Learn From Your Mistakes

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Justin

AC closes his eyes and misses a third attempt squat forward.

Something is bound to go wrong. You’re going to miss a rep because you let the bar drift forward as you pulled it off the floor. You might (for whatever reason) close your eyes (followed by a forward somersault) and miss a heavy squat. At some point you won’t finish your pull and miss a clean or snatch. And you will sure as hell miss a heavy press forward. Whatever it might be, something is going to go wrong; you aren’t perfect all the time.

Some people can’t come to terms with this reality. They’ll get frustrated when learning a new movement and try to quit. Some pout and moan when they miss a lift and others don’t understand why they sucked on a given day. Others will look in the mirror and say, “My traps aren’t big enough.”

Irregardlessly, you’ll face these events and it’s up to you to decide whether or not you’re going to act like a sally when they do. When things go wrong, you (and your coach, if applicable) need to figure out what went wrong so that it doesn’t happen again. If you can manage to learn from your mistakes, then you’ll inevitably improve.

The bar isn't supposed to hit your chin

Mistakes can be mechanical in nature. Letting your knees drift in as you hit the bottom of your squat will cause them to also shift forward at the bottom which also brings your pelvis forward. Heavy deadlifts have a tendency to drift forward if you don’t pull it back, and this makes them exponentially harder. Hitting low on a snatch will help you miss it forward. Catching a clean in the same way will make the front squat much harder. Basically if you do something that moves the bar forward or backward of the middle of your foot, the lift is going to be extremely difficult, and there are lots of reasons that can make this happen on every barbell lift.

Problems can also occur from a macro standpoint: programming and recovery. Recovery limitations are either your fault or out of your control. It’s your fault if you didn’t eat enough protein and calories, but having a three day shoot out as a SWAT team member with little sleep is a function of your job. In either case, care must be taken when training to account for these things.

Brent percieves his lack of trap development as failure

Programming problems can arise when someone is not ready for their program, advancing beyond their program, has long-term recovery issues, experiences nagging or acute injuries, or has too much volume/intensity causing too much stress in the current program. This is where you have to be particularly observant to look for patterns in your training and this is the chief reason why keeping a training log is important and necessary. As you advance and get stronger the closer you will have to pay attention to this. If you’re deadlifting too frequently, you’ll get run down and it will affect your squats and pulls. If you’re doing too much volume early in the week, then your intensity day will not thrive because you won’t fully recover. If you’re hamstrings aren’t used to handling heavy loads when they are tired, then deadlifting in a long meet is going to be arduous. When you cause local stress on structures (particularly muscles, tendons, and ligaments) and you have chronically high systemic stress, the structures won’t heal efficiently and are more prone to injury (which is why people get hurt from frequent CrossFit training). It’s all cumulative.

Younger lifters will some times feel helpless because of failure. Older lifters understand failure and most will learn from it. I know some people that have gotten strong because of their persistence over years and years of training, and it wouldn’t be possible without learning from their failure.

Looking for patterns is a concept that Pete Blaber repeats in his interesting book, The Mission, The Men, and Me. If you’re observant over time you’ll be able to absorb enough data to recognize patterns that can help you figure out what went wrong. When you figure out what went wrong, you’ll be able to fix it and improve. It’s okay to fuck up. Just don’t keep doing it.

Hangover

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Justin

Edit: There is a t-shirt poll on the left side bar.

The ten day California journey is over. We drove to Sacramento on Friday and met up with Ben Claridad, a strong and funny Olympic weightlifter (that means he gets along fine with us). Ben, AC, and I trained at Camilo Gutierrez’s Midtown Strength and Conditioning that evening. Camilo is a real nice guy and has a pretty sweet facility that is home to some strong geared powerlifters and other strength/power athletes. After training we ate some pizza and basically had a sleep over at Ben’s where I watched AC and Ben play some videogames.

The next morning Ian Carver of CF Centurion hosted the last 70’s Big Workshop of our Cali tour. Ian is a law enforcement officer and, according to his wife, is “old”. In any case, they have a beautiful family and we had a lot of fun at their facility. There were almost 25 people at the workshop including 7 or 8 women who could be our spokes model on why women who train are wonderfully in shape and attractive.

After the workshop, we had Chipotle burritos, beer, and did some coaching for some of the people that hung around till 8:00 PM or so. AC and I drove to the Sacramento airport, dropped the rental car off, got to our terminal, and boarded the red eye flight to Charlotte. I didn’t sleep at all on this flight and felt like I was in hell when I sat there with everyone asleep around me, had nothing to do, and couldn’t get in any kind of comfortable position. I slept on the hopper flight to Atlanta for about an hour.

When I finally got back to my mom’s house outside of Atlanta, I was smelly and exhausted and slept for a few hours, then fell asleep by 7:00 PM and didn’t wake up until this morning (hence the late post). In any case, it was a good cap to the excellent trip where we met and hung out with lots of great people, trained a bit, and hopefully gave everyone a good show. Here are some random pictures from my phone.

The exquisite Double Double from In-N-Out

My brother and his wife's cat. He looks like Snarf from Thundercats.

AC's first time in San Francisco. I was still thoroughly unimpressed.

AC tried on Ben's Captain America shield.

Ian snatches while Ben (behind Ian), AC, and I stand watching.

PR Friday

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Gant

Justin’s still on his trip, and I’ve watched the sunrise from my office desk twice this week, so sorry for the lack of posts. That needn’t stop you from posting your record exploits this week. Lifting, eating, or pillaging. Let’s have it.

Hopefully a lot of you are going to participate in the Super Total Challenge. I’m doing mine this weekend. Choose your attempts wisely…maybe two per lift. I suspect that my deadlift will take at least a 60 pound hit by the time I get there.

Since we’ve already phoned it in the rest of the week, I’ll leave you with someone else’s work. These are a random selection of articles from sites you may not read that contain some good info AKA five bookmarks I can post about in five minutes before getting back to work.

Vegetarianism and Veganism Are As Logical As a Poopie-Flavored Lollipop

This is an article about vegetarians from ChAoS & PAIN. He’s a smart guy that writes a good training blog. He reminds me of myself when I was younger (goes hard, doesn’t care for rest, pushes it to the max every damn time), but he’s a hell of a lot more outspoken.

Just Because You Have a Vagina…

This one is for the ladies or the post-op trannies among us. C&P drops some good knowledge about how women should train.

Rebuild Yourself with Complexes

This is from Dan John, the man who corrected my KB swing before I even got my first one to chest height. It’s hard to pick out one article from the DJ universe, but I chose this one because it made a significant impact on my training. This spring, I ditched a lot of my old training stuff to get in shape for spring judo. I replaced all of my conditioning (other than mat work) with barbell complexes and prowler work. I got more muscular (from the time under tension), leaner (duh), and in better condition than I have been in a long time. I won the three big spring tourneys in the masters expert division, my best result in years. This article helped me towards that goal.

7 minute rotator cuff solution

A concise prehab and rehab routine for the cuff.

DeFranco’s Agile 8

The solution to hip mobility problems.

Of course it wouldn’t be a 70sBig post if we didn’t embed a video. Here’s a typical bowl of meat for me at Genghis Grill. It’s not a PR, but it’s a good portion. If your bowl doesn’t look like this, you need to rethink your strategy.

Dates

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Justin

I’m not gonna lie and say I didn’t drink beer and play Mario all last night. Just deal with the mid-day post.

We are capping the road trip off Saturday by doing a workshop at CF Centurion. Ian Carver owns the place and he has promised food and beer afterwards. If you’re within driving distance of the Sacramento area, then it’ll be well worth it. E-mail Ian to sign up.

I will be down in Fort Myers, Florida for a workshop on Saturday August 21st at CF Fort Myers. You can register for that one HERE.

We’ll be in Atlanta on the last Saturday of the month (August 28) at AC’s dad’s gym, Body Pros in Alpharetta, GA (north of Atlanta). If you’re interested in attending this workshop, e-mail me.
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I’m behind on checking e-mails because of this trip and I will get to some of them today. If I haven’t responded, it’s because I haven’t had the time. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
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This Will Keep You Temporarily Busy

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Justin

We are up in Hayward, California in the bay area. You should be busy eating meat and training hard. If you’re getting bored, here’s a video of Ruth and Sean’s (who hosted us at their house and gym for the first workshop) dog training. Her name is Nalu, and she takes her training seriously.