#derekweida comes along and trains to deadlift 500lbs whilst missing one of his legs: https://www.instagram.com/p/BuuJO_-n57L/ Throughout my career I’ve handled a lot of concerns. People deal with pain. And it sucks. As much as we can, we organize movement patterns to work around the pain, address the pain, strengthen structures to mitigate future pain. As I reflect over the thousands and thousands of clients I’ve known or directly coached, and the thousands of worries many had about knee stress during activity, not to make light of their plight… but COME ON. This man was shot sideways through the knee while serving our country, suffered through futile attempts to save the leg for 18 months, ultimately losing it. Now, he does this. And HIM doing THIS makes makes even the tough guys look… well… not that impressive.
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Simply being awake ages you and damages the brain and body. Sleep effectively reverses some of that: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08806-w The number one thing you can do for health and fitness is take a look at your rest, recovery and sleep patterns, and how to optimize them. Oftentimes, in a first appointment, people look at me puzzled when I’m more interested in this (I.e. - stress management) than food or training. But it’s no small thing. In a way, it’s everything. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu8kqCenIih/
Click the link above and listen closely to the greatest bodybuilder of all time showcase ZERO knowledge of biomechanics and exercise physiology with regard to the back. A one arm dumbbell row, kneeling on a bench, with a two-inch-thick weight belt cinching your entire spine and torso into absolute immobility, using legs for momentum and a brief tug of the arm, is working LOW BACK? It is decidedly NOT working low back. The low back is completely cut out. Does anyone ever claim to be training elbows while wearing a restrictive/constrictive compression sleeve on the elbow which completely prevents the elbow from moving at all? When your leg is in a cast, you’re target training legs? I have always loved Ronnie Coleman. He was and is one of the hardest working athletes of all time. His battle cries and quotes are awesome. He slaved for his sport. His work ethic and attitude are admirable. Did he succeed because of his scientific knowledge? Clearly no. Consistent hard work makes up for a lot. Survivor bias - it’s a phenomenon when we look at an example who survived terrible and ineffective methods, and we accidentally attribute their success to the flawed method. Think most testimonials, most popular fitness franchises, most infomercials, most businesses, almost all top athletes, and all descendants after a first generation wealth grab. We don’t see the 99% of people who used the same technique only to get injured or make no progress. While we are under the spell of survivor bias, we are only observing the 1% or less of survivors, and our brains get confused and think we’re seeing evidence of a good program. We’re not. It’s bad programming. And it is self-sabotage to model your approach after survivors. They survived IN SPITE OF bad technique or nonsense strategy. There is a reason we created sciences: so we could unshackle ourselves from personal fictions and biases. • Attention to details is great.
But everything has details, including impertinent and unimportant matters. So, although paying attention to details is nice, paying attention to the wrong details is wasted. In some debates about intellect, there’s a theory that what we often call IQ (which has many different measures) is, in fact, a skill at rapidly ignoring unimportant details. The more one can develop a skill at ignoring and paying NO attention to impertinent and unimportant details, the more they tend to rank higher on IQ and score higher on standardized tests. In fact, standardized tests work hard to create “distractors,” well-crafted answers that are dead wrong but APPEAR to be right. Higher “intellect” people recognize distractors faster, or more accurately, they quickly turn the mind from focusing on distractors at all. I see this in the battle for fitness and wellness. People have room to develop a skill where they ignore inconsequential details. There are many factors which will improve our health. And being a “details-oriented” person can actually mean that you are burning up precious energy on distractors instead of the very factors which will improve your life. Pay attention, but not to every detail. Because many of those haven’t anything to offer you for improvement in being stronger, more active, or healthier. Listen closely. The need to remain consistent with how we view ourselves is so great that it will determine our successes and failures.
I would add more. But he says it all in the complete talk: https://www.facebook.com/Elev8Wellness/videos/284885705761734/UzpfSTEwMDAwOTk2OTYwMjg4ODo4MDM2MjQ2MzY2NDY1MTY/?id=100009969602888 When given a choice between feeling motivated or feeling unmotivated, I choose the latter, because of three things:
1. Motivation WILL NOT last anyway 2. Action must supersede feelings 3. Anyone can keep his word when it’s easy; I want to be known to keep my word when it’s difficult 1.) Start where you are; do what you can do. 2.) Forget comparisons. 3.) Live to fight another day. 4.) Whenever hard times come, see 1-3. We humans are consistently in a battle against our baser selves. Our better selves need substance. But our baser selves want merely showmanship and spectacle. Am I walking away from an experience more and more empowered, and genuinely changing the way I act? Or do I walk away simply entertained, and still behaving the same? The honest answers to these will provide good feedback about whether you are winning the battle for substance or if you are losing the battle to showmanship. I don't dismiss the power of entertainment or motivational presenters. But I do see a trend that among those who follow-through the least, they gravitate toward that entertainment and motivational speaker the most. Get your entertainment. That's fine. Pick your favorite speaker. That's great. Now... ACT. DO. Execute. How many more lessons should I take in a foreign language before I’ve achieved total mastery and never need to practice again to retain complete fluency?
How many more breaths of air do I need to take until I can live just fine without breathing any more? How many more bad days or challenges do I have to face until they’re over? When can I discontinue strength training/maintain/stop taking care of myself? I can’t wait for retirement. I can’t wait for... I don’t like people who... I like people who... Objects. We’ve turned pursuits, skills, growth, and even people into objects. People aren’t objects or even nearly products. They are processes. As if they don’t and can’t change, we place them neatly into the organizational drawers in our minds. Then all pursuits, skills, and growth we talk about like we’ll just go out and buy them and they’ll sit on our mantles. DONE. Right? We think we will ARRIVE. We think we can get to a pinnacle, and there will be nothing more to do. We will have filed each type of person away. And we’ll sit back and look at our trophy case of pursuits. Newsflash: you never arrive. There is no “type” of person. The mantle is empty forever. There is no trophy case. The joys and difficulties of life aren’t products. They’re moments within a journey flowing from one into another. They process. It is all in process. It’s a journey. Stop objectifying all of life’s journey. The various strongman carries, especially single-arm, have a lot of great benefit across the spectrum of athletic ability.
If you’re wondering where to place carries in your program, wonder no longer. Just have kids, and you’ll be doing them 7 days a week. I always get multiple sets in on my off days, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Want to ensure sufficient distance? Any destination with full parking will do. Usually I don’t film my carries, because I prefer to perform them with both hands overfilled with other items like too many Target or grocery bags. That way I can get simultaneous grip work and muscle-confusion coordination training. video here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BuqmObFnPos/ |
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