Above the Rest Training Systems

Squat shoes aren’t “throwing you forward.” Your technique is.

Here’s why this trips people up.

Your subconscious is getting feedback from your body every rep, but it reports it to you in caveman language: feels good, feels bad, feels off.

When you put on a weightlifting shoe, you just changed one variable. You got an artificial boost to ankle dorsiflexion. That’s it. The floor didn’t tilt. The shoe didn’t push you anywhere.

So when an athlete says, “These feel weird,” or “My squat got worse,” I’m not calling that fake. I’m saying it’s data.

The question is what the data is actually pointing to.

If the elevated heel makes you feel like you’re getting dumped forward, something in your pattern is using that new range in a way you’re not controlling yet. If a knee position suddenly feels unstable, the shoe just revealed how you were managing your balance without it.

That’s the whole point of a tool.

A squat shoe can be a huge advantage for squatting, lap-implement positions, and overhead work. But the first reps will often feel “wrong” because it’s not your status quo.

Give it enough exposure, and your nervous system recalibrates. Then NOT wearing them feels strange.

What’s the biggest thing you “hate the feel of” right now in training, and what do you think it’s actually telling you?

Process-oriented lifting is the fastest way to PR (and the hardest thing to commit to).

If your only goal is “move the weight,” you’ll miss the entire point of training.

Because the task is obvious. The bar goes down. The bar goes up. Congrats.

But here’s the thing… the result you want lives inside the process you keep ignoring.

When a lifter watches a movement and only sees the outcome, every rep becomes a performance. Not practice. And that’s why coaching cues don’t land. They aren’t trying to demonstrate a technique. They’re trying to manifest an outcome.

That mindset also traps identity.

“I’m a 315-pound bench presser.” “I’m a 500-pound squatter.” “I’m a 700-pound deadlifter.”

Now anything that isn’t that number feels like you’re not you anymore. So dropping to 255 to clean up touch point, brace, and position feels impossible… even though that’s exactly what would get you to 365.

A process-oriented mindset asks a different question:

How am I doing this rep, and is it scalable?

The goal is that eventually task and process become the same thing. Hitting the lift is just a demonstration of a repeatable process.

Until then, stop chasing the outcome and start building the thing that produces it.

What lift or movement do you catch yourself “performing” instead of practicing? Drop it below.

A lot of athletes sabotage their progress before they even touch the bar. The second you label yourself as “bad” at a lift, your brain starts filtering every training session through that identity.

Miss a rep? Proof. Lose positioning? More proof. Have one off day? That becomes evidence instead of feedback.

The problem is that negative self talk changes how you approach the movement. Lifters get hesitant, overthink their setup, rush ex*****on, or try to force corrections all at once. That usually creates even worse reps, which reinforces the belief that they are bad at the lift.

Good training requires objectivity. Instead of attaching your identity to the outcome, narrow your focus to the specific technical issue you are trying to improve.

Maybe your dip drive is inconsistent. Maybe your rack position collapses. Maybe you lose timing overhead. Those are technical problems, not personality traits.

The athletes who improve the fastest are usually the ones who can separate emotion from analysis. They identify one issue, practice it repeatedly, review footage, track what works, and stay patient long enough to accumulate progress.

Confidence in training is not pretending you are perfect. It is trusting the process enough to keep showing up and refining the details.

A lot of lifters understand force production in the limbs, but they overlook how long it can take the trunk to fully “turn on” under speed and load.

Motor unit recruitment works progressively. Your nervous system ramps from smaller, low threshold fibers into larger, high threshold fibers as demand increases. That matters because explosive movement happens fast, and your core may not always be reaching full tension at the same speed as your hips and legs.

This is one reason technique can break down during heavy or aggressive reps. The lower body creates force before the trunk is fully organized to stabilize it.

The answer is not endless low intensity core work. You need exercises that force rapid tension and aggressive bracing under speed. Med ball slams, hard kettlebell swings, and explosive plate chops are all useful options when done with intent.

Use them as primers before your main lifts. Keep the volume low, focus on violent but controlled ex*****on, and make the brace the priority. Over time, you will usually see better positional control and cleaner mechanics during your heavier work.

Coaches I want to share a lesson I’ve learned: if your default is “correct,” you’re missing half the job.

When an athlete sends a video review, my brain wants to hunt problems.

It’s not because I don’t care. It’s because I like fixing things. There’s a clean kind of satisfaction in pointing at a fault and handing someone a solution.

But here’s where most of us get it wrong: if every check-in turns into a list of what’s broken, the process starts to feel like it’s always behind.

Progress becomes invisible.

And when progress is invisible, it’s hard to stay in love with training.

So I’m working on a simple rule for myself:

Before I correct anything, I name what’s improving.

What moved better than last time?

What decision did they make under load that used to fall apart?

That celebration doesn’t lower the standard. It reinforces the behaviors that are already working. And it gives the athlete a reason to come back fired up instead of braced for criticism.

If you’re a lifter of mine, I’m trying to do this more.

If you’re a coach and you think it doesn’t matter, you’re wrong. Learn to celebrate with your athletes.

What’s one thing your coach has done (or could do) that would help you FEEL your progress?

One of the biggest misconceptions about online coaching is that the coach is supposed to catch and correct every mistake in real time. That is not realistic, and honestly, it is not the goal.

An online coach cannot stand next to you during every set. They cannot remind you to brace harder, adjust your positioning, or identify technical faults in the moment. Because of that, athletes have to develop awareness and ownership during training.

That does not mean athletes should be left guessing.

A good online coach should provide a system that teaches the athlete how to analyze their own lifting. That process should include understanding technical cues, documenting what reps feel like, reviewing video, and learning how to connect those observations together.

With my athletes, this is part of the Technical Mastery Process. We identify faults, apply corrections, compare ex*****on against video, and build better decision making over time. The goal is not dependence. The goal is developing athletes who understand what they are doing and why they are doing it.

The athletes who improve the fastest are usually the ones who communicate the best. They show up to reviews with notes, observations, and questions instead of waiting to be told what happened.

Online coaching works best when coaching becomes collaborative. The coach provides structure and direction. The athlete develops awareness and ex*****on inside that structure.

Most athletes save sandbag and stone loading (over a bar or to a platform) for the peaking block before a contest.

But for most of the year, we live in extensions.

Why?

They take almost no setup, and they build a ton of transfer to every implement without sacrificing the “feel” of the event.

The common mistake I see: athletes pop the implement out of the lap, stand up “enough,” then drop it right back down.

It *feels* like a full rep, but the implement often only travels half to three-quarters of the height it needs for a real load.

The fix: *follow through.*

Don’t just stand up. Throw the implement up into space as high as you can.

You won’t always get huge elevation, but you’ll finish with the implement high on the torso and your extension fully completed.

This carries over to loading almost anything in almost any event: over a bar, to a platform, or to the shoulder.

Plus, you’re practicing the pick from the floor, which builds work capacity and speed.

If your “extension” is basically stand up → back to the lap, try this version for one session and tell me what you notice.

Planks are one of the simplest core exercises, but most people turn them into a passive hold. They get into position and wait it out instead of actively creating tension.

If you are just holding yourself up, you are likely letting muscles relax wherever possible. That defeats the purpose of the exercise and limits how much you actually get out of it.

A proper plank is a full body contraction. Start by externally rotating the shoulders and driving the elbows into the ground. This creates stability through the upper body and engages the lats.

Bring the legs together and squeeze them hard. This turns the lower body on and prevents you from hanging out in a loose position.

Tuck the pelvis and contract the glutes as hard as possible. This locks in your spinal position and connects the hips to the core.

Push away from the floor to create slight upper back rounding. This helps bring the ribs down and increases abdominal engagement.

From there, think about pulling your elbows and feet toward each other without actually moving. This creates global tension across the entire body.

Stop thinking about how long you can hold a plank. Start thinking about how much tension you can produce for 15 to 20 seconds.

That is where the real benefit comes from.

Speed work without mastery is just noise.

Everybody loves “fast up, slow down” until the bar starts moving like a shopping cart with a bad wheel.

Here’s the order most people skip:

1) Technical mastery. You can’t be explosive in a movement you can’t repeat. When the technique is complex, your subconscious will do anything it can to hit an unreasonable conscious ask. That’s how you end up “moving fast” but practicing chaos.

2) Strength in that exact pattern. If you aren’t strong enough to move heavy loads with clean positions, you probably aren’t strong enough to move moderately heavy loads FAST while keeping those positions.

3) Then speed. Explosiveness is a qualifier you earn. It’s the end of the road, not the on-ramp.

And yeah, some lifts get you there quicker. A trap bar block pull is simpler to master than an insanely technical movement, so the path to “move it like an athlete” is shorter.

But when intermediate lifters start throwing chains, bands, and speed work on top of crap reps, they’re just stuck in fourth gear trying to start from a stop.

What lift are you trying to make “explosive” right now: a simple hinge, or something you still haven’t mastered?