Do something!

"Doing something trumps thinking about a perfect program"

- Dan John

A while back in the gym I saw a great example of this. I had to show a guy through a routine someone else had written. Luckily I could subvert it a bit, the other trainer had written "BB squats" and I knew he meant "smith machine BB", but I took the guy five feet the other way to the power rack and he did his first ever below parallel squat.

Anyway, he had his old programs, and he'd just ticked each exercise each workout. That is, when he was shown the exercise, he found a weight he could do without trouble, and then did that for every workout, 12-24 of them over the next couple of months. 

He was in his 60s, 5 years past having had a heart attack and triple bypass surgery, and could without trouble do barbell squats, solid planks for a couple of minutes, and so on. To be honest he had more strength and bodily awareness than most healthy 20 year olds I meet in the gym. 

Simply doing the movement a few times a week with a load that wasn't terribly challenging, and doing this consistently over months and years - it'd done a lot for him. He was by no means an athlete, but he was stronger, fitter, with better joint mobility than the sedentary 20 year olds coming into the gym with some pages pulled out of a fitness magazine. 

Strength is a skill, and practice is practice.

I once trained a young woman called Swati. She came to me in November 2010 for a routine. She had poor strength overall, only able to do a few knee pushups, and not great bodily awareness, she could get a squat but not a hip hinge.

One of the exercises I gave her was goblet squats with and without a dumbbell. Over the next several months I saw her come in and work out pretty regularly.

Then in August 2011 she asked me for some personal training. I got her under the barbell. In her second session she said, "this 25kg is easy, I could do much more."
"Yes, you could. But there's the weight you can lift, and then there's the weight you can lift with good form and still walk tomorrow."

She insisted on trying out her max strength, so I added 5kg to the bar and she did a rep, and so on. She got up to 50kg and it was a bit rough but she did it. She could have lifted a bit more, maybe even 60kg, but I stopped her there.

Obviously, all those goblet squats had prepared her for barbell squatting 50kg, at a bodyweight of 63kg. But here's the thing: she never used more than 12.5kg in the goblet squat.

In PT school we were taught a lot of stuff about training at such-and-such a percentage of your 1RM to improve your 1RM. However you want to translate goblet squats to back squats, it's plain she was training at under half her 1RM for quite a while. According to all the official tables, this will not build strength significantly.

Yet she got stronger. She practiced the movement at a low load, and got stronger. Just like the recovering heart attack guy who never really challenged himself with his load and had less than ideal exercises (his previous routine had swiss ball wall squats and his new one had cable flyes).

I'm always in favour of slapping another plate on where you can, but... Consistent effort over time gets results. As I said about Rosemary, what I've learned is that consistent is more important than effort. This does not mean that no effort is needed, the little pink dumbbells, walking at 4km/hr on the treadmill, the quarter-squats, half-bench presses and the cheat curls aren't going to do a thing for you. It does mean that you don't have to go all-out in every workout. Show up. Do something. Keep doing something. 

Resilience Part II

Below is a guest post from Rosemary, the lifter I mentioned as developing resilience from her consistency. She gives a bit too much credit to her injury recovery to training with me, since before she worked with me regularly she did a lot of work on her own. What I really did was what I do with so many others who are injured or have been weak for most of their lives, I gave her permission to be badarsed. 

For the trainers reading, an important observation is that people who've been injured, or those who are older, will often be afraid of pushing themselves significantly during physical training. They may only have 10% function, pushing themselves might get them more, but if done wrongly might injure them, and they'd rather have 10% function than 0%.

With most workout routines, we only ask, "is it effective?" But the injured or older client or athlete will ask, "is it safe?" It can take time to convince the person that what you're coaching them to do is both safe and effective. 

To get and keep personal training clients we must demonstrate competence, establish trust and rapport. When working with someone with injuries, obviously competence matters - but trust is very important, and part of the programme must be things which make them mentally stronger as well as physically, so that they come to trust in the work and themselves. 

What follows is her writing, she gave it as a speech to over 1,000 students and 100+ teachers at her school. 

Resilience

Today’s reflection concerns resilience, its application and the need to develop our strengths as we live our lives. Within it, I will refer to habits which can be sustained to develop a sense of self fulfilment. In so saying, I affirm that it is necessary to reinforce positive habits to develop the values which allow us to face those things which we feel we can truly not cope with.

The inspiration for my reflection comes from:

The 2^nd book of Timothy 1:7: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”

The words within the verse have a broad application. They encourage us to take stock in ourselves and to develop a true understanding of our self worth. They require us to act on the positives we perceive within ourselves so that we can achieve our goals.

In the world of education, the concept reflects a need to understand the fundamentals of the way we approach our learning and our lives, to focus on the inadequacies that exist there and work steadily to improve, accepting responsibilities for any shortfalls which may exist. In a broader context we can make assessments concerning how we approach our lives.

To illustrate this, I would like to take you on a personal journey, one which I experienced early last year but which is continuing today. Imagine waking, on the first day of your holidays and merely trying to get out of bed. Strangely, as you attempt to place one foot on the floor, your leg and one side of your body is engulfed in excruciating pain, a pain that is so extreme you cannot achieve that simple task. Instead, all you can do is drag yourself to ask for help. Later, you are administered Pethidine as you are taken to hospital by ambulance, but even that does not diminish the intensity of your pain, neither does morphine. The process continues unremittingly through the day and increases as you are taken home by car. You face the prospect of an operation on the spine or of other intervention through a cortisone injection placed into the sciatic nerve root and into the offending disc, which is pressing on the already damaged and inflamed nerve, trapped in your spinal column.

Yes, this is an anecdote. Sadly, however, the anecdote concerns me, last year. You may remember me trying to move around the school with the aid of a walking stick. I was terrified that someone would bump me, rushing past. My fear was that I would fall and further damage an area of my back which I was told, by a specialist physiotherapist, would succumb to the same injury time and time again.

Self confidence, resilience and self belief can be a marvellous tool for us. We engender it through intelligent application. And while this concept is something we can refer to in terms of a physical context, it can be broadened to encompass other aspects of our lives.

After much work, swimming laps of the local pools, I improved enough to walk normally, and to cut out pain killers, such as Endone, (otherwise known as hillbilly heroin), which enabled me to meet my commitments reaching through the day. Increasingly, I adopted the belief that the key to developing any form of endurance and resilience at all was reliant on physical fitness

It was at this point that I met Kyle, my personal trainer. Distinguished by his four hundred meter stare, he has instilled fear yet equally, resilience in kids who were deemed at risk and were consequently recommended by the YMCA to bond by attacking the Kokoda trail. His approach was, and still does remain simple. As one of his trainees remembers - “it was cold, it was early, I had an ex-army officer staring me dead in the eyes and there was no escape.’ The trainee continued on recounting the first instruction given: “Hi guys I’m Kyle, I don’t care what your names are, get on the ground and do push ups.” 

Now this might not be something which reflects the way you have been introduced to subject matter in a particular area of study, but it does strike a chord with the urgent need to become physically conditioned to embark on the Kokoda trail in a relatively short period of time and does have relevance to the development of strength training.

Strength training....training with weights. After my injury this is what I do, once a week. Kyle is my trainer. After my training I will alternate days when I work out with weights with others when I will go for a 4 kilometre run, with my dog. This is a real treat, when you consider that15 months ago I could not walk. I took some photographs of my training recently. You will note that what I am doing is a considerable effort for me, but not beyond the bounds of my strength, concentration or the application of my intelligence

Since starting my weights training, I don’t think that I have physically changed a great deal, although I am certainly much stronger. I have now been working in this way for around eighteen weeks and for me it has been quite a journey to improving physical health. What I have found particularly interesting is the association of concentration and application of intelligence with achievement of my short term goals. There is a right and wrong technique which can be employed, and to persistently lift the wrong way can cause injury. If I were to do this, my back would be seriously damaged. As it is, it has been significantly strengthened. In this way, something which might be seen as an exercise has an application in terms of learning and intelligence.

Mark Rippetoe is an American trainer who has an interesting interpretation of this. A coach of some thirty years standing, he believes that:

"One of the lessons of barbell training is that you can in fact do what you intend to do 

if you just make yourself do it. 

It doesn't just make your body strong; it makes your mind strong as well."

This reflects that, as I have noted, actions which are employed in lifting are learnt with care so that different areas of the body are concentrated on to develop a focussed and fluid approach. Another reference we might consider is 

“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general." 

Here Rippetoe develops the argument that by increasing our strength and I infer this means resilience in the face of adversity that the results are beneficial to ourselves and to the community.

Yes, a concentrated approach yields results. This has much to do with the development of power, self love and self discipline as a journey from fear and timidity, from acknowledging your weaknesses and focusing on them to make them strengths. Or stating to yourself as Kyle has so often told me: “you can do it.” Or when I say I can’t attempt a weight: “Yes you can.” How many times have I heard Kyle say this to me as I progressed to the weights I am now lifting, 10 kilo pull overs, 25 kilo squats and 60 kilo dead lifts? 

Ultimately I use my example as a message to you. Identify your weaknesses, know them as part of yourselves but more importantly, defy them work on a program to improve yourself, physically and mentally. By doing so, you will become a much better person and achieve something which to be proud of.

Don't overthink the movement

Many times I have to say this to clients and gym members. They tend to worry and overthink an exercise, and their form turns to shit when they do. It works much better when they just move. After coaching them on the basics, I tell them, "Your body knows what to do, you just have to let it."

Gray Cook talks about squatting and deadlifting being natural movements any child can do but which adults forget. Here's an example. 

I doubt this child learned to deadlift and squat from her excellent coach parents, I can't even get my 13 month old son to refrain from chucking his water cup off the edge of his high chair, infants are not very coachable. It's simply that the hip hinge and squat movements are natural to us, she's plainly not thinking about it. Somewhere between being toddlers and being adults we unlearn these movements and have to be taught them again. 

Get the basics of the movement, then get moving. Don't sweat the details in the beginning, just get moving.

Consistency & Resiliency

Today I'd like to boast about Rosemary. She is a 64yo schoolteacher, has herniated L4/5 and one or two other physical issues. 

She began with simple hip hinges using the cable machine, then dumbbells, very light work, then pulls from the rack starting with 35kg, did that a second week, then added 2.5kg each week doing 3 sets of 5. After the first couple of weeks of learning the basics of the lift, none of the reps performed were a struggle. It was just "start easy, build up slowly." We'd reached 57.5kg and yesterday was supposed to be the 60kg day. The original plan was to then slow down, and over the next couple of months work up to 70-75kg in the rack, then try 60kg on the floor. 

However, the rack was occupied and one of the other staff had brought his bumper plates in, so we tried 40kg from the floor. Then 45, then 50, 55, all went smoothly. 57.5kg went up but she didn't lock it out, blamed her gloves. I had her take them off and chalk up, and it went up smoothly. 

"Want to try 60kg? Confident with that?" I asked.

"Easy."

And it was.

"Stronger people are more useful in general,
and harder to kill."
- Mark Rippetoe

She'd brought her camera in that day, saying that at her school they were doing presentations, "Mine will be on resilience, physical strength and the process of getting it are part of resilience." I guess having the camera encouraged me to try out her "sorta max", but I also felt that after 18 weeks of solid work it'd be safe to try out. 

Built up over 18 weeks. Deadlifted more than her bodyweight. 

No more bad back. 

I'm not claiming this as a remarkable lift, I'm sure someone will post saying their 98 year old grandmother deadlifts three plates a side. But I think that if you can deadlift your own bodyweight consistently into your 60s and beyond, a lot of other physical issues will be better, and you'll continue to be independent and have a fairly good quality of life. 

The key thing has been her consistency. Never missed a session, only rescheduled one session to support her daughter in a running race. And each week she comes in Sunday 10am, does our workout, during the week comes in 2-3 times and repeats whatever we did, then the following Sunday we increase the weight or reps, or introduce a new exercise. Consistent effort over time gets results.

Everyone has physical limits. I don't think Rosemary will ever deadlift 160kg, for example. But not many women in their 60s going to gyms deadlift 60kg, either. Nor even women in their 20s. Consistent effort over time gets results, but consistent effort over time is very difficult to do. Not many people will come into the gym, accept guidance, plan their lives around their workouts rather than fitting in the workouts when they happen to feel like it, be willing to focus on quality movement, start easy and build up slowly but steadily, each week doing just a few more kilograms or a few more repetitions. 

This is not my achievement, Rosemary's the one who had to show up and lift all those weights, I just guided her. Consistent effort over time is difficult. But the results are worth it. What could you achieve if you were consistent? Certainly you'd get stronger, fitter and more mobile - and more resilient.