Bench: 205lbs
Squat: 270lbs
Deadlift: 325lbs

By the end of ten weeks of programming, my gym 1Rms were:

Bench: 225lbs
Squat: 300lbs
Deadlift: 385lbs

I learned two major lessons from these ten weeks of training.

You can make progress while working full-time

During these ten weeks, I was not only training, but I was also student teaching full-time. The first three weeks were nine hours a day, on my feet, teaching high school students, and in the HS weight room teaching and demonstrating for the strength and conditioning class. Last seven weeks were nine hours a day, on my feet, teaching, demonstrating, playing with these kindergarteners through fifth graders, and then continuing extra hours after school and playing hockey with a group of students who stayed after waiting for rides. I’d get done with these days teaching, and then go to the gym for two to three hours, and just smash things. I made my gains. I made them while tired, beaten down from days of work without pay and additional life stressors, but those gains were still there. Walk into the gym and turn it on. You can make progress even working 40+ hours a week.

Accumulate, Intensify, Destroy

Before and, for that matter, during this cycle of training I did not fully understand the concept of accumulation, intensification, and transformation phases of training. It was not until after this cycle, when I was trying to return to my own programming, that I realized just what these phases meant. I had spent ten weeks building up and chasing new rep maxes every training day. Chasing these “big” numbers week in and week out without any thought to the level of strain I was putting on my body and how there would be a time limit on how long I could push this. When I came out of this cycle and immediately moved on thinking that I could just continue pushing these numbers, I was met with failure after failure. It was at this point that I realized I needed to restart from the bottom. I needed to get more work back under my belt and get my reps back in at manageable weights. Once I have my base set again I can begin to intensify my training before moving on to the transformation phase (or, as I prefer, the destroy phase) where I can chase those PRs in the gym and perform at the top level in sporting endeavors. I realized that the program took me through these phases in a sustainable manner, and that to continue my improvements I needed to cycle back through them. This is where I stand now.

Conclusion

I feel as if having someone else write my programming for a bit allowed me to keep from overthinking my training, and gave me an experience that I as a young coach could not provide for myself because of that lack of experience. However, now I have a deeper understanding of programming demands for progressing in strength performance and can apply them to programming for myself and others.

2013 is in for some surprises.

During this Wednesday’s practice I found myself contemplating our movements. Every time I have stopped and held position I’ve been so grounded: solidly based, and locked down tight. In those moments my focus was on becoming an immovable object. As soon as we moved to the next portion of form and our bodies flowed from the held position, I thought about the impact of our movements when performed at full speed, generating force through our hips and legs which are firmly rooted to the ground and how these movements are meant to be delivered as an unstoppable force.

This all comes back to an overarching idea of duality. We contract and then expand, we breathe out and then we breathe in, we are still and then we move, we are the immovable object and then we are the unstoppable force. I began applying this duality to my thoughts on other movements while training. Take the squat for example: we lower ourselves into position and at the bottom we become the immovable object, no longer allowing the bar to force us towards the ground which we have firmly rooted ourselves on. From this position we become the unstoppable force, pushing the weight on our shoulders back away from the Earth. The concept works with most other ground-based movements which have concentric and eccentric phases (there’s that duality again).

As I stated to my roommate while I was explaining this entire concept to him: we must be both the immovable objects and the unstoppable forces and be capable of flowing between them at any given moment to be more capable of producing strong movement. So, what comes from the meeting of an unstoppable force and an immovable object? Us, every person to do work under the bar.

The point he made applies not only to sport, but to life. Okay, you made a bad pass. You do not have to shout about it or apologize and broadcast that you screwed up, you just make a better pass on the next go. You learn from the mistake and move on, rather than getting down about a poor performance. The moment you go negative you can go from having just a dip in your performance to having a completely awful performance.

I was helping a friend in the gym work up to a new bench press maximum. He’d stalled out at 225 and “no matter what he tried” just could not press more regardless of the fact that every rep kax he had said he should be able to press between 235 and 240. To him it was a daunting task to beat “the two-plate monster” and he’d allowed his negative emotions to get the better of him. This time though, he worked up to 220, and then instead of bumping up to two plates he mixed it up. He grabbed 35lb plates and put them on, followed by 10s and then 2.5s. He said to me that when he looked at that setup it didn’t feel as daunting as staring at those two dreaded plates. He had attempted 230 a previous week and missed majorly because of that inborn thought that he would just get stuck after 225. We got him set on the bench, he took the bar and pressed that 230 setup for an easy single.

All it took for this man to succeed was the subtraction of his negative emotion. He fooled himself into seeing the weight on that bar as being less than it was, and then took that weight and smashed it. The trick here is to make your challenges seem and feel smaller than you initially believe. It’s just like my head coach said. Bear no negative emotions about your challenges or your mistakes and misses, learn from them, grow from them, defeat them, believe in yourself, and move on.

“I’m curious about how you train for rugby in regards to balancing strength, endurance, and rest… but mostly because I wonder how it would relate to roller derby.”

A

Alright. So let’s look at training for rugby in three phases: off-, pre-, and in-season. With each phase we see a different focus in the priority of training.

Off-Season

During the off-season for rugby we can focus on athletes working for hypertrophy or gains in maximal strength. We can utilize programs that would create far too much strain in the athletes if used during any other phase because they’re not also attending organized team activities, conditioning, and skill training sessions. You pick a weakness and work to make sure that, come pre-season, it’s less of a liability. This is the time to get better

Use the off-season phase to pack on size and strength, or if conditioning is a major issue, take some time to run a solid conditioning program.

Pre-Season

In the pre-season phase we dial back the intensity/volume/frequency of our training from the off-season in exchange for the inclusion of team conditioning and skills-related training (passing, kicking, scrummaging, or other position-specific skills). Gains can still be made here, but training receives a more generalized focus (this is a shift in focus somewhat from strength/power to endurance) in order to prepare for match situations and conditions.

In rugby we may place a focus on training the glycolytic energy pathway during the pre-season as that energy system gets a large portion of the work during matches due to the quick changes of pace mixed with ongoing work during phase play (this system is even more critical for forwards, but should be trained by forwards and backs alike). Training this pathway consists of interval training, lifting complexes, timed circuits, and other drills or exercises which use the glycolytic pathway as the primary source of energy.

In-Season

In-season training is all about maintenance. In the case of rugby, most training is focused on technical skills. The priority in the gym becomes maintenance of strength, peak power, glycolytic and aerobic endurance along with injury prevention. Lifting is probably happening two days a week at most; we’d see a full-body strength workout early in the week and a lighter, full-body power session towards the end, a day before the week’s captain’s run. Aerobic work at a light to moderate level is feasible multiple days a week as that energy system has the ability to recovery quick enough, but this work may come from practices and conditioning sessions rather than occurring outside of team activities.

The body needs more time for rest and recovery during the season as playing matches week in and week out will begin to take its toll as the season rolls on, so training for any major gains in-season would apply too great of a strain to the athletes. The goal is to be fresh by the next match, and spending too much time on physical training can impede the attainment of this goal.

Roller Derby

To be honest, I don’t know the first thing about roller derby. However, if it’s like most other hybrid sports (drawing on both anaerobic and aerobic energy systems) in terms of demands on the body, then I see no reason why a similar training cycle cannot be used with roller derby. If it isn’t as similar as I envision it being, you could still use these cycles, but adjust the content of them to meet your needs.

Some days it’s going to suck

Some days your head will not be in it, or you’ll be tired, or there will be one of hundreds of other reasons that  a long bench press session can suck. Regardless of that, you need to dig in and grind it out. Take your rest as needed and hit every set like you’re out to kill something.

You NEED to be eating

You’re benching four days a week, so food is officially your best friend if you want to fuel growth and recovery. I actually managed to get through these three weeks without much soreness thanks to lots of eating and some physical precautions listed below.

Do some form of pulling

Most days after bench I performed some sort of pulling movement. Whether it was deadlifts, chin-ups, or otherwise, there was some sort of pull to help keep my back and rear deltoids strong. On rest days and even some nights after lifting I would tie two mini short bands together and perform pull-aparts at high volume just to get extra pulling work in. There’s a very good chance that the pulling work has helped prevent strength imbalances and maintain healthy shoulders.

Stretch

A strong back arch can be employed to increase and hold tension throughout the lift. This can require a good bit of spinal flexibility which needs to be maintained throughout a very strenuous three weeks of benching. Doing spinal flexibility and mobility work is crucial to keeping your spine healthy and strong throughout this program. I did this work after every bench session and most nights before going to sleep.

The first set is the hardest

Even after a warm-up before each session involving working up to that day’s weight, the first working set was the most difficult of the day during all twelve sessions. The key was to not be disheartened by the initial difficulty, take the necessary rest, and drive through the session. By the end of the day the sets are going up like lightning.

This is the quality of “wanting it” or tenacity.

The athlete that wants it is the hockey player that drops his head and digs deeper into his strides to win that icing race against an opponent that has a twenty foot head start on him. It’s the rugby player that not only charges down clearance kick, but retrieves the loose ball and drives forwards to make something from nothing.

Every effort made by these athletes demonstrates a commitment even if the result is failure, and when facing a result of failure these athletes find the learning points to improve from where others would just stew in frustration. There’s a drive in these people to succeed by pushing their bodies to the absolute limits if necessary to beat out the opposition during play. They can be huffing, puffing, and at the end of their rope, but the words “can’t” and “quit” don’t seem to exist in their vocabulary.

The tenacious athlete is someone who can set an example on a team. Tenacious captains can rally their teammates around an example of never giving up or possibly being beaten, but never being broken. There’s a never say die attitude which exudes from these athletes. They fight the hardest because they “want it” the most.

This is all a matter of motivation. The athlete that wants it won’t let anything stand in their way. There’s no quit in these people. They will work and work and work until they are at the top of their game and aren’t happy unless they know they have performed at their best.

How can you show that you want it?

• Never settle for less than your best – If you underperform for any reason, do not make excuses about it. Instead, put the work in to fix factors that you have control over.
• Forget about the idea of quitting – Quitting on the field shows a lack of drive and there will be others who clearly want it more than you.
• Keep positive – If you fail, do not get down on yourself. Forget about the word “can’t” and remember a daunting task is not an indomitable task.

I had to take a lap around the gym’s track and get my head on right without looking at the weight. About halfway around I began justifying why I could succeed. I’d pulled 315 before. There was no reason why I couldn’t pull it again, and certainly no reason why I couldn’t pull it twice if I could pull it once. I walked back to the bar (which seemed like far less of a monster), took my stance, and pulled. It went up once, stopped dead at the bottom, and went up again. Red in the face I sat down with a feeling of victory swelling in me.

The only thing that could stop me from pulling that double was my own mindset. It seemed like such a daunting task when I wrote it in my notebook, but a daunting task is not an indomitable task. It is a challenge, and how you come away from that challenge is going to affect your mindset in subsequent events. Even if I’d walked up to that bar and only pulled a single, I would have tied my all time 1RM after months off of serious deadlifting and if I had missed then I’d know where I stand in terms of strength and would better know how to move forward with my training.

It all comes down to remembering that no matter your sport or event an attempt is only an attempt. Whether you succeed or fail you should come away having learned something that you can take with you to make your next attempt or competition better.

Watch and learn

Visualization can be a huge boost to the mental side of an athlete’s game. It comes in handy when attempting to correct or learn a new skill. I’ve found that sitting down and watching a professional at the highest level perform that skill over and over from multiple angles (top-down, front, rear, and both side views) allows me to better understand their movements as I attempt to mimic them for my own performance or modify it to fit my own abilities. This is very similar to the way in which we begin to learn to walk. As infants, we observe our parents and other adults moving having mastered the ability to walk. As we begin exploring on our own we attempt to mimic the movements of those who have mastered the art, this is called modeling. This usually starts with us having to hold on to a support as we discover a movement concept we have to learn in order to walk, balance. So we practice walking with support over and over while gradually using less and less support over time until finally we stand up, push off the coffee table in the living room and stumble across the floor without using anything other than our legs to hold us up.

Find an athlete out there who is considered a master of the skill you’re trying to learn. Watch them perform the skill on repeat from every angle possible.

• Learn it.
• Practice it in your mind.
• Practice it more.
• Do this all the time.
• More visualization practice before you go to sleep.
• Even more practice when you wake up.
• Practice the skill without any implements (balls, sticks, clubs, bats, etc).
• Mental practice and review of your attempt (rinse, repeat as necessary).
• Practice the skill with implements.
• More mental practice in between attempts.

Visualize for success

Just as when you’re visualizing while learning. If you think out your motion before performing it, you can correct many of your own mistakes before you make them. Like Holtby going over all of his movements before the game, go in with your movements fresh in your mind. Walk yourself through everything before you even run your warm-up, and do it again during your warm-up.

My usual Monday morning goes something like this as I run through my spine mobility exercises before I lift: “Okay, I’m deadlifting today. I need to keep my chest up, neck packed, shoulders back, back straight, drive with my hips, and press through my heels”. I visualize the lift over and over while I walk to the power rack. Sometimes I’ll go so far as to pull a light warm-up set with my eyes closed to let my visualization lead me through the movement (I keep a friend on hand to check form on those occasions).

I’ve had visualization work in the moments immediately before an action as well. Lining up to take the face-off of an inline hockey game I run through my motions in my mind just before the ball or puck is dropped. I tense my muscles as I work through the action and load up to perform them in the seconds after I’ve thought them through. Minute corrections are made to my stance and positioning to align with my mental image, and then I act.

With practice these thoughts become automatic, playing through the scenarios in my mind becomes an instant occurrence as play goes on or as a training session continues. Not only can you make mental corrections to your movements, but you can play out the entire game in your head an infinite number of ways, anticipating and reading the play as it happens.

The point to come away from this with is to learn your game. Learn your movements. Learn as many applications of your movements as possible, visualize them in in-game situations, go over the possibilities, develop these movement patterns in your mind, and then practice them on the pitch, rink, in the weight room, or wherever it is that you practice your art. This method may not work for everyone, but it’s one possibility of many in terms of ways to up your game mentally.

The most important lesson I learned from Mike was presented in the very first class I took with him, and that was his idea the concept of doing your best. He said to us, “Even if you dig a ditch, dig the best ditch you can”. Of course this was met with the sighs of every freshman in the room as they wondered what this crazy old codger was getting on about, but I just sat there and made sure I took that quote down in my notebook.

Under the quote I have written his points behind doing your best, and I strive to remember them in all aspects of life:

• Your work ethic is who you are.
• Be proud of your work, it reflects who you are.
• Never settle for less than your best.
• Commit yourself to your actions.

The work we do is a direct reflection of our personalities and who we are as people, and that lesson has stuck with me ever since. This applies to work, relationships, training, and just about anything else. If you know you’re not giving your all in something you’re doing, then maybe it’s not something worth doing. By the same token, if you’re doing your absolute best and not seeing results, maybe another plan of attack is required.

If you’re half-assing a program that you’re writing, then it’ll show when your athlete makes less than ideal progress. If you’re walking into the gym and skipping over half of your program because you “just don’t feel like it today”, then don’t act shocked when your returns show that. Walk into the gym, put all you’ve got into every rep, finish the session and know that you did everything in your power to succeed. Go in like that and your work ethic will show even if there’s a missed attempt on the books. If there’s water flowing through it, then you’ve probably dug a decent ditch, but if you’re seeing flooding, then you may have missed a few things.

Coaches

I read the adage that coaches should be much like doctors in making an effort to “do no harm” with our athletes. Your first priority, even above progressing through their lifts, should be maintaining the health of your athletes. It’s been my experience that the more I let my pride get the better of me, the less competing and training I can due to the injuries incurred. Programming and coaching should be done in a way which minimizes injury risk while still making strength and performance gains in your athletes. This is pretty common sense, but I’ve seen it happen where high school gyms here have the most arbitrary training sessions posted on the wall with little to no thought behind the programming or the needs of the individual athlete. Some of it makes sense, while some of it also makes me wonder just how kids are making any progress. It’s part of my argument against CrossFit, with its underqualified coaches and high volume programming, you’re just begging for an overuse injury or an injury coming from poor, uncorrected (or improperly corrected) form. As coaches, we have a responsibility to turn out a functioning, strong product (our athletes), and if they’re all ending up injured at our hands then we’re not doing too great of a job. Some setbacks are avoidable, some uncontrollable, and we have to do our best to minimize them in order to get our jobs done.

Athletes

I hope you didn’t just skip over the coaches section, because the information’s just as important for you. As I’ve been doing my own programming, I’ve had to wear both hats and it’s as much about the athlete’s mindset as the programming. Stopping at the sensation of pain is near critical. Completing an hour run when your feet are in pain at the 30 minute mark is just stupid and pride is not a good reason to induce injury. Training despite actual pain in a muscle or joint is the same; you’re just asking for a layoff and hindering your own progress. A great yoga instructor once told me to “honor my body” by listening to the tension, the aches and the pains, and to perform my practice based on those messages. I’ve slowly been incorporating those messages into my strength work, and after this most recent setback I’ll be taking it even more seriously. Working yourself into a pile of useless flesh will get you nowhere. Listen to your body and adjust your training accordingly for the sake of your health. The less time you spend sidelined, the more time you can spend succeeding on the pitch.

I feel that all of this is fairly common sense, but I clearly haven’t been listening and I know that there are plenty of others out there who are or who have been in my shoes. We don’t have to push through the pain, and the old saying “no pain, no gain” is full of shit. Wanting to be the most “hardcore” may get you some recognition from other guys in the gym, but it stands a good chance of also getting you a shortened career or at least a nice little required rest. Sacrificing your health is a mistake when there is life beyond sport for years, and if you listen to your body you just may get to enjoy that time with minimal pain. Coach smart and train smart, you’ll go far.