GO BEFORE YOU ARE READY

Credit goes to u/timmanser2 over on reddit for pitching this idea to me, because I’ve written AROUND it a bunch of times but never really just sat down and crunched it out.  Like most of my good ideas, I didn’t come up with this one.  Typically, I’ll THINK I did only to discover that I read about it in a Dan John article earlier, but I blatantly know I stole this idea from Jon Andersen.  “Go before you are ready” just perfectly sums up how I approach my training these days.  It’s all about never getting comfortable during the training session, never being fully recovered, and training the body to still operate on demand even when it’s sucking wind.  One of my most recent conditioning workouts perfectly captured this

 

 

There’s a fun backstory to this.  On this particular afternoon, training was the LAST thing I wanted to do.  I had to spend 5 minutes just convincing myself to get changed into my gym clothes, which meant I couldn’t do my normal 20 minute “Kindergarten” WOD (PBJs and ABCs…it’s a cute name), so, instead, I decided I was just going to combine two of my daily conditioning sessions into 1: 5 minutes of ABCs followed immediately by TABEARTA.

 

It was the hardest 10 minute workout of my life.  And when I shared it online, people commented on how ridiculous it was that I went for ABCs until the very last possible second before I switched over to the TABEARTAs.  In truth, I was upset at how long I spent setting up for those bear complexes, but the point remains: it’s all about not having any rests and recovery whatsoever.  We go before we are ready. 

These dudes, instead, would go before the OTHER side was ready

 

It's similar with my Monument to Non-Existence workouts

 

 

I’ve had a few people try to replicate this workout, and most of them screw up the most significant part of it: the transitions!  The only way this workout “works” is if you go STRAIGHT from the front squat into the squat, and straight from the squat into the SSB.  Sure, after I get in that first rep on the next movement I’ll let myself “rest” with the bar on me, but this is “go before you’re ready” summed up.

 

The body is VERY greedy and miserly.  It takes and it takes and it takes, and it does not give unless forced.  So if you give, it takes.  If you give it rest, it will take it.  The more you give, the more it will take.  This is how stories of dudes taking 15 minutes of rest between sets happens.  They conditioned the body to accept this rest as “the standard”, and that body now refuses to be ready to perform UNTIL it gets it’s demanded 15 minutes of rest.  And if you wait until you are ready, you are playing the body’s game. 

I am the greetest!

 

That’s why we go BEFORE we are ready.  The body says “Hey, we’re not ready yet, we don’t feel good” and we say “Too bad: it’s time”…and suddenly, the body performs.  We discover it was a liar.  That it had the potential all along: it simply didn’t WANT to perform.  In that 10 minute workout I posted, when I run TABEARTA on it’s own, 3 complexes per round tends to be “enough”.  This time around, running it post 5 minutes of ABCs, I STILL managed 3 per round, simply because my body had a LOT more in it than it wanted to admit.  And yes, you can see firsthand how my body protests: my lungs are short, I am folded over, I am hurting, but as soon as that timer goes off, I can walk up, smash out 3 rounds, and go back to dying.  I am going BEFORE I am ready…and I am performing.

 

We are too focused on perfect execution under ideal conditions.  There is a time and a place for that: PRACTICE.  When our goal is skill development, absolutely: we should endeavor for perfect practice to groove ideal reps so that our body “learns” how to move correctly.  The issue is: trainees want to treat EVERY session like it’s a practice session.  Which I attribute this to being a product of a generation of “inside kids” (I love that term) that never played a sport before.  In sports practice, we had times that were dedicated to skill work, time that was dedicated to live drilling, and time that was dedicated to simply getting physically better.  When we drilled skills, we went light and got in good reps.  When we live drilled, we added resistance to test those learned skills in a “live” environment.  When we did conditioning, it was simply about making things suck so we got good at dealing with that.  You can do all of that in ONE session if that’s what you like, or you can have some sessions where you practice, some where you live drill and some where you condition, but either way, the point is: you can’t ALWAYS be practicing.  At some point, you HAVE to perform while under fatigue so you can start getting good at doing THAT too.

Sometimes, flutter kicks are an ab exercise.  Other times, freezing water is poured on you while you do them in the ocean because they just suck

 

And in a bit of comedy, there’s something to be said about PRACTICING “going before you are ready”.  The more you engage in that practice, the better you get at doing it, and like all terrible drugs, you end up chasing a bigger dose to get the same boost as before.  Jon Andersen’s Deep Water program was such a great crash course into this concept, as it FORCED you to change your rest times as part of the program’s progression model.  If you haven’t tried it, do that FIRST and then take the lessons you learned and continue to apply them.  You’ll find, when you continually push the body to go before it’s ready, it eventually gets VERY good at doing just that.

 

Yes, it WILL suck.  Yes, you WILL hurt.  BUT, you will transform, and THAT, folks, is the whole point of it all.  Those who wait until they are ready will never make that leap, because the body is NEVER ready to transform…so we push it to go BEFORE it is ready.