Dave Yates Coaching

APU State Qualifier Recap and appreciation post.

This prep was the best I’ve had in many years. I’ve not been lifting this well in a long time. I don’t think I’ve ever lifted this well with my squats. That’s down to the constant refinement from my coach, the environment I train in, and the people I look up to.

On the day squats didn’t go to plan, missing my opener and third on depth. This has been an intermittent feature of my training for the last few blocks, one I’m determined to eradicate..

Bench and deads reflected my training, going 6/6 on these.

I ended with a 257.5/167.5/290 for a 715kg total. I haven’t gone over 700kg in a long time, so to be making progress again despite getting older is exciting.

Thank you to for the outstanding handling on the day, selecting loads to ensure I posted my best possible total, and backing me no matter what.

Thanks to all the lifters and coaches there on the day, and during prep, for the ongoing support and cheer squad.

To my wife .lisa.yates and kids for coming to support me and putting up with my obsession in this sport. ❤️

And to my coach, , who despite being half way around the world, never let a day pass without communication, feedback, and program refinement. To have the level of support and professionalism despite time zones and IPF worlds going on, to make sure I was at my best, is incredible, I can’t thank you enough.

Back to work now, I’ve got a lot to do.

Thank you to all who messaged your support on the day, it’s much appreciated.

Full recap coming soon, but wanted to thank this king for his excellent handling today. thank you sir.

Last year I took my family on a trip around the world. The memories and experiences we shared will last a lifetime.

Before leaving, I speculated with my coach how I’d fair with strength upon my return home after 3 or so weeks off. She laughed and told me I’d lose a ton of strength. She was right.

Eating roughly half what I would normally, walking 30000+ steps every day, being sleep deprived from travel and long days, all took their toll.

Throw in COVID at the end for good measure, and it was quite the recipe.

Most people gain weight on holidays, I lost nearly 6kg (5% total mass).

When I started my routine again, training was HARD. Light weights felt heavy, my stamina was gone, and I felt skinny.

3 weeks off translated to a 3 month lag in performance. I’m now back moving better than ever. All my training is going well, and my routine set. It was slow going to start, which is to be expected, but that’s the smart way to do things.

Whenever you take a break, be realistic about what you expect from training when you start again. You won’t set the world on fire. But if you’re consistent, disciplined, and patient, you’ll go beyond where you left or quicker than you otherwise would.

Stay strong.

9 weeks.

LFG

These are the most common roadblocks to achieving goals in the gym.

Compliance:
Are you following the plan? Really following it, not just mostly following it? Regardless of who wrote the plan, it was written to achieve something. If you don’t follow the plan, adjustments can’t be made to improve the outcome..

Consistency:
Follows in lock step with compliance, but it’s a little different. Being consistent means more than just being compliant, it means behaving the same way outside the plan. Sleep, hydration, stress, training times, extra activity, they’re all variables capable of derailing even the most compliant.

Effort:
Self explanatory. Are you giving it your best every session, or are you just turning up? Chances are your goals are lofty, they likely require, and indeed deserve, your best. Don’t be slack.

Time:
Has enough time elapsed? Are you being realistic? If your goal is to drop 25kg of fat and gain 15kg of muscle, that’s not a short term thing. If your goal is to go from 700kg to 800kg in lifting, allow a lot of time. Make sure your goal is difficult but realistic. Typically people are trying to undo a lifetime of neglect in a month. That’s not a thing.

Communication:
If you’re working with a coach, communicate how the plan is going. This involves more than filling out numbers and taking videos. What’s your fatigue like? Are you excessively hungry or struggling to eat all your food? Do you not like something in your plan? Speak up, I promise I’d rather hear about it sooner than later.

If you need help reaching a goal, DM.

Stay strong

Belief is different to knowledge.

If you’ve set yourself a goal, either on your own or with the help of a coach, you must employ the best strategy to reach said goal.

Believing a strategy works, even if it has before, doesn’t automatically make it the best strategy moving forward.

People fear regression, they’ll do almost anything to avoid “getting worse”, whether that be more body fat, less strength, less aerobic capacity, it’s all the same.

The fear is understandably paralyzing.

Ironically, NOT changing their approach after a prolonged period of limited (read none) progress is effectively making things worse.

Embrace change. The worst outcome is you were right, in which case go back to the grind. The likely outcome is you improve, and simultaneously overcome your fear of change.

Stay strong.

Controversial?

Shouldn’t be.

Don’t get me wrong, prioritizing a muscle (or group) for increased size is fine and all, but it belies the root cause of why you THINK you need to train it.

For the most part, poor muscular development stems from poor movement patterns. Most people begin their exercise career with quad dominance, anteriorly rotated pelvis, under developed triceps, and over developed traps. It’s not their fault, that is to say it isn’t deliberate.

The craze these days seems to be hinge and hip extend everything, every session, to maximize those b***y gains!

As mentioned in the slides this can lead to muscular imbalance (the other way from when you started), injury (different from the old ones you had), and ironically dissatisfaction with your results.

YOUR GLUTES ALREADY WORK.

You’d literally fall over without them.

If you’d like them to grow, learn to use your quads, adductors, hamstrings, and glutes together, as they’re designed to be.

Not only will you move significantly more weight, you’ll do so with less effort than before, meaning you can train with greater intensity and get better results.

If you’d like to learn more about this, DM.

Stay strong

If you start BEHIND your mid foot, you’ll end up FORWARD of the mid foot at the bottom of the squat.

Film your squat from the side, check out the angle of your shins, and watch what happens.

If your shin is angled backward, you’ll fall forward in your squat.

Having trouble with the mid foot, DM me your videos and I’ll do my best to help.

Stay strong.

Expressing force is colloquially referred to as being strong.

The more force you can bring to bare against “something”, the faster it moves or the heavier it can be and still move.

That’s the key thing, “something” moves.

It stands to reason the force we’re expressing when lifting weights is against the weight in question. This is true, partly.

For you to move anything, whatever force you apply to the “anything” is ALSO being expressed into “something” else.

For strength pursuits, this is almost always the ground.

Lifting weights is an exercise in physics. Mechanical physics is dominated by a bloke named Newton, who’s famous 3rd law of mechanics states “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.

For me to deadlift 300kg, MORE than 300kg of force must be expressed INTO the ground. Otherwise, I get 🔴🔴🔴 and the bar doesn’t move.

Feel yourself express force into the thing NOT moving, your efforts to move the other thing will be well rewarded.

Stay strong

Do you feel lucky?

I’ll concede there are elements of chance contributing towards outcomes we can neither predict nor plan for.

However, for the most part, there’s no such thing as luck.

There are decisions positively impacting an outcome as pert of a design, versus those taking you away from your goal.

Some are big, obvious, so simple they’re written in crayon decisions, and others you might make subconsciously as part of a broader habit set.

But they’re either moving you forward, or holding you back.

It’s that simple.

For the “unlucky” folk out there, are you being honest when assessing your decisions? Does your habit set help or hinder you? Getting out of your own way can be the hardest thing in the world to do, because you’re the easiest person in the world to lie to. You’ll believe all your own bu****it about why someone else is lucky and you’re not. Once you stop buying what you’ve been selling, start making better choices, then you’ll start to feel lucky.

Stay strong.

Celebrating Mr and Mrs Baker❤️

What an amazing day/night with so much love and laughter. Hung with some of my favourite people and met some new fabulous friends.

and congratulations, thank you for inviting us and sharing your special day.

Much love

lisa.yates