How To Lift

Today, I am NOT referencing technique, activation, biomechanics, posture, form, etc. 

I am talking about FRAME OF MIND with regard to possible/impossible. 

The most rapid progress I ever made in deadlift was a time I worked out with about 5 guys who all had about the same build as mine but routinely picked up another 100lbs than I, at LEAST. As far as I know, all of us were without super supplements at the time. I have no ethical or moral concerns about PEDs. I just am referencing that we were all playing by the same rules. So I couldn’t pin my deadlift weakness on the typical scapegoats. I was slightly taller than these guys. They logged a few more years of lifting than I. That was about it.

Now, I learned nothing new in technique during that time, nothing new about set up or bracing. In fact, a few guys had bad bracing. But what I did learn was that the weight on the bar wasn’t IMPOSSIBLE. That visceral realization put another 100lbs on an already decent deadlift in an advanced lifter.

I cannot stress this enough. Find a way to make the seemingly impossible into the evidently possible or even probable. That’s the best part of my job, frankly. When I have someone whose idea of weights is 5lb dumbbells, and we get them to squat or deadlift 100 to 400lbs, WHO they are changes. THAT is how to lift. Lift in a way that changes WHO you are. Simply lifting weights is great. But when lifting offers you a revision of self is when you “get it.” When you redefine yourself as “I am the person for whom no physical task is impossible,” there is deep purpose in training. Seek that. Yearn for that. Reach that. Then any load to be lifted in life is not only within reach, but it is already in hand.