PUSH IT UNTIL IT BREAKS

In my time training, I’ve observed statements from people that always tend to fascinate me.  In this instance, I’m speaking primarily of those statements relating to being pushed to the limit.  People will talk about how, during their training, they felt like they were going to puke, or that their limbs were going to break, or their ACL was going to snap, etc etc.  Invariably, whenever I ask these people when the last time they’ve vomited during training, or broke a limb, or ruptured a ligament, the answer is always the same; they’ve never done it.  So how the hell do they know that’s what they were feeling?  How the hell do they KNOW that they were at their limit?  What if they had more, MUCH more, to give?  The only way to know for sure is to push it until it breaks.

Well this won't take long

“It sounds like you WANT people to get injured!”  People say that to me in such an accusatory tone.  Yes; I DO want people to get injured, mainly because I want people to get enlightened, and there is no better teacher.  You simply cannot grasp this sensation through word of mouth or books and articles; this is experience, and it’s PERSONAL experience for how your body operates.  You simply can’t know your limits without having reached them, and without knowing them you’ll never know when you’re actually approaching them in your training.  You’ll never know your true tolerance for punishment or true potential until you’ve overreached, surpassed it and suffered the consequences.

“But my progress?!” you cry.  Surely an uninjured athlete will make more progress overtime compared to an athlete who receives an injury, no?  What silly logic!  If I take my formula 1 racer and crash it into the wall at 160 mph after a year of driving, I’ll still have it rebuilt and back on the road before you reach where I was in your little red wagon.  Bizarre metaphors?  But of course, but surely you follow.  The person constantly pushing to the limit is going to make more progress than the trainee who does not know where that limit is and plays so far on the safe side that they spin their wheels.  Because guess what; you can actually GO to 90% of your max when you know what your max is, but when you don’t, your “90%” may actually be 80, or 70, or 40.  While progressing at the rate that you think is “optimal”, you may in fact be barely treading water.

Pictured: Most people performing "HIIT"

And UNTIL you actually break, you’ll be progressing as fast and as hard as you possibly can be.  AND you’ll find that it’s really hard to actually reach your limit.  Sure, it’s there, but it’s buried DEEP.  Your body doesn’t like going there, and your brain has a bunch of halting mechanisms in place to prevent you from reaching it, which means you’ll have AMPLE time to keep training and chugging along before you really truly find your breaking point.  And all the way through you’ll be making better and better progress, further and further separating yourself from the pack.  And when you get hurt?  You’ll now be so familiar with your limits that recovery will be a breeze.  You’ll know exactly what you are capable of and for how long, and you’ll know how to push yourself back to where you need to be, and you’ll bounce back so much faster that you’ll STILL be lapping those folks taking it safe and playing the long game.

And knowing your limits is just one of the many benefits you’ll derive from this practice; think too of how many useful training tools you will be exposed to in your quest to find out where your breaking point is.  You’ll get to know how to effectively employ intensity modifiers ala the HIT Jedis, how to run 2 a days to maximal benefit, how to effectively train everyday, how to tack conditioning onto lifting, etc etc.  All those taboo ideas that are “best left to people who know what they are doing” are suddenly open to YOU, because you KNOW what you are doing.  You have been there and you have done that!  Why do you need someone’s permission when you can just be an experienced traveler on the path who, en route to their own self-destruction, personally observed and experienced concepts that others only whispered about?

"That can't POSSIBLY work", yeah, until it does

And in all this we’ve not even begun to address the benefit of knowing your limits regarding lifting technique.  There is an epidemic of young lifters believing that the slightest rounding of the back in any lift is to guarantee a lifetime of paralysis, and in turn these trainees only perform lifts with the strictest of form…and a total lack of effort.  Form deviates under extreme circumstances, and the trainee that has reached his limits will KNOW the sensation of doing so such that, when they are actually approaching said limits, they know when to shut it down. I am known for my awful form on most lifts, but even I have my limits.  In my 4th strongman competition, while performing a last man standing tire deadlift, I had successfully performed a clean rep with 680lbs, but upon my attempt at 720lbs I felt the distinct sensation of my vertebrae separating and knew at that moment to shut it down.  I have felt pain during deadlifts, I have felt pressure, I have felt things pop and snap and click and grind, but this very sensation was something so completely alien and distinct that I could recognize it right away for the legitimate warning that it was and live to fight another day.  How many others have been doing the same for far less significant concerns?

You have limits: now go find them.

BULLET POINTS YET AGAIN

- So the latest drama in strongman is that Roizo grip shirts have been banned from USS Nationals.  For those of you unfamiliar with what a gripshirt is, it's a t-shirt with a sticky design on the front that makes loading stones easier in strongman, since now the stone won't slide down your shirt.  Apparently the owner of the company has been taking people’s money and not delivering the product, so the chair of USS made it such that his gear was no longer allowed.  Basically an attempt to force his hand.  And people of course got upset and said “We just became powerlifting; now only certain companies are banned, just like the IPF”.  Newsflash; we became powerlifting once someone made a grip shirt.

- And on the above, people don’t seem to understand the power of the dollar.  It’s why the shirt ban happened in the first place; to take money away from the guy selling grip shirts.  And hey, guess what; you get to vote with your dollar too.  If you don’t like the USS decision, don’t compete in their contest.  What?!  Perish the thought.

- Let me rant even more; “It’s unfair; these shirts aren’t cheap!  Now I have to buy another.”  So here’s the thing; the Roizo one cost like $60, which yeah, isn’t cheap…but f**k me if you’re buying it you GOTTA have some extra cash laying around.  Look, I have a home gym that probably has like $4,000 in it at this point, and even I don’t have a damn grip shirt because I can’t justify the cost of it.  If I find an extra $60 laying around, it’s going to go to something else instead, because I’m going to get more out of my money that way.  If you’re at the point that you’ve bought a grip shirt, you either have such an excess of funds that it’s a drop in the bucket, you already OWN everything else you’ve ever needed to own so that money wasn’t going to go anywhere else, OR you made a poor financial decision to start with and should probably just get better instead of trying to fix the problem by throwing money at it.  Heck, I got a $5 Iron Maiden tanktop at Hot Topic that has a big graphic on it that is pretty sticky; try that.

...that guy COULD possibly be a strongman competitor

- Naming exercises after lifters was cute until we started naming exercises after lifters that the lifters themselves never actually used.  The Z-press anyone?

- Bought and read Jon Anderson’s “Deep Water” book.  It’s only $10 for a kindle copy, and that’s about the right price.  A LOT of the book is basically the co-author hero worshipping Jon, but the routine in there looks solid, the diet is stupid easy to follow, and some of the stories of Jon’s training are pretty awesome. Well worth adding to your library.

- After buying an Airdyne, I have found my favorite use for it is to fill up the remainder of the minute on EMOM workouts with the airdyne.  Great “active rest” cardio.

- On the above, I’ve been coming up with some brutal EMOM workouts.  I’ve started combining events and conditioning by doing a circuit of 2-4 events, doing a new event each minute and airdyne in between.  Something like, stones for doubles on minute 1, powerstairs for triples minute 2, and sandbag carry for minute 3.  I’ll run it for a half hour and just be absolutely brutalized by the time it is done.

I speed up the video so you can't hear the dry heaving

- Still no complaints with my Titan products; once they arrive that is.  Definitely get your money’s worth, just have to be willing to go the extra mile when it comes to talking with the company.

- I am starting to think “skinny-fat” can’t be solved because it’s an unnatural state of being brought on by an unnatural state of living and eating.  Or perhaps that means the only solution is also an unnatural one?

- What a bizarre insult to say that someone bigger and stronger than you trains, lives and eats sub-optimally.  Isn’t this only an accusation of yourself for not investing enough effort?

- One of youtube’s suggested videos for me was some 700k viewed video from AlphaDestiny.  Who?

- And people will read the above and say to me “Well who the hell are you?”  I’m also no one.  That’s the point.  No one should listen to me when you can listen to a million more qualified people out there.  But I’ll say the difference between me and other nobodies is that I’m nobody for free.

Notice how these people get paid to make videos; not to lift?

- “I only have access to”, “I don’t have access to”, man, I had no idea so many people were posting online from prison.  Wait, that can’t be true, because inmates are supposed to be pretty jacked.

- Everyone is in a race to determine what can’t work, and so few seem interesting in figuring out what can.

- “Sumo is a natural pulling position; just look at strongman with stones” He genius, how the hell am I going to pick up a stone if my shins are in the way?  And notice how those same strongman competitors have their feet as closer together as they possibly can while allowing the stone between their feet?

- And no, that’s not a dig on sumo; that’s a dig on being stupid.  If you like sumo, quit justifying it and just do it.

- I immediately doubt anyone that tells me they can calculate training volume as a number.

Notice how THIS was the big strong dude in the movie?

- With everyone so concerned about overtraining, I’m surprised HIT hasn’t made a big comeback.  Probably because you still have to work hard with HIT.

- My time with 5/3/1 really seems to have laid down a solid foundation to tap into with more intense training.  I’ve since transitioned to some sort of bastard child of my own creation, and I’m seeing some crazy growth in short order.  However, my current training approach seems far less sustainable, while 5/3/1 felt like something that could be run indefinitely.  Being a little older has given me the maturity to appreciate both for what they are.

- The people who care the most about bodybuilding aren’t bodybuilders, about powerlifting aren’t powerlifters, about strongman aren’t strongman, and EVERY non-crossfitter seems to have an opinion on crossfit. 

- “I can’t figure out what to do for conditioning”, no, you can’t figure out a way to do it without it sucking.  Quit trying to outthink the pain and just go suffer it.

THE DAY TO DAY

Had a question from a reader (Jen) in my last post that asked the following

“I'm not sure if you've done a post exclusively on this before but I'd be really interested in your thoughts on rest and recovery between workouts/working out while still suffering the effects of the previous workout or non gym based fatigue and managing your fatigue and soreness in every day life.”

I've heard good things about ice baths...close enough?

My response will be predictable on this one, but I can at least elaborate and illuminate.  In case anyone is living under any sort of delusion, allow me to be clear; I am always in pain.  Like many athletes, if I woke up one day and something didn’t hurt, I’d assume I had died.  My left knee is the most usual culprit, as even after my surgery I still have to deal with stiffness and swelling, but if it’s not my knee it’ll be my shoulder, back, hamstrings, elbows, or something else.  Pain will migrate through my body, and it’s basically a question of riding it out in one spot before getting “relief” from it by shifting it to another.

However, don’t interpret this to mean that I am in daily agony.  This is just pain, and since it is a daily occurrence, it has reset my baseline perception of normalcy such that being in pain FEELS like what being normal is.  One of my best examples of this was that, after my knee surgery, I got off my pain meds in 3 days.  I started with only have the recommended dosage, and quickly weened myself off from there, mainly because pain meds scare me.  After those 3 days, I THOUGHT I was painfree, and then 2 weeks later I realized that I was FINALLY not feeling my surgical pain.  In 3 days, I had reset myself to a level of “normal pain”, because it had been way too long since I had experienced a painfree baseline.

You mean this isn't normal?

I am rarely injured, just beat up, and in turn this is a bit of my management strategy for this fatigue and soreness; it’s simply a state of being for me.  I’ve learned how to function while being beat up and sore, because it’s how I always am.  It DOES take a while to come to terms with that, but through repetition it becomes easier.  I used to only want to train when I felt good.  If I was too sore or beat up from previous training, I’d tell myself that it would be better for me to rest an extra day and come back feeling good.  After a while, I discovered that I was spending a lot of time NOT training.  I decided to really look into the matter, and come to the conclusion that a whole bunch of OK workouts were going to outpace a handful of super awesome workouts, and it was ultimately in my best interest to train even when I felt beat up rather than wait for the perfect day for training.  Consequently, I got a lot bigger and stronger once I embraced that.

In addition, many times training IS the solution for pain.  I followed a training cycle for a long time that involved me ending the training week with the dumbest squat workout I could come up with that day.  Dropsets mixed with rest pause was usually a big winner.  I’d walk with a limp until about Thursday each week, and in many cases my hamstrings were too tight to do any more productive squatting until that time, which really put a damper on things considering my squat day was Tuesday.  I eventually learned that, instead of trying to rest the pain away, I had to train it away.  Feeder workouts, which is to say lightweight squats with a focus on getting blood flowing through my legs and prowler work (or any sort of non-eccentric leg work) would have me recovered enough to train again by Tues or Weds, and after that training session the pain in my legs would be completely eliminated.

Yeah, walking normally after this wasn't happening

Regarding non-gym based fatigue, it’s another instance of constant exposure building tolerance.  Much like my “practice misery” blogpost, I’ve spent  lot of time trying to train under worse and worse conditions while doing my best to maintain or improve my strength, operating under the premise that, if I can STAY strong while I’m fatigued, I’ll be even stronger when I’m fresh.  The issue people run into with this approach is that they immediately freak out at the first sign of a strength dip and decide to never train while fatigued ever again because they believe you need to always lift the absolute most possible highest weight you can handle at any given time or you’re “losing gains”.  Bullcrap.  If that was true, things like rest pause, stripsets, giantsets, short rest periods, etc wouldn’t work.  I find the most significant variable is a maintained rate of exertion irrespective of conditions surrounding it.  If I push myself as hard as possible while fatigued, I’m going to get as great a growth as I did while pushing myself while fresh.

Life is FULL of opportunities to give this a practice.  You can do it while sleeping less, or you can do it after a long hard day, or you can do it by training too many days in a row (GASP, but don’t you HAVE to take a day off between workouts?), etc.  I’ve done it while recovering from surgery or after being discharged from the hospital or after some minor surgery, mainly because I’m really stupid.  With enough practice, you learn how to eventually zombie through it all, and then, after enough zombie-ing, you learn how to actually thrive under these circumstances.  You’ll learn how to stumble up to the bar, see double when you look down to set your feet, focus as hard as you can on not vomiting as you grab the bar, knock out a strong set of deads, then put the bar down and headspin away to rest between sets. 

*Phew* only 2 more sets

Probably not the most helpful answer, but it’s what works for me.  Keep sucking it up until you can’t.