that state of grace from time to time. Some days are just perfect. Some workouts are perfect. I don’t know exactly how that works or why, but I do know that your mind will probably take it way too seriously, become way too big headed, and be genuinely surprised when the perfection ends unceremoniously a few hours later with a stubbed toe, an argument with a spouse, or finding out Jamba Juice is out of spirulina or whatever.

But the point is, those perfect workouts do happen. And that can be the easiest time to pivot into gratitude, if you can manage to get over yourself. Sure, you can just let your ego take credit for everything good in the world, but if you do that, you’re also going to blame yourself when things go wrong. And things will always go wrong, eventually.

Being grateful when things are going well seems easy, until you remember it isn’t about your ego. [Photo credit: Precision CrossFit]

The key to maintaining that state of flow is shifting from the attitude of “I’m so wonderful,” to “thank you.” To be clear, I’m not talking about addressing yourself to any sort of higher power, unless that happens to be your thing. And I don’t mean addressing your gratitude to your parents, your high school coach that really “got” you, the kids who made your shoes, or any other specific persons. The most effective attitude of gratitude is non-specific. It’s a feeling, an emanation outward, a simple acknowledgement that countless forces had to align to make your perfect day happen, and that your perfect day is fleeting, so you’d better appreciate it while it’s happening.

If you can settle into that feeling, something beautiful happens. You relax. You don’t need to grasp at the good stuff and get anxious about making sure it never goes away, or run around trying to make sure everyone knows how wonderful you are. That just gives away your power, puts a leak in the boat, and short-circuits the flow you found yourself graced with. Unless you can relax into it and accept it without attachment, even good stuff can become a curse. So next time you’re having a day like that, try an experiment. Resist the urge to take a picture and post about it on Instagram, or whatever you do to show off. Instead, take a deep breath, sink into the feeling, say “thank you” (to no one in specific), and keep doing what you’re doing. See what happens. You’ll likely find you have more power, more energy, and a greater depth and breadth of deep relaxation. The state of flow will last longer, and over time, become more accessible.

When the Cards Are Stacked Against You

We all have perfect days, but we all have terrible ones, too, when all forces seem to be working against us. You oversleep and have to rush your morning. It’s raining, hard, and your only clean gym clothes are your too-short, too-blue shorts and the faded, cutoff Bob Marley t-shirt you can’t remember why you ever bought. One of your earbuds is busted, so you can’t even find refuge in your favorite motivation playlist. You’re tired, your form is poor, and everyone’s looking at you like it’s your first day picking up something heavy. And it’s leg day of all days, and no one really likes leg day, do they? You have to grit your teeth just to get through a workout that should be easy.

Maybe yesterday was one of your perfect days, and suddenly here you are, back at the beginning of the maze. When things were going well, it seemed like that’s how it would be from now on. You figured out life, once and for all, right? When things are going terribly, it also seems like things will be that way forever. But neither state is permanent, and neither one is worth focusing on. More importantly, both states are transparent to gratitude.

It may seem easier to tap into gratitude when things align in your favor, but maybe not. It may just make your head even bigger. In fact, bad days can be an even more powerful portal into gratitude and flow. After all, your ego has already taken a big knock. What do you have to fall back on? What can you look toward that you can be grateful for, and what inner resources might emerge when you stop whining and start looking? With that simple inner gesture, you can do a mental one-eighty, and not only break the “bad day” trance, but discover new insights and abilities you may have had locked away in a corner of your mind and never even suspected.

For one thing, it’s a great opportunity to see that maybe you’re not so in control as you thought you were, and not in a bad way. Trying to have nothing but perfect days, as a way to protect your delicate vanity, is no way to train mental toughness. It’s fear-based, and ultimately futile. Mental toughness doesn’t mean everything is always great; it means you are unphased, strong, powerful and relaxed no matter what is going on around you. I’ve even deliberately worn clothes to the gym that I thought looked ridiculous, just to force the issue for myself. There are plenty of little tricks you can do to undermine your fearful little ego in all its hiding places, and force yourself to develop an indestructible inner equanimity, no matter what’s going on around you.

In the process of daily ups and downs, gratitude is the great equalizer. It reminds you that whatever is going on right now isn’t the whole of reality. And because of that, those bad days are as much of a blessing as the good ones, maybe more so, because they force you to dig deeper. And that, in turn, is all the more reason to be grateful for them. The process compounds itself. When you start to see there’s always a reason to be thankful, you see that bad days are in the flow, too, and that it’s really just you interpreting them as bad. More little portals open into the zone, and you start to realize you can get there from anywhere.

Gratitude is the great equalizer, allowing you to see good days and bad as all part of the flow. [Photo credit: J Perez Imagery]

Hardest When You Need It the Most

I suppose you could take a look at these examples and say, hey, this is pretty mundane, everyday stuff. What about when I lose a loved one? When I get into a car accident? When I get married, or receive a Nobel prize for discovering a new chemical element in my home laboratory? I would say that all the same principles apply to those extreme situations. But those are rare, and should they happen, they’ll likely put you into a sort of altered state anyway. A mother can lift a car up to save her infant child in a temporary mania of superhuman strength, but we wouldn’t call that strength training. I’m talking about cultivating an everyday gratitude that you can develop and make permanent, not a once-a-year or when-crazy-shit-happens gratitude.

Gratitude takes practice, like everything else worth developing. The most important thing is to remember to do it, and that can be hardest when you’re hypnotized by a bad day, which incidentally, is when you need it the most. But also like every other trait, the more you practice it, the easier it gets. And if you start by being mindful of it when it’s easy, it’ll be more accessible when it isn’t.

Like most aspects of mental training, the problem of gratitude mostly comes down to resistance. It’s not so much being grateful as it is getting rid of all the stuff in the way of being grateful, clearing out the mental and emotional junk so you can start programming yourself, and not just allowing yourself to be programmed by whatever is going on around you, a slave to circumstance.

For most of us, there’s plenty of that junk in the way. That’s why when it comes to any kind of mental training, I say start at the root. Hit the inner enemy where it lives: in the deep, chronic tensions and stresses that you carry around with you everywhere you go. That’s the stuff that gets triggered and activated on a bad day, and makes it seem so hard to be grateful. It’s also what tempts you into a limited, ego-clad response to good things happening, which also short-circuits gratitude. Clean the window of your perception, and you’ll find you never left the flow. It’s always been there, all around you, all the time, and always will be, if you have the eyes to see.

Getting the most from the body requires conditioning the mind:

The Performance State: How to Develop Athlete Self-Awareness

The post The Thanks Giving Zone Boosts Performance appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Whether you are an athlete seeking peak performance or an adult attempting to reconnect with the health of your youth, the mind matters. Michael Gervais, sports psychologist for the Seattle Seahawks and many Olympians, explains that there are really only ways to train: your craft, physical development, and mental training. If you aren’t training the mind, you are missing a full third of your potential training benefit. The good news is that you already have the first essential ingredient of any successful person: the desire to improve yourself.

Many of you have probably tried, in vain, to white-knuckle certain changes that were sure to bring success. The problem is that willpower is a finite resource. As the famed Stanford marshmallow test showed, when willpower is taxed, people are more likely to listen to their emotions and opt for guilty pleasures or less productive options.

Eventually, you’ll have a rough day at work, then it’s back to the bowl of Ben and Jerry’s you swore you’d only have on Sundays. For true change to take place we must understand habits and the methods by which we create lasting, positive change. Furthermore, you must be able to pinpoint what actions will give you the greatest leverage and make the most difference.

Change your mindset, change your habits, and perform better. [Photo credit: Adrian Valenzuela, CC by 2.0]

How a Habit Is Formed

Most of life boils down to habits. Life events are cues, and how we respond to them, with thoughts and actions, are habits we condition. Charles Duhigg explains this “habit loop” of cue, routine, and reward in his book, The Power of Habit. The most obvious example is a text message:

• Cue: phone chimes
• Routine: check phone
• Reward: information

But habits aren’t always so benign. You may have trained your body to expect a double-mocha-extra-syrup-heavy-whip-latte every day on your way to work:

• Cue: drive to work
• Routine: buy sugary cup of death
• Reward: taste buds do their happy dance

It’s important to understand that we cannot get rid of bad habits; we can only replace them. Therefore, we must be very intentional about substituting new cues, routines, and rewards. For example, I love peanut butter sandwiches. They are the high-glycemic carbs I need after a workout to replenish glycogen.

I work out every day, because otherwise I don’t get a peanut butter sandwich. Do you want to start making your bed every morning? Put one of the eighteen “throw pillows” (my wife is right; they really do a lot for the aesthetics of our house) by the bedroom door. When you wake and are forced to move the pillow before opening the door, you are cued to make the bed.

The reward may be your satisfaction and wife’s gratitude, or you can strengthen the habit by rewarding yourself with that first cup of coffee. Within a few weeks, you’ve built a new habit.

The Elephant, Its Rider, and the Path

To improve our ability to create positive habits, its important to know and manipulate all relevant variables. Chip and Dan Heath highlight this process in their book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.

They describe three variables in each decision: emotion, logic, and external circumstance. These variables are explained metaphorically as an elephant (your emotions), with a man riding it (logic), and the path they’re traveling (external world).

The rider may set an alarm to wake up at 5am and work out, but when the alarm rings, the rider cannot control that elephant. The alarm is cancelled and you go back to sleep. To get leverage on this decision, you must shape the path. At night while your rider is in charge, set two alarms at opposite ends of the room. By the time you’ve turned both off, the elephant will have quieted and your rider can take charge.

It’s not always the rider that needs empowerment. Sometimes we need the elephant’s passion and momentum. If I explain to you that soda is bad for you, you don’t care. However, if I bring in people who drank sodas everyday and have lost limbs to diabetes, or show before and after pictures of people who simply quit soda for six months, I will influence the elephant.

That feeling you get when you see Sarah McLachlan singing and sad puppies in the background? That’s your elephant telling you to donate.

Shape Your Path to Hack Your Habits

Life would be infinitely easier if our peers and culture reinforced strong habits. Fitting in 20 minutes of meditation would be easy if your workplace encouraged a daily mindfulness break. Eating healthy would be a breeze if the middle aisles of the grocery store disappeared and your friends stopped encouraging late-night Jack in the Box runs.

This brings us back to shaping the path. As they said in Switch, “What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.” Take pressure off the rider and elephant so neither gets as tired wrestling all day. You should painstakingly create a path that promotes your goals. If candy, chips, and soda are in the house, you’ll justify the indulgence repeatedly.

Surrounding yourself with positive peer pressure may be the most important step in creating a path. Dr. Wayne Andersen, cofounder and medical director of Take Shape for Life, claims that in “evaluating what creates long term health and fitness success, the single most important factor is having a support system.”

Create goals with your spouse or friends and compete together. If this is a challenge, find a way to constantly expose yourself to positive inspiring information. Podcasts are a fantastic way to do this. On your morning commute or during lunch you can benefit from the top minds in your field or masters in the performance world. Let their stories be a form of positive peer pressure.

Make reinforcing positive habits a daily practice. [Photo credit: Pixabay] 

Path Development for Positive Cultural Change

For a civilization of great people, we need great societal habits. Nowhere is there more opportunity for path formation than in education. Take junk food out of the schools and kids can’t eat it all day. Install standing desks and they’ll be less sedentary.

We must intentionally train habits to deal with the effects of social media, and create a generation capable of using this technology for its benefit rather than one controlled by its charms. This starts with shaping the school path. Foster the understanding that there is no such thing as multi-tasking. Eliminate social media from the classroom, but allow specified social media sprees every couple of hours.

There is a great need in education for intentional habit and mindset development. All of the math, science, and social studies courses may not be essential to everyone’s future, but understanding mind and body health and how to develop both are skills everyone needs.

Taking charge of your own mental and physical health may be the most pertinent topic to life success schools could cover. We should deliberately create a mentally strong, well-balanced generation through instruction on mental health.

Mental training is made more necessary by the path currently presented to our nation. Sugar-based diets, sedentary lifestyles, and constant social media distraction have thrown the mind and body out of whack.

Some researchers have even suggested there is such a thing as “Facebook depression,” created by too much time on social media and the augmented perception of other people’s lives viewed on their highlight reel profiles. We have created a perfect cocktail for a deeply imbalanced mentally distressed generation.

Integrating mindfulness practice into the classroom would help youth begin to understand how to handle distraction. It would allow them to shed any negative labels they’d given themselves and give them a background in exploring and taking ownership in their own mental development. Our culture lacks structured practice in emotional intelligence, and most people would benefit greatly from early exposure to mental training.

What Changes Should You Make?

Now that we know how to change, we must address those changes that will have the greatest benefit to our physical and mental health. Jennifer Cohen has highlighted the habits highly successful people swear by. I’ve taken her list and given it my own twist:

• Get to bed early and get up at least an hour before your day begins. Set a sleep schedule and shoot for the eight hours of sleep you know you need.
• Get a morning workout. It can be just a 15-minute HIIT session or a full strength and conditioning program. Just get something in.
• Find time to sit in silence. Meditating after the workout seems a perfect time. You need this silent space. Creativity and happiness often follow. As, I’ve stated before, meditation may be the key to unlocking a performance state which allows you to thrive.
• Create a mantra. What moves you to awesomeness? Breathe and recite.
• Eat breakfast and pack healthy snacks. This eliminates future temptation.
• Do the hardest activity first each day. You will create awesome momentum.
• Eliminate life’s non-essentials. Remove the clutter and focus on what matters. Too often we waste time on a million tiny items with little payoff, rather than tackling the whale, which will make all future actions much easier.
• Practice daily gratitude. At the start of each day, recite one thing you are excited for; at the end of each day, recite one you are grateful for. In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor explains how exercises like meditation and gratitude can re-program your brain for optimism and make you more creative and energized.

All these habits are not required for success. But I expect by adopting just a few, you will find production and self-satisfaction rise. Rather than be victims of our constantly changing world, let’s become active guides, shaping our path and creating a stronger generation with the ability to confidently guide their own lives.

Strengthen your resolve to develop the right kind of habits:

There’s No Such Thing as Willpower: How to Identify Triggers of Bad Habits

The post Make the Switch to Better Habits and Mindset appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Type “fitness” into Google and in .57 seconds, you will get over a billion results. Were you to click every link and scan it for just five seconds, it would take you 217 years to get through it all. The amount of available information is staggering, and this information overload can lead us to endless frustration by leading us to these three critical mistakes: analysis paralysis, program hopping, and its malicious little cousin, the “goal carousel.”

We need the courage to start on a brave new journey and the persistence to see it through. [Photo courtesy: Pixabay]

Critical Issue 1: Analysis Paralysis

In his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Dr. Daniel Kahneman laid out a fascinating dilemma. Give a customer a choice between sampling three or four flavors of a product, and they may buy one. Make them pick between thirty different flavors, all at the same price, and they won’t even try. More choices and more information should lead to better decisions, not indecision.

This same thing can happen in training. Eager and motivated to get strong, we look up every possible program in support of our goal: Starting Strength, Westside, Juggernaut, RTS, 5-3-1, Sheiko, everything they can find. Each program will have its own variations and will make its case for why it’s the best approach. The beginner who commits to one will spend weeks of time and energy on that specific program and not the others, a choice that may mean years of wasted effort if one of the other programs proved to be ‘better.’ Rather than make the choice, they fade back into the comfort of the routine and are never heard from again. That’s a shame, because there is an alternative.

For the motivated wanderer: If you’re just looking to get better and don’t particularly care about your rate of progress, I recommend one of two options: find a coach you trust not to injure you, or set a deadline to start (less than a week) and commit to some program, any program, for six months.

As long as you follow these three guidelines, it’s hard to go terribly wrong:

1. Avoid any promises of instant, easy results. “Just six minutes a day for 6-pack abs!” has always been a lie.
2. Keep it simple.
3. Keep it specific to the goal. Don’t start a couch-to-5K program if you’re looking to get stronger.

You might not select the program I would prescribe as your coach. It might not be the best one for your goals. Still, the novice effect (rapid gains achieved whenever a new trainee does virtually anything) guarantees that whether you’re ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ you’ll move in the right direction, and if you pay attention and learn while on your journey, you’ll be better positioned to make better choices as you grow.

For coaches and informed friends: As we learn more, we often succumb to the habit of data-dumping our knowledge onto anyone who will listen. Imagine you’re a waiter at a fancy restaurant and someone asks your opinion about what wine to drink. Would you whip out the fourteen-page-8-point-font wine menu and start listing them off one by one? Of course not. You’ll look for context, ask questions, and then give them a solid recommendation (and, usually, a second also-good option). If they had the time, knowledge, and experience to wade through the sea of options and pick the right answer outright, they wouldn’t be asking for advice.

Critical Issue 2: Program Hopping

I’ve touched a little bit on this in a previous article, but few other faults are as often responsible for repeated frustration and failure as this one. It can affect the beginner, but it’s particularly common among intermediate-level athletes in any sport.

After a year or two of training, physiological changes slow down a great deal. For strength athletes, improvements may take a week or more to manifest. For team sport and skill athletes, it can be incredibly difficult (amidst the noise of fatigue, team, and cross-skill interactions) to know whether one is actually improving or not.

This is a natural growth curve, but to someone used to seeing improvement virtually every session, it can feel like being stuck. In general, we are not comfortable with that feeling and seek to get past it as quickly as possible, so we take the path of least resistance rather than dig deep, identify our weaknesses, and wade through the muck to squeeze out what gains we can.

This can take multiple forms, the most obvious being switching programs outright. As a general rule of thumb, any time you switch a program, it will set you back one to two weeks while you learn the new exercises and adapt to the new set-rep scheme. An impatient lifter, desperately trying to break out of their plateau, may change programs every 4-6 weeks, never giving their body time to adapt to the stimulus. Deeply frustrated, they either burn out, find a different sport, or (through sheer stubbornness), keep plowing through and eventually find themselves on the other side of the tunnel.

For some, escaping program-hopping can be as simple as a change in mindset, but there are a few helpful rules of thumb. Any time you commit to a new program, stick to its major tenets for at least four months. Unless there is a painfully obvious conflict in the program, make no more than one change every two weeks. Dig into the history behind the program and the alternatives it offers for different situations. Have a backup plan: what do I do if I get sick? Injured? Travel? Any time you aren’t able to accomplish the plan, don’t try to make up for lost time by doubling-up workouts. Lost time is gone, but rushing progress is a great way to lose even more, crash, and potentially injure yourself.

Critical Issue 3: The Carousel of No Progress

The goal carousel is a more insidious form of hopping, especially for those of us in team sports or general-fitness programs like CrossFit or kettlebell lifting with numerous exercises to choose from. Stuck at a 5:00 Fran time or a 32kg kettlebell press, unable to get more results by simply adding volume or intensity (or worse, starting to see creeping injuries), a quiet whisper tempts us: “Let’s be honest, the Turkish get up is more functional anyway.”

The real answer is probably not easy: it may take more precision in diet and recovery, periodization, or improving body composition. Instead of accepting the challenge and slogging through the hard work of change, they hop on the carousel and ride it round and round. They make a few easy changes, like biasing their practice time towards their new pet exercise, and they see improvement. At least for a while. Eventually, the project will stall out as well because the real issues haven’t been addressed, and the voice will whisper again: “It must be that your core is weak. I bet a solid bent press will fix that…” Or even worse, “Sure, you’re stuck at the same weight you were three months ago… but you’re really owning that weight now.”

Round and round she goes. This is a tough one to address because it’s character we need, not information. Information is, in fact, the problem. We know the techniques for dozens of lifts and potential (mostly nonexistent or irrelevant) weaknesses, imbalances, and restrictions in need of correction, and all those options make the carousel possible. It’s fun, cheap, and easy and becomes never-ending cycle of PRs and novelty. It takes grit, purpose, determination, and humility to acknowledge our failings and refuse to give up until we’ve improved at that thing we’re stuck at.

In the end, I can suggest a few rules of thumb that have worked for me, my trainees, and other successful coaches, but the answer to all of these progress-sapping struggles isn’t greater information, but what old sports coaches used to call “heart.” We need the courage to start on a brave new journey and the persistence to see it through.

More on learning what works for you:

Embrace Individuality: Find Your Best Lifting Technique

Coaches, guide your athletes:

The Lost Art of Handwritten Programming

The post Less Brains, More Heart appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Does this sound like you or someone you know? Do you feel intimidated by the weight room because it’s overrun with alpha males? This is the scenario creating gender segregation of ladies doing cardio and men lifting heavy.

The growth of CrossFit, Olympic weightlifting, and the “strong is the new sexy” tagline have encouraged more women to add regular strength training to their daily fitness regimen. But as a female trainer, I often witness women shying away from entering the weight room. A large percentage of my female clientele tell me, “I just don’t know what to do” when I ask them if they ever strength train on their own.

My goal with any client, and particularly female clients, is to get them comfortable in the gym so they can feel confident in the weight room. Women are often “gymtimidated” by the weight room, missing out on benefits of resistance training like stronger bones, weight loss, and stress relief. They are self-segregating themselves to the “women’s area” of the gym, cardio, or classes. 

Here are a few things that can help any female take that first step outside of her comfort zone and into the weight room of any gym: 

1. Get a trainer: Even better, get a female trainer. He or she will give you the training program and form cues to make sure you are performing exercises correctly. Book a few sessions and spend the majority of your time with him or her in the weight room to get comfortable with navigating the equipment.
2. Bring a buddy (not your partner): It’s always easier to take on a new environment when you have a friend with you. I mention a friend rather than a partner because if he or she is more comfortable in the weight room than you, the workout will be swayed towards his or her own goals. Join up with a lifting buddy and make a plan together. You may not be lifting the same weight but you can spot each other and motivate each other.
3. Find a specialized gym or program: Similar to getting a trainer, but maybe joining a large club isn’t in your budget or your style. Try a smaller, local, specialized gym that offers classes for beginning lifters. You will learn correct form, safe training, and enjoy a group-training atmosphere.
4. Be confident: Why do you think there are mirrors all over gyms? Because everyone is looking at themselves. The number one thing I tell hesitant clients is that nobody is watching you because they are all watching themselves. Walk in with confidence, work with confidence, and leave with confidence.
5. Work out at your pace: Any workout you do should be for you and your health. Find the right pace and progression that is right for you and push your comfort zone a little bit with each workout. Every person’s body is different so every person’s workout can be different also.

Men and women should take advantage of all equipment a gym offers. “Gymtimidation” is often self-inflicted and can be easily overcome by a small step outside of your comfort zone.

Trying to change what you see in the mirror? Start between the ears:

Transform Your Mindset to Transform Your Body

The post Time to Stop Fearing the Weight Room, Ladies appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

What we all found most offensive about this was his lack of objective evidence in either direction. He certainly did not know anything about lifters and would have no knowledge of their intellectual or academic achievements. Similarly, we had no real assurance that he was as bright as he self-righteously claimed to be.

Many members of the general public still assume that athletic people are somewhat mentally deficient. If you’re talking about weightlifters, powerlifters, bodybuilders, and other heavy iron users, those assumptions often double. Ditto with football players, weight throwers, boxers, wrestlers, and anyone else of similar ilk. This attitude has gone on at least since the days of Samson in the Old Testament.

Why does this myth persist? Does it have any validity?

Don’t judge an athlete’s intelligence by the size of his muscles.

Trends in the Class System

Let’s go back in history a little bit. In times gone by, many athletes indeed may have appeared to be lower than others in overall intelligence. But this is more likely due to the social origins of those concerned. Those who engaged in heavy athletic activity back then were most likely from the lower social orders, due to the fact that such activity was frowned upon by their so-called betters. Those of the working classes would obviously have been less educated than those more fortunate, and this would affect their speech and other interests. Even if an 130 IQ individual arose from the laboring classes, his social status would have shifted him away from anything intellectual right off the bat.

Now the upper classes did indulge in sports, but not usually ones requiring much musculature. Again, this had more to do with their social prejudices than anything else. Most of their sports required more intellectual inputs and, just as frequently, large expanses of real estate.

Intellect in Modern Athletes

It’s time to look at more modern athlete demographics. Many sports are much more spread throughout the socioeconomic classes than they were 100 years ago. Very large percentages of people nowadays at least spend some portion of their lives in sporting activity, often at a fairly serious level. In such an environment, you are more likely to see a wider range of intelligence among the participants.

While I do not have the ability to conduct a decent and fair survey of the large number of athletes, I am pretty confident that such a study would reveal a range of IQs that would be pretty well distributed. That means that there would be a small number of Mensa people (those highest 2 percent with 130 IQs), a large number huddling around the middle, and yes, a few below normal. There would not be many in the very low intelligence areas due to their inability to fathom the game. In most sports, you at least have to be able to function independently.

One thing that does make athletes seem less intelligent is the hallowed postgame media interview of the day’s star athlete. What the public does not realize is that for some time after a game you are quite tired out emotionally. Intelligent comments are hard to come by. The media doesn’t seem to know this either, and they continue to ask inane questions of our erstwhile hero and get equally inane and clichéd answers.

Strength Versus School

My own admittedly unscientific observations in weightlifting seem to bear this out. We have had our share of intellectual achievers. Norbert Schemansky (USA) and Yuri Vlasov (RUS) were good examples from my heyday. Both were engineers. Vlasov also became a writer and politician (although I’m not sure the last one is proof of any intelligence).

We have also had our share of doctors, both medical and PhDs, lawyers, technicians, and all manner of professionals. You cannot intellectually fake your way into these jobs. We do have some athletes with little or no regard for intellectual work, and the bulk of our weightlifting population is probably huddled around the middle. If that makes them dumb in some people’s eyes, they are at least in good company, for that is where most of the world resides.

Everybody knows that over the last few decades the need for education has greatly expanded. The baby boomers alone are responsible for the need to build many new universities in the Western world. Unlike prior generations, we do not have the luxury of being able to choose whether we want to go to school or not. If you want any decent kind of life, you have to hit the books. This situation undoubtedly works into my original question. In the past your big, physically oriented individual could still do well for himself in a physically oriented job, even without schooling. These men (and it was men in those days) were often interested in sports that matched their big self-image.

We all know what it means to assume, right?

But as most of us who have spent decades in the gym know, it is not just the above types who are interested in getting stronger. Whether polite society likes to admit it or not, strength is important to men, and it is especially important to a teenage boy struggling to find his place in the world. Most men have to come to terms with this in some fashion. They either have to do something about their lack of strength, or they have to rationalize that need away. The more energetic sports have always served as an outlet for these young men.

It is safe to say that American-style football would not exist if this inborn desire did not exist in males. You can say the same for hockey, soccer, rugby, boxing, wrestling, martial arts, and of course, all of the weight sports. (Yes, I said soccer, but I mean soccer as it’s played in South America and Europe, not the type played here where “mercy rules” and such are the norm.) This desire exists in all males, regardless of their IQ level or socioeconomic status. For that reason, you’re going to find a wide range of cognitive ability in sport practitioners.

Most interestingly, we are now finding that this desire for greater physical efficacy is not limited to males, as it’s always been thought. Females are participating now in record numbers and are interested in strength and power. Also quite interesting in this situation is the fact that women participants in the weight sports are on average better educated than the males. That may be one of the reasons why we don’t hear much about “dumb female jocks.” Women are far more likely to have their sexuality questioned, which I suppose comes with the territory if you’re engaged in what was once only a male sport.

Redefine the Narrative

In summary, someone who is not that bright but has potential for athletic success may indeed add some credibility to the dumb weightlifter paradigm. But there are far too many others who span the full intellectual spectrum. It’s important for weightlifting people not to simply point to a few stars and say, “See, we are all brilliant.” That is unrealistic and not believable. It is far more important for us to point to all of our members, then point to the rest of society and ask why there is no IQ variance between the two.

The quickest way to put someone down is to attack his or her intelligence, mainly because it is hard to measure, and therefore difficult to defend oneself in such a debate. Perhaps society has a lesson to learn from our misconceptions about weightlifters: pointing to someone who is different and claiming the difference exists because he or she is dumber does not make you any smarter.

Unlock Your Potential:

• Athletic Ability as a Form of Intelligence
• There Is No Try: Believe in Yourself
• The 2 Essential Principles of Lifelong Motivation
• New on Breaking Muscle Right Now

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Brains and Brawn: How Smart (or Dumb) Are Weightlifters? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I have had a lifelong struggle with trying to be perfect. Now, I believe the concept to be at best harsh and at worst, dangerous. It isn’t something I strive for in my training. And it shouldn’t be something you target, either.

Learn to adapt and grow from failure.

Perfect Versus Pretty Good

I’m writing this article for all the perfectionists out there. You know who you are. You like your slate clean. You’re the lifter who begins an exciting new training programme but quits a third of the way in because you got stomach flu and missed a week.

You’re the person who starts their new clean nutrition regime every Monday, falls off the wagon on Thursday, and rides out the weekend on a wave of takeaways before starting over “afresh” the next Monday.

You’re the athlete who stopped going to CrossFit because you can’t do pull ups and you hate the idea of doing the workout less than Rx. You are the person obsessed with doing things “properly.”

I’ve got news for you. Your standards for properly are improperly high, and your perfectionism will trip you up every chance it gets. Perfect some of the time gets in the way of pretty good all of the time. Your need for perfection inhibits true lifestyle change.

So let me give you some advice.

Stop Starting Over

Everyone loves the idea of hitting the ground running with a health goal and sticking with it for the rest of their lives. It just doesn’t happen like that in real life. As a perfectionist, you have the highest of standards, but you need to stop starting over the second you face a barrier. Let go of the idea that everything must be perfect in order to progress.

“Acknowledge your successes and learn from your failures, instead of obsessing over them.”

If your baby kept you up all night and you need to catch up on your sleep – skip your AM session and smash it tomorrow. If you caved at the sales meeting and had a couple of biscuits with your tea – get over it, and eat your prepped chicken casserole at lunch. Accommodate failures as well as successes into your programmes and meal plans. Good plans are built for sustainability anyway.

Don’t Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater

Let me use myself as an example with this one.

My weight has fluctuated by as much as 15kg over the course of my adult life. I weigh 69kg now, but that number has been as high as 84kg. I have tried most diets, including not eating at all (the most ill-advised), followed closely by a juice fast, and concluding with a miserable six weeks on the Dukan Diet. On every occasion, something slipped. Usually an entire Cadbury selection pack into my mouth. Every slip-up was a cue to go to town on all of the food I had previously stopped eating. Because if I was going to do something, I had to do it properly.

What learning points and experiences did I miss out on by repeatedly throwing the baby out with the bath water? I have a feeling I would have reached my current nutritional equilibrium much quicker otherwise, and that, as they say here in Norfolk, really butters my bread.

Be Kinder to Yourself

If you have a hiccup, congratulations. You are human. Learn to adapt and grow from failure.

My initial months of lifting and trying to eat right were marked by speaking to myself like a piece of shit, berating myself constantly about my commitment to my training, and frequently not feeling good enough. Only when I negotiated my expectations, shot for consistency, dieted more flexibly, and – most importantly – spoke to myself more positively, did I make the most significant progress of my life.

Your inner dialogue is critical to success in training. As a rule, if you wouldn’t talk to your friends the way you talk to yourself, change the conversation. Acknowledge your successes and learn from your failures, instead of obsessing over them.

The Expedition of a Lifetime

Moving away from perfectionism has been transformative for me. Over the last year, I’ve added 15kg to each of my Olympic lifts, moved down two weight classes (from 75+ kg to -69kg), and dropped 11 percent body fat.

How much is keeping your slate clean costing you?

But this journey has been far from perfect. I blew my assigned macros three days into my programme and had a feast to rival a Tudor court’s on my birthday. I missed training for six weeks with tendonitis in my shoulder. At first, I let these incongruities get to me. Over time, as the scale dropped and my lifts went up – basically, as the world didn’t end – it mattered less and less.

These examples may or may not resonate with you. Perhaps you are the smaller kid in class who just can’t eat enough for significant mass gain. Maybe you are trying to limit your alcohol intake. Or you could just be trying to train more sustainably, because hitting the gym nine times a week for three weeks is making less and less sense to you, and you’re finally starting to consider a less extreme approach.

Regardless of your goal, remember you have to enjoy what you’re doing day in and day out. Success is the expedition of a lifetime, literally, and you will never progress doing something you hate every day.

Put Your Best Foot Forward

Don’t get me wrong. Attention to detail and high standards in your endeavours are not bad things. So-called perfectionism has driven the human race to our greatest victories. Thomas Edison wasn’t satisfied with the light bulb filament he invented that only lasted a few hours, so he worked relentlessly until he discovered one that lasted for nearly 1,200. Flaubert scoured his language over his lifetime for les mots justes (the precise words), and the byproduct of this was one of the greatest novels ever written: Madame Bovary.

The perfectionism I am criticising is marked by an aggressive, all-or-nothing attitude in which anything judged to be less than flawless is considered to be worthless. Situations when a non-linear progression is not a progression, and a step back is cause to give up entirely.

So settle in. Work hard, and fall in love with your endeavour. You will find that even the most aggressive perfectionist in you will overlook the most skewed of picture frames, and putting your best foot forward will be easier than ever.

More Like This:

• Consistency Over Perfection: 3 Tips for Sustainable Training
• The 5 Key Mindset Qualities of Successful Athletes
• Why These 7 Do-or-Die Motivational Memes Are Misleading You
• New on Breaking Muscle UK Today

Photo 1 courtesy of Rx’d Photography.

Photo 2 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Is Perfectionism Holding Your Training Back? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

In all the various realms of our lives, there are two types of “things”:

• The things we love to do
• The things we should do

The problem is, these two categories are not always synonymous. 

Fun Versus Useful

If we restrict this discussion to our training efforts, it’s easy to see the built-in conflict we need to resolve if we ever hope to actualize our potential. Naturally, we like doing certain things because we’re good at them, and therefore, doing them gives us a sense of satisfaction. Just as surely, we tend to dislike the things we’re not very good at. Those tend to be the things we ought to do.

Visualize two different circles: one representing the things you like to do, and the other the things you ought to do. The more overlap you have between each circle, the better you will do in any venture you choose. How can you bring these two circles together so they converge as much as possible? How can you learn to like, or at least accept, doing the things you need to do?

What is your strategy for increasing the overlap in the middle?

Trick Yourself With Temptation Bundling

“Temptation bundling” is one promising strategy. The idea was conceived by Katy Milkman, Professor of Economics at the Wharton School. Temptation bundling involves combining a temptation with something you know you should do, but might struggle to do. It’s similar to rewarding yourself after doing a difficult but necessary task. With temptation bundling, your reward behavior happens in conjunction with the unpleasant task.

In a recent interview with Freakonomics Radio, Milkman provides a simple example from her own life: only allowing herself to watch her favorite television shows while she’s on the treadmill at the gym. This strategy makes her much more likely to go to the gym, and she also feels less guilty about watching the shows. Here’s Milkman describing the process in more detail:

I use a similar behavioral trick in my own life – I listen to podcasts while taking my daily walk to Starbucks. Ever since I started this habit, I look forward to my walks much more than I used to. I also feel less guilty about all the time I spend listening to podcasts.

In the gym, I’ve been using this approach to help me pay more attention to mobility work. Doing simple band exercises in between sets of my normal strength exercises has been an effective way to solidify this new behavior. While it may not be temptation bundling in strict terms, it has the same flavor: for every set of weights I do, I do a set for mobility.

This strategy has been suggested by other coaches (Dan John comes immediately to mind), and the inter-set mobility drills are often referred to as “fillers.” If you’ve found yourself using this technique without having a term for it, I’d love to hear about it. Or if you have other techniques you use to “trick” yourself into doing unpalatable, but ultimately beneficial behaviors, please share them in the comments section below.

This Week’s Training:

Volume: 100,334lb (Last Week: 57,270lb)

Significant Lifts:

• High Bar Squat 240×8
• Swing: 124 (2×15)
• 2.5” Deficit Pull: 375×10

I’m quite happy with this week of training. I feel healthy, and I managed to post a few good lifts. Overall, things feel like they’re going in a positive direction. I’m gradually working to bring up areas of weakness (quads, abs, mobility, and aerobic endurance) while maintaining my strengths.

And there’s another possible new chapter that might crop up in my training in upcoming weeks. The gym I belong to has a fantastic kickboxing room, with every type of striking bag you could imagine. I spent about twenty years heavily involved with martial arts in a former life, and I think I’m going to add two short workouts per week that include a bit of kicking, striking, and stretching. Reacquiring at least some of my former abilities will serve as a primary impetus for doing the mobility work I need to do, and it’ll help with my conditioning as well. 

In a sense, this bears a lot of similarity to the temptation bundling concept I wrote about above. I hate stretching and conditioning, but the prospect of being able to regain my kicking ability might be enough to get me to do it. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes. Thanks all for this week, and I hope your new year is off to a great start.

Bodyweight: 201.8lb

Volume: 23,023lb

Goblet Squat

• Set 1: 30lb × 10
• Set 2: 55lb × 10
• Set 3: 75lb × 10

Power Clean

• Set 1: 45lb × 5
• Set 2: 88lb × 5
• Set 3: 110lb × 5
• Set 4: 132lb × 5
• Set 5: 154lb × 3
• Set 6: 165lb × 2
• Set 7: 176lb × 1

High Bar Squat

• Set 1: 95lb × 10
• Set 2: 135lb × 10
• Set 3: 185lb × 10
• Set 4: 215lb × 10
• Set 5: 240lb × 8
• Set 6: 185lb × 10

Swings

• Set 1: 106lb × 15
• Set 2: 124lb × 15
• Set 3: 124lb × 15 (Video Below)

Toes To Bar

• Set 1: 6 reps
• Set 2: 6 reps
• Set 3: 6 reps (Video Below)

Reverse Hyper

• Set 1: 50lb × 10
• Set 2: 90lb × 10
• Set 3: 180lb × 10

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Bodyweight: 202.2lb

Volume: 26,250lb

Football Bar Bench 

• Set 1: 40lb × 10
• Set 2: 90lb × 10
• Set 3: 130lb × 10
• Set 4: 150lb × 10
• Set 5: 150lb × 10
• Set 6: 170lb × 6
• Set 7: 170lb × 6
• Set 8: 150lb × 6
• Set 9: 130lb × 10

Seated Row

• Set 1: 165lb × 10
• Set 2: 165lb × 10
• Set 3: 165lb × 10
• Set 4: 165 lb × 10

Incline Dumbbell Press

• Set 1: 80lb × 10
• Set 2: 110lb × 10
• Set 3: 130lb × 10
• Set 4: 130lb × 9
• Set 5: 130lb × 8

Dual Cable Low Cable Curl

• Set 1: 90lb × 10
• Set 2: 90lb × 10
• Set 3: 90lb × 10
• Set 4: 90lb × 10
• Set 5: 80lb × 10

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Bodyweight: 201.8lb

Volume: 25,300lb

Goblet Squat

• Set 1: 30lb × 10
• Set 2: 30lb × 10
• Set 3: 30lb × 10

2.5″ Deficit Pull

• Set 1: 135lb × 10
• Set 2: 185lb × 10
• Set 3: 225lb × 10
• Set 4: 275lb × 10
• Set 5: 315lb × 10
• Set 6: 375lb × 10 (Video Below)

Hack Squat

• Set 1: 45lb × 10
• Set 2: 90lb × 10
• Set 3: 115lb × 10
• Set 4: 140lb × 10

Standing Calf Raise

• Set 1: 180lb × 10
• Set 2: 180lb × 10
• Set 3: 180lb × 10

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Bodyweight: 200.2lb

Volume: 25,761lb

Rusin Shoulder Warm Up

Standing Calf Raise

• Set 1: 75lb × 10
• Set 2: 75lb × 10
• Set 3: 75lb × 10

Goblet Squat

• Set 1: 30lb × 10
• Set 2: 30lb × 10
• Set 3: 30lb × 10

Seated Band Abduction

• 3 × 15

Chin Up

• Set 1: 1 reps
• Set 2: 2 reps
• Set 3: 3 reps
• Set 4: 4 reps
• Set 5: 5 reps
• Set 6: 6 reps
• Set 7: 7 reps
• Set 8: 8 reps
• Set 9: 9 reps
• Set 10: 10 reps

Military Press

• Set 1: 45lb × 10
• Set 2: 65lb × 10
• Set 3: 85lb × 10
• Set 4: 95lb × 10
• Set 5: 100lb × 10

Bench Press (Dumbbell)

• Set 1: 80lb × 10
• Set 2: 100lb × 10
• Set 3: 120lb × 10
• Set 4: 150lb × 10
• Set 5: 170lb × 10

Bicep Curl (Dumbbell)

• Set 1: 50lb × 15
• Set 2: 50lb × 15

More Tips for Training Between the Ears:

• The Science and Psychology of Motivation for Athletes
• Science Says Imagery Is a Powerful Psych-Up Tool
• 3 Mind Hacks to Streamline Your Training
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Teaser photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Need to Train Things You Hate? Try Temptation Bundling appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

In my time as a coach, I have picked up on many behavioral patterns. The most interesting are those that make or break people as they pursue their goals. The pattern I want to discuss today is belief.

Beliefs Are Powerful

Beliefs are extremely powerful and hold the potential to shape outcomes. For example, I believe humans are incredibly capable beings. I believe we all have potential to learn and adapt to just about anything if we put our minds to it. These beliefs shape how I act and how I treat my clients. When you treat people as remarkably capable, they tend to become that, sometimes despite themselves.

In this game called life, our outcomes are largely shaped by what goes on between our ears. The most successful among us are those who have mastered their minds. What we choose to believe is such a vital part of that mastery, but it often starts on an almost imperceptible level. Let me get more specific.

Self-Talk Is Poppycock

We constantly talk to ourselves, often without realizing it. There are a hundred different names for it: self-talk, hidden scripts, inner monologue, etc. Whatever you call it, it happens, and it shapes what you believe, how you act, and what you accomplish.

“I believe we all have potential to learn and adapt to just about anything if we put our minds to it.”

All too often I overhear phrases that start with “I can’t do this…” or “I’m no good at that.” To be fair, sometimes it is 100 percent true. But most of the time it is total poppycock.

These negative feelings are the sum of many subtle thoughts we have routinely chosen to accept. After we’ve embraced these “micro-thoughts” for a while, they form the foundation for belief. Unfortunately they also tend to become a great way to let yourself off the hook and make excuses. The “I can’t do this,” turns into “I can’t do this,” with a subtle, “…and I’m not going to bother trying, either” at the end of it. Sound familiar?

Trying Is a Cop Out

That brings me back why I don’t believe in trying. “Trying” is a word loaded with expectation. It lacks conviction and is muddied with subtle ambiguity. Trying leaves room for you to return to the comfortable world. It keeps the door open for failure and excuses. It is all too simple to say “I tried,” and just walk away.

Entertain me, though. Instead, say “I will do this.” Maybe make it a promise to a friend. How much more does it hurt to say, “I didn’t do this or that thing,” or “I failed to deliver on that promise?” There’s accountability there and it sucks to come up short. You have more skin in the game. But it’s objective. It gives you grounds to change your plan of attack, be persistent, and persevere. Failure is okay, as long as you keep moving forward.

A Real Life Example: 3,000 Miles In 12 Days

I have an example I’d like to share from my time crewing for a friend of mine who completed the Race Across America (RAAM) cycling race. RAAM is a 3,000 mile bike race across the United States that racers must finish in twelve days or less (approximately 250 miles per day). I’ll be frank with you – it’s absurd. More people have climbed Everest than completed this race.

One thing that stands out to me is the total conviction our athlete had leading up to and throughout the race. There was no ambiguity. He believed in his ability down to the very core of his being. Even in the midst of dire sleep deprivation, the vision remained clear.

“He believed in his ability down to the very core of his being.”

When he hit rough patches and had doubts, he’d talk to us about his belief. He’d compare it to folks suffering through cancer, who have no choice in the matter. He’d say he was grateful to have a choice and how trivial the choice to keep riding seemed in that light. He’d talk about the team he flew out to support him and about not failing us.

There was no choice. There was no try. It was do, or do not. And he did.

That will stick with me forever. You simply can’t be 100 percent physically prepared for an event like that. It goes beyond pure physical ability. The body can do it, but the mind has to lead it there.

Five Steps to Build Complete Conviction

Sensational story aside, how do you harness this belief in your everyday life? Here are my five steps to acting with complete conviction:

1. Slow Down and Listen – Without any judgment, focus on those thoughts that are almost subconscious. Take time to hear and be mindful of them. Acknowledge them for what they are and pay attention to how they make you feel.
2. Ask the Hard Questions – Why is that thought there? Why does it make you feel the way it does? Is it true or does it just feel true? Really examine yourself. This part may not be all that comfortable, but it’s a great opportunity to get to know yourself.
3. Acknowledge the Ambiguity– Any time there is choice, there is ambiguity. It’s human nature. Look for it and acknowledge it. What do I mean exactly? Think of it this way. Sure, you want to be 10 percent body fat, but you also want to eat that chocolate cake. Both choices are of value to you somehow. The answer to the right decision lies within you. Take the time to see the value in both options.
4. Reframe – Let’s say you have a negative thought creep in, such as “I can never be below 10 percent body fat.” Stop. Don’t buy the lie. Reframe it into a better thought like, “I can get there, but I need to eliminate other options. See ya later, chocolate cake.”
5. Act – Make your decision with full conviction. This applies to how you treat small thoughts all the way up to bigger decisions like finishing a daunting race. You will surprise yourself when you see how far conviction and focus can take you.

Give it a try. You will learn about yourself. You will fail. But you will also succeed. I’d love to hear your stories!

More Like This:

• The Science and Psychology of Motivation for Athletes
• The 2 Essential Principles of Lifelong Motivation
• This Is Fitness: Move Beyond Instinct and Become Uncomfortable
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post There Is No Try: Believe in Yourself appeared first on Breaking Muscle.