One of my favorite movies of all time is the Karate Kid, it truly is a perfect movie. There's things to make you laugh, things to make you cry, and if the All Valley Karate Championship didn't have you on the edge of your seat, you need to check your pulse, and of course all the truly great life lessons that Mr. Miyagi had for Daniel-san. They started simply and to Daniel-san pointlessly. Paint the fence, sand the deck, and most famously "Wax on, Wax off". These simple tasks that to Daniel-san seemed pointless and were just Mr. Miyagi using him as his own slave. Of course Mr. Miyagi quickly proved his point that all these seemingly menial tasks of labor were drilling in the muscle memory needed for Karate. (Are you starting to see where this is going?) The thing Mr. Miyagi said that has stuck with me for a long time as an athlete and a coach is this. “First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature rule Daniel-san, not mine”.
As an athlete this can be the hardest concept to put into practice even if we know it's correct, especially as novice lifters. You've learned the basics and have started to add some weight to the bar and now you start to see this beginner plateau numbers start to become more realistic and you don't want to wait 6 months to hit them, you want to do it now. So you get your credit card and you buy a brand new custom belt, a $200 pair of lifters, brand new knee wraps. All the gear you see the best in the world use. Well, I hate to break it to you. You aren't the best in the world. You aren't even the best in your gym. You suck. What good is a belt if you don't know how to properly brace yourself to begin with? What's the point of slapping on 3 meter knee sleeves when you barely squat 200lbs? Why spend $200 on shoes when your squat isn't worth 10 cents? What you think are aides to your lifting are actually crutches for laziness. Instead of embracing the suck that is reps and the little things, becoming a master of a lift and is technical aspects. You've ran out to the store to buy every item to help you fly when you can't even stand yet. Become a master of your technique and then add in all these tools, you'll be amazed what happens when your belt and wraps stop being crutches and become tools of strength. In my own training I'm about to do a hard reset in about a month. Is it fun lifting heavy as fuck with the boys, slapping backs, sniffing ammonia and going berserk on a lift? Fuck yeah it is. I'm closing in on a goal that I've had for almost ten years now, squatting 700lbs raw. I came up short 10 years ago, and I know that weight is so close to my abilities that I can taste it. Could I put the pedal to the floor and give it all the next few months and hit it? Maybe, it's possible, but I also possible that I get stapled with 650, or I suffer a major injury. Thankfully due to lessons imparted on me by the best coaches in the world my entire life, and after 20 years of hearing it and finally listening to it, I know it's about time to get back into off season mode, work on some technical flaws I see that I have, start pounding the weaknesses that are starting to rear their ugly heads, so that next training cycle I'm even better and stronger. We always want to do more and more. I mean, isn't that the point of the sport? See how much weight we can stack onto a bar and lift it? Yes, that's absolutely correct, but what is often lost in the ether of bravado, adrenaline, and testosterone is the ability to let your brain make a smart choice, and not let your ego to make a dumb one. Novice and seasoned lifters can make that mistake, I know I've made is numerous times myself. Irrational confidence in oneself can be an amazing tool if you can handle the reigns properly, or it can be the downfall of us all and lead to unnecessary injuries. Dave Tate had a quote the other day that put all this as simply as you really can "Optimal training is like edging. Taken to the edge and stop. Great for longevity but frustrating as hell" Now is that really all that different' from where Mr. Miyagi started us all the time ago with "Wax on. Wax off?" If you want to improve past mediocre in this sport, you have to put in the time, the work, the reps, the relentless dedication that's required of you. The weights we lift are made of iron, and if your will isn't made of the same, the road you travel is going to be very very short.
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"People Don't Know How to Fight Anymore"I've been fighting some kind of bug this past week, so I've spent most of my time at home consuming as much Mucinex as I felt safe to. In light of this I've spent a ton of time, probably too much, surfing all the social medias. This morning I came across a something Dave Tate had reposted. It was a video of an interview(you can find here) that Tim Grover had done, talking about why there are great athletes but few true Icons in sport. In it he says, "People don't know how to fight anymore", now he's not talking about fist fights but grinding, struggling, earning it. Whatever their "It" is.
This really hit home for me, as it's been a conversation I had just the other day with Ortmayer. I had been helping an athlete in the gym, who is a great person, but during their workouts there was inevitably a set that they would quit early on. Could be the 2nd, or the last for this or for that, but they'd quit. It was something I honestly couldn't comprehend. There was no fight in them. You gotta have fight in you if you want to survive this sport. It's why I'm a fan of doing my last working sets to failure, it keeps that instinct alive, to keep pushing no matter what. That instinct, that flip of the switch to approach the weight and say fuck it, I'm standing up with this or you can bury me under the platform is one of the most important skills that novice lifters need to learn and one they most often neglect. The growth of strength sports like strongman and powerlifting is an amazing thing to see. USA Powerlifting Nationals has almost 1,200 athletes competing in three weeks time. Gracie V has the US Open where the best of the best compete for some serious money, things the sport has not seen before at this level. Consequentially from this growth, the mind set of the athletes competing has shifted. It's shifted drastically even from where it was 5 or 6 years ago. It was a sport of winners, people that knew there was no money, nothing to win but pride. That this sport is pain and the tolerance of that pain and the stubbornness to work through that pain. It's moved from a truly niche sport to a more mainstream culture. We now have fancy shoes, and food related slogans galore. I don't dislike any of these things, honestly they're good for the sport in the long run but it's all "pop-culture" lifting. "Let me post this RPE 9.death squat, in my new Romaleos, with my bacon socks and donut shorts #beast #poopedmyself" They care more about being Insta-famous than being a winner. Now of course people have the right to do what they will and I salute them, but one thing cannot be forgotten. In this sport you're in a fight every rep against gravity. And brother, gravity is undefeated. |
AuthorDan Lopes. Professional Adidas stylist Archives |