So its been a while since I posted, but I wanted to start a series of posts regarding what athletes should be doing during your off-season. Instead of doing more "base training" which is essentially spinning your wheels, and going no where fast, commit to working at things you suck at. For endurance athletes, that usually means 2 things - strength and mobility. For functional fitness athletes, it can mean endurance, mobility, or any of the more technical gymnastics movements. The key is to take a no-bullshit assessment of yourself, what you've done, and where you want to go. For the purposes of this post, I'm speaking to the endurance athletes out there. For a reference point, I'm going to use the classes I teach at INTENT as an example.
As most of you know, we offer 2 types of
strength classes -
1. Strength and mobility - focus is on a lift, auxiliary work that supports the lift and mobility work to provide you an opportunity to find out what's tight, and how to make changes to the sticky tissue. The mobility is something that you can take home and continue to do as you deem fit.
2. Functional Strength - focus is on
performing a number of movements at intensity - think 90% of max effort and
harder. The purpose is to get your heart rate up and work to achieve EPOC - a
fancy term for calorie burning post exercise. Studies have shown that when you
train at least 12-24 minutes at 85-95% of your max HR, you will continue to
burn calories up to 32 hours post exercise.
Now, the question is, how do you get the
most out of either class? The first step is not what you would expect. It
involves 1 of 2 things - Ego and fear, and how you need to overcome them to get
a real benefit from classes. Understand that both of these things give you a
ceiling, they are your limiters. They are preventing you from improving. And
the more you rely on them, the more often you will hit your ceiling and come
crashing back down.
Let's start with Ego. I know we have said
it as coaches, but its important to reiterate here. When you come to INTENT,
before you cross the threshold of the gym door, you need to check your ego.
That means, you need to keep your eyes on your own paper when you are in class.
If you are new to strength, guess what? We will be coaching you more than
someone who has done it for a while. We will want you to do modifications, use
lighter weight. If you are new to strength, odds are, you will fail at first.
You'll probably fail a lot. Get over it. To get better at anything, you need to
understand what it means to fail in order to improve. So fail. I fail
constantly. Its part of life. You aren't going to hit a home run every time.
Get past yourself, get past your bullshit, take the coach's advice, and get
after it. Its for your benefit, not the coach, not anyone else. You. So if you
aren't lifting the most, or moving the fastest through workouts, that's fine.
Get the movements down, and practice, practice, practice. Be humble. It will
pay off.
Now fear. This is a bit trickier because
its actually a few things happening at once. First, the notion that strength
training is going to make you big is ridiculous. You would need to stop
endurance training altogether, lift 2-3 hours a day, 6-7 days a week and
consume close to 5000 calories a day. As someone who has friends who are power
lifters, I know what I'm talking about here. So stop with that.
Second, the fear of "getting
hurt" is really code for "I don't want to be sore". If you fear
getting hurt, that's an indictment on the coaching staff. And folks let me
assure you, we are all looking out for your best interest. We aren't there to
let you get hurt. We air on the side of caution. Which is why I know a lot of you
tend to go lighter in lifts or weighted movements because you either think you
are going to get big or you don't like the idea of being sore. This is what
blows my mind - you don't mind being sore after swimming, biking or running,
but you don't want to be sore from lifting. Wow. Have you considered that maybe
you would feel better if you did strength and conditioning that you would move
better in your sport? By understanding the need to squat heavy at certain times
you would learn how to engage your core, develop a stronger posterior chain,
learn to fire your glutes and hamstrings, as well as find out if your knees,
ankles and hip flexors are weak and/or tight? That one movement provides that
much information. But if you aren't going to move weight, its like doing junk
mileage, after a few weeks, it provides little benefit.
And please, please don't use the
"well I'm strong for a triathlete/runner/cyclist". I'm not even sure
what that means. Better yet, for those who use that excuse, do you know what it
means? Is there a correlation that you can point to that tracks your version of
"strong" to performance in your sport? Odds are, there aren't any.
The point is, if you allow either of these
things to run your attitude, you won't reap the benefits of the classes we
offer. Or any strength training for that matter. So figure out what is running
you - fear or ego. Own it, then commit to getting past it. Otherwise, your built in limiters, your self-created ceiling will prevent you from improving. You will constantly run into them, and get knocked back down. Be the wolf. Work your weaknesses until they become your friends, and then destroy them. If you don't, you lose the right to complain. Its on you.Stay tuned for the next installment.
Stay strong,
Guy
