Good Fitness Reads for the Week: 8/17/2014

I hope you’re enjoying your weekend! Time to catch up on some fitness reading.

Before we get to the goods, I want to let you know about a new article I’m working on, so be on the lookout this week for ‘4 Tips You Need to Know for a Bigger Bench Press’!

Strength tips:

*Stop training through your nagging injuries. If you are training and aggravating the same nagging injury day in, day out, it will never heal and probably get worse.

This does NOT mean you should stop training all together. Continue doing exercises that don’t cause pain. For example, if doing barbell squatting causes your hip to hurt, take some time off barbell squats and replace it for a movement targeting similar muscle groups that you can do pain free.

Your squat isn’t going to improve if your hip never heals and your hip won’t heal if you continually irritate it doing barbell squats.

Let pain be your guide. If something causes you pain, don’t do it.

*Your training should be efficient. More isn’t always better. To achieve your goal, you should aim to train smarter.

Strive to train optimally, not to beat your body into submission.

*Stop over-thinking your powerlifting equipment

We have so many options when it comes to belts, shoes, knee wraps/sleeves, wrist wraps, etc. Lifters are becoming neurotic when it comes to finding the best piece of equipment.

There is no perfect knee wrap or Olympic shoe that will add 200lbs to your squat.

Instead, place that focus on improving your technique, programming, recovery and diet. These are the changes that will improve your performance.

*There are no tricks to getting strong.

Don’t waste time searching for the right supplement to burn fat or get you jacked overnight.

Train hard, train smart, and stay consistent with your diet.

*If you are going to the gym to lift weights you should be warming up to allow your body to perform at its highest level and to reduce the risk of injury.

The goal of the warm-up is to prepare ourselves to perform the activity we are about to do (lift weights, football, sprinting etc.) optimally and safely.

We need to be mindful of this when warming up. If you are performing: foam rolling, breathing drills, dynamic/static stretching, any or more combinations of all these things, that is fine. Like your strength training, be smart and efficient. It is unnecessary for most people to be warming up for 30 minutes.

If you are doing all these things and it is taking up a large chunk of your session AND you continue to feel tight during and/or after lifting, you need to identify the reason.

Perhaps you need to address other issues: technique, mismanagement of volume/intensity in your programming, improving your warm-up, or something else.

Remember why you are warming up, and try to perform a warm-up that prepares you for your activity efficiently.

*The setup is a crucial part of your lift.

Lifters often rush through their setup, causing them to continually practice and develop bad habits.

Treat every set is an opportunity for you to practice and perfect your setup.

If your setup is improper, you are not giving yourself the opportunity to perform the lift to the best of your ability.

*One bad training day is just that, one bad training day.

It’s only one workout!

We all have days where our training doesn’t go as planned. Bad training days often have more of a psychological impact on us than physical. One training day does not determine the success of your
training cycle.

You can do better next time. Now you have even more of a reason to go in and kill it in the next session. Eat well, rest, and often you can have some of your best workouts following a bad one!

*Work on mastering your technique.

People often automatically associate missing a lift with a muscular weakness. I missed (insert lift) at lockout, I need to work on (insert variation). Sometimes this is the case, choosing the correct variation and focusing on bringing up the weak area can improve the lift.

Another common reason people miss lifts is their technique. Work on perfecting your technique and many of your ‘weaknesses’ will improve.

*Don’t convince yourself you will be bad at something based on your body type.

If you believe you won’t be successful at a lift because you’re not ‘built’ for it, than you won’t be. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy, you’ve already decided that you are going to fail.

Instead of convincing yourself that you’re not going to be good at the lift, put extra work into improving it. It may never be your best lift, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t be good at it.

“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.”

Good Reads: