"Should I correct them?"

Too long ago Teri asked if it was a good idea for her to give people advice on lifting in the gym.  Today - and not for the first time - a gym member I'd given a routine to commented, "So many of the gym instructors just hang around by the desk and never correct anyone." For both general gym members and instructors, the question "Should I correct them?" is a difficult one. For Teri, the short answer is: probably not. The long answer is below. 

There are two considerations for any exercise, its safety and its effectiveness. Let's take for granted that anyone should speak up when something's dangerous. We'll just talk about whether to poke our noses in when something seems less than effective. 

Asked-for advice

Whether you're a trainer or a gym-goer, when someone asks for advice, give it. But bear in mind that just because they ask for advice doesn't mean they actually want it. Some just want a casual chat about life and are trying to find something in common to start the conversation with. "How do you do those lunges?" 

And some want a pat n the back, they want to be told their actions and plans are brilliant. The "sixpack abs by Christmas!" guy is a good example of this. He knew it was ridiculous, and he knew there was no way he was going to come and train six days a week, he just wanted to dream for a little bit - and I popped his happy balloon. Now you know why the gym doesn't have me doing sales. 

In the end, they asked for your comments, so go ahead and give them - but don't be surprised when they're unhappy with your response. 

Unasked-for advice from PTs

Why don't more trainers interrupt people's workouts to tell them they're doing it wrong? There are many reasons. These are the Sunday Drive, the Stubborn Idiot, and the Lazy Trainer.

Sunday Drivers

Many people are working out not training. That is, they have no real goals. They don't want to lose 10kg, to run a marathon, to squat 200kg or whatever. They have some vague notion that it's good to "get fit, lose weight, tone up," even if they have absolutely no definition of what any of those words mean to them. Working out is an escape for them, a chance to stop thinking about their troubles. In the middle ages people would put on sackcloth and go and sit in a cave, nowadays people put on lycra and their iPod and get their sweat on striding along on the cross-trainer. 

Imagine you're going for a Sunday drive. You're cruising along on your way to the countryside or beach, and you stop at the traffic lights. The passenger door opens and a guy gets in. "Hi! I'm a driving instructor, I'm going to help you drive even better!" The guy's advice may be brilliant, he might be able to make you the best driver in the world, but "Damnit, I don't want to drive better, I just want to go for a Sunday drive!" 

That's how many people feel when a trainer interrupts their workout. They don't welcome the PT's advice that cruising along at 4km/hr reading Runner's World is not going to do anything for them, or that half-squats with the pad on the bar are even less useful than standing on an upside-down bosu ball doing medicine ball slams. 

It's not hard to spot the Sunday Drive members. They're the ones with their iPods jammed in their ears, the ones who never speak to a gym instructor except to complain about the music volume or the lack of hand sanitiser, who never make eye contact when you pass right in front of them. Their workout is unproductive but they don't care, they just want to get their sweat on for half an hour or so and then leave.

Stubborn Idiots

Some people actually do want a productive workout, however they're a Stubborn Idiot. This is most gym-goers. As I've noted before, around 2/3 of new gym members refuse the instruction they've actually paid for in their gym fees. Refusing instruction when you join a gym is like buying a car and insisting they empty the fuel tank before you drive it out of the lot.

Of the remaining 1/3 who seek out instruction, only around half follow it past the programme introduction session. Generally speaking, the women flee to the cross-trainer and group classes like cycle and circuit, and the men flee to bench press and curls. So not more than 1 in 6 gym members are following a programme given them by a professional fitness instructor. 

Thus, if a PT approaches a random gym member, there's a 5 in 6 chance that the person has already been offered guidance and rejected it. If they didn't accept it a month, a year or six years ago, why would they start now? They're a stubborn idiot. 

It's possible that they're rejecting instruction since they know so much already. However, consider this: in a single strength-focused gym in my city, the top 5 strongest women have squats of 120-135kg, bench press of 67.5-77.5kg, and deadlifts of 135-142.5kg. They are overall stronger than any adult male training on his own at the three gyms I've worked at, three gyms which between them had some 9,000 members. Plenty of guys benched more than that, a few had bigger squats or deadlifts, but taking all three lifts into consideration, those women were stronger. I would suggest that if 5 women in one gym can be stronger than any of 4,500 or so males in three gyms, then perhaps these males could benefit from some guidance. Like totally, bro. 

The stubborn idiot is quite discouraging in many ways. When I'm working, usually if the person is completely wasting their time then I leave them to it. As the gym opens in the morning people flood in, a guy walks in, grabs the 20kg fixed barbell and starts curling. This bloke is so far gone there's no hope for him. 

Another bloke walks into the power rack, puts the pad on the bar, puts a 20kg plate on each side, and then does some quarter-squats onto his toes with his knees collapsing in. He's doing a productive exercise badly, there's some hope. What I want to say is, "What the fuck are you doing?" but my manager told me there have been some complaints and I must stop. Instead I walk over, "Hi, I'm Kyle, I see you're working pretty hard. I could give you a couple of tips to make it even more effective." They nod and say "sure" and ten minutes later they have a good barbell high bar back squat with 40kg. Two days later I see them again, pad on the bar doing quarter-squats, but with 80kg this time. 

Stubborn idiot. 

Sometimes people will claim, "Well, I would listen to PT advice, but I've met so many useless PTs I don't trust them at all." Maybe. Certainly most PTs are less than useful. But maybe you're just a Stubborn Idiot. Remember that part of incompetence is being sure you're competent - very competent. 

It should be added that some Stubborn Idiots will actually tell you to fuck off. As I'm not the manager, all I can do is leave them to it. Were I the manager, I'd throw them out. See above where I mention that I'm not involved in selling memberships. 

Lazy Trainers

Around 1 in 6 gym members are genuinely willing to accept instruction and will more or less follow it. We call them People Who Get Results, or Active Members. An active trainer knows how to spot these people. They talk to other gym members and staff, they may have a workout journal or programme card (pages torn from Muscle & Fitness or Oxygen magazine don't count), they make some effort to progress the resistance on their machines or free weights, or speed on the treadmill or whatever. 

A Lazy Trainer is unable or unwilling to spot these Active Members. The Lazy Trainer unable to spot them is often simply too lazy to learn these basic communication skills or anything else, they don't know how to coach and have never really tried. For example, PTs are required to do continuing education, you can do genuinely useful courses or some cheap and easy multiple-choice online test bullshit just to get the points.

Mostly it's the latter. For example, let's imagine that a PT certified as a kettlebell coach brings their kettlebells to the gym and invites other trainers to use them, offering them free coaching in the lifts. Half the PTs use them regularly in their sessions, none seek coaching from the certified coach. 12 months later, there's still only 1 certified kettlebell coach in the gym. This example is entirely fictional, of course, but if true would be a good example of a bunch of lazy trainers. 

But many Lazy Trainers were previously active (even if not good, at least active) trainers, after ten or more years in the gym dealing with Stubborn Idiots and the like, they've just had enough. Clueless or cynical and jaded, the result is the same: the Active Members are ignored. 

Don't be too quick to assume the trainers are all lazy, though. Probably around 1 in 4 trainers are active, the other 3 are lazy. Being generous, only 1 in 4 are truly lazy, and 2 in 4 are just passive - if someone asks for help they'll get it, but the trainer won't be out on the gym floor trying to find people to help. But let's be less generous and just say that 3 in 4 trainers are lazy.

A typical gym with 2,000-5,000 members will have 6-20 trainers, thus 1-5 active PTs. That's 1-5 active PTs to deal with 2,000-5,000 members. Or 1-5 to deal with the 300-1,000 active members who might actually listen to them. There's simply not enough time to deal with them all. 

Unasked-for advice from gym members

Most of what was said about PTs offering unasked-for advice goes double for gym members. People tend to respect you when you're in uniform, just ask Stanley Milgram. If you show up wearing a polo shirt with your name on it and "personal trainer" on the back, people will at least listen to you for a minute or so, usually. If you're just another chick in lycra or guy in a tank top, if you're hot they'll pretend to listen to you, if not then you're out of luck. 

Sounds depressing...

It often is. For the record, I don't claim to be a great trainer, but I do claim to be an active trainer. I'll be out on the gym floor talking to people, getting told to fuck off, shaking my head sadly at the stubborn idiots ignoring my advice, tuning up barbell squats and so on. 

I take my happiness and fulfillment at work from those 1 in 6 active members who actually listen and act, and those 1 in 30 who become PT clients. Because in a gym with 5,000 members, that's 800 or so lives being changed for the better, and 150 or so lives being radically changed for the better. There are 4,000 people wasting their money and time and spinning their wheels, but that's life. Each year I do around 100 health consultations and do PT with 20-30 different people. That's 70-80 people whose lives I helped be better. Not too shabby, I say. 

So go ahead, correct. But choose your targets carefully, and don't expect them to follow it all to the letter, take it as a bonus when they do. 

"I want sixpack abs by Christmas"

In physical training as in so many other things, it's important to have a long-term view. The short-term view is more popular but less useful.

A guy came into the gym recently, in his 40s, about 10kg of extra fat on him, mostly his belly. He was only half-joking when he said, "I'd like sixpack abs by Christmas." 

"14 months? Sure, you can do that."

"No, this Christmas." 

"It won't happen."

He looked genuinely surprised.

"It took you longer than ten weeks to get the belly, why would it be quicker to get rid of it? But you can have a significant change in your physique in ten weeks, if you eat and work very hard. Keep that up and you could have sixpack abs the Christmas after that." 

I suggested personal training - not with me, I'm full up, but another trainer could take him on. If someone has ambitious goals or big obstacles to their goals - run a marathon in six months, shoulder reconstruction operation, etc - then PT will be useful.

He said he couldn't do PT because of his business, he couldn't commit to a regular time. But he also said he was going to come to the gym and work out six days a week. I was a bit confused by this. "I can't commit... I will come every day." 

After doing a few hundred initial consultations with new gym members, I can say that generally the ones who say they'll come 5-6 days a week won't come at all. They usually don't even show up for their programme introduction the following week. Those who say they'll come 2-3 times, they're much more likely to actually do it. 

If people have the mindset of doing big things in a short time, they usually do nothing at all. If they have a longer view, they usually do big things. Most top athletes have at least ten years' experience at that sport. Most top bodybuilders have been doing it for a decade or more. Someone with a PhD has been studying their topic for at least ten years. Being a parent or buying a home is an even longer commitment. 

This is an age where electricity is available at the flick of a switch, water at the turn of a tap, information at the click of a mouse, and communication with someone on the other side of the planet at the press of a button, and where if those things do not happen as we want them to within FIVE SECONDS we become distressed or angry. It is thus natural for us to be startled to realise that if it took us two years to get a large gut, it'll take us more than two months to lose it.

But there it is. Consistent effort over time gets results. I've previously noted that when I started training I focused on the effort part, going hard, but now I think the consistent part is more important. I've always taken for granted the over time part, but apparently many people need this part pointed out to them. 

You will not get sixpack abs by Christmas, and if you think you will, you will probably never get sixpack abs, since your disappointment in your unrealistic expectations will make you give up and go back to beers and Bathurst. Nor will you rehabilitate your reconstructed knee, squat 200kg, or run a marathon in ten weeks. But maybe you can do it in a few years, if you stick to it. 

Patience, Grasshopper. 

Circuit training

As outlined in the excellent book Fit, the basic physical qualities are strength, endurance and mobility. Mostly I'm interested in strength and mobility, since most Westerners spend their lives sitting on their bums, their strength and mobility are overall atrocious, so improving these has a big effect on how a person looks, feels and performs, endurance not so much. Anyway endurance is trendy so plenty of other trainers deal with that, I'm happy to leave them to it.

But this doesn't mean I just whack a barbell on everyone's back the first day they come in. Often I'll begin with circuit training. This surprises many young trainers who've always been strong. "What's the point?"

Remember that each type of training has a primary benefit, but other secondary benefits. Aerobics will build your strength, low-reps high-weights will build your endurance, and so on. For example, if I get a deconditioned woman of 60-70kg doing barbell back squats, she might struggle to squat 30kg. If she has years of aerobics behind her, she might manage 50kg. That 20kg difference was the strength she got from aerobics; she wasn't trying to get stronger, and the improvement of her VO2max would be much greater than the improvement in her strength, but it did nonethless improve her strength. 

So circuit-style training will improve both their strength and endurance. Remember that our neat divisions of strength, cardio, muscular endurance, etc aren't really relevant to a deconditioned beginner. They're just shit at everything, they need to do something. If I can do 10 pushups with two 20kg plates on my back, or 60 pushups without them, you can assess my relative muscular strength and muscular endurance. If I can only do 3 knee pushups, the distinction is simply irrelevant. Whether I do pushups or bench press, high or low reps, this doesn't matter - I am going to improve all aspects of fitness. 

Commonly I will have people go to the Smith machine and put the bar at knee height. Away from the bar they do goblet squats, then some pushups, then under the bar to do inverted rows, with no break between the three. A short rest and then back to it. The progressions and regressions of each exercise ought to be obvious. This is "circuit" training, but it will improve their strength. 

Or we could do the same in the squat rack, they could do some heavy squats, then inverted rows under the racked bar (most women beginners will be unable to do inverted rows from the horizontal with their legs straight out, from the bar at chest height will be easy and they can do 10-20 reps), then some pushups. So this is a bit of strength work in the legs and postural muscles from the squat, then more muscular endurance with rows and pushups. 

I'll also have people do kettlebell work. A minute each of swings, rows, squats and presses, then a minute's rest, then go again. This will improve both their strength and endurance. 

Women especially tend to enjoy circuit-style training, they like to be kept moving and puffing a bit. That's another reason for aimless sessions. This dripping with sweat puffing puking tends not to happen with low-reps high-weight until the person gets quite strong. Even a weak person is not going to puff from squatting the 20kg bar, either they lift it or they don't, no puffing involved. Get them doing a minute of goblet squats and they'll be puffing, though - and still improving their strength.

Clients and gym members will sometimes question the PT's training methods, and so they should. A trainer should have a reason for every exercise, every set and rep in the session, and be able to explain where they expect things to progress to. Explaining to them the reasons for it all tends to make them more co-operative. I find phrases like "We train movements, not muscles - do you have to sit down and stand up? Then you need to squat -" are quite persuasive.

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.