The other day I found a scrawny young guy doing a round-backed deadlift with 80kg. I was busy with a client so left him to it, but when he went to 95kg I had to step in. I corrected it, and it was alright.
"Stay at 80kg," I said, "do a couple of sets of 5, do that a couple of times a week, then next week add 5kg, and so on."
He loaded the bar up to 95kg. "No really, stay at 80kg."
"I just want to -"
"Stay at 80. That's enough for now, more and you may hurt yourself."
"Could you watch while I -"
"No. If you are ignoring my instruction, there's no sense my giving you more."
He was quite offended by this, and indignant. Possibly his anxiety to add more weight had to do with the fact that the 64yo woman I was training at the time was doing 80kg. If he'd asked I could have told him, that took her 12 months, you are doing it today, don't feel bad - but he was too emotionally bruised to even ask. The male ego is a delicate thing.
A couple of days later another scrawny young guy doing the same disc-popping deadlifts. I corrected him, he expressed wonder that it no longer hurt his back. We tried some things out and he pulled 140kg, which for him was a 30kg lifetime personal best.
I started saying something else and he interrupted. "I better get on with the rest of my workout."
If someone got me to do an exercise pain-free for the first time in my life, and in ten minutes helped me get 30kg personal best, I'd stick around to listen to what else they had to say.
My examples here have been young guys. It's true that adolescent males are the least likely to listen to instruction, since when a man says the words "I don't know" his penis shrinks one-sixteenth of an inch. (Women are all former men who said "I don't know a lot. True story.) But it's other people, too. I once had a woman in her 40s tell me she didn't need a gym programme. "I've been coming seven years, I'm advanced." However, she could not do a pushup, perhaps she had advanced beyond them?
I don't know everything. In February I went to the Starting Strength Seminar in Seattle, I didn't spend $3,000 and travel halfway across the planet just to walk in and tell Rippetoe he was wrong. But I can definitely coach you to your first pushup and stop you herniating discs in your back from an 80kg deadlift. You might even get genuinely strong.
Not everyone likes to listen to instruction. If you don't, that's alright, but you probably should not join a gym - just lift alone in your garage. Fail in private where we don't have to watch you. In the gym, listen to instruction.
It's hard to admit you don't know what you're doing, sometimes especially if when you don't. The first step to wisdom is learning to recognize what you don't know. It's a hard step, though. Until you manage to take it, it really feels like you do know what you're doing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's at least halfway understandable when someone doesn't value free advice. I'm sure you've had cases where someone pays you for your time and knowledge and then disregards it. That's harder to understand - I totally understand setting parameters, or even limits, but it's strange when people hire you and disregard what doesn't agree with what they are already doing.
It is indeed a conundrum. I have to say, it was a culture shock coming to civilian life from the Army.
ReplyDelete"No, I don't want to do it that way."
"What the fuck? When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you! Now drop and give me twenty your fucking worm!"
I have been told that this is not an appropriate way to conduct a training session.