Coach Buck

Central or peripheral?
Certain types of training target one more or less than the other and so often we get hung up@on addressing only half of the side of improvement. Whether we are training for a 100m sprint or 1RM squat, or our first 5k or long distance adventure, we need to be honest about where we are lacking and target the “lowest hanging fruit”.

Stuckness is something we’ve all experienced, on projects, in training or work or life. We are trying to do something that we think we know how to do, or what to do next, but progress freezes by our own fault or that of someone or something else.

Stuckness is immeasurably frustrating. There is, however, a way through stuckness that would seem to be a simple as getting stuck in the first place.
Do one thing, and only one thing at al time.

That is how you get unstuck.

Building up to a win, a record, a goal is usually what gets us started and keeps us motivated, but it is not always the reason for these once in a lifetime performances.
Nate Brown felt that this weekend. Sometimes, there is nothing on the line, and you still do something extraordinary not because you needed to, but because you wanted to, because you love it. After all, aren’t we all doing these activities because we find fun and joy in them? Because we love them?

In so many things in life we often focus on bringing up the top, reaching for a higher limit.
While this can be exciting, the real work and improvement comes not when pushing the top, but rather when we slow down and more importantly, by how much we slow down.
Don’t be the fastest, slow down the least.

McGill, Knees Over Toes, FRC, even science based PT, you name it. All of these schools of thought have some success helping folks come back from a specific set of injuries. There seems to be one common theme however, and that is the fundamental nature of their “rehab”.
All of them seem to target, not strength, but muscular endurance. The ability of a muscle to not just produce more force but resist fatigue, and have its strength endure.
Much more of the mechanism of chronic injury seems to be the fault of this muscle endurance over the failure of other systems, thus the remedy would seem to be to train this deficit.
While targeting its exact fault may not always be obvious, its success is well documented in thousands of accounts of “miraculous recoveries”, so take that for what it’s worth, and maybe consider training this quality to become a more durable human.

“You don’t get stronger in the gym, you actually get weaker. You get stronger when you rest”

Resting is important, but for the sake of saving routine and sanity, complete rest is hardly advisable for most people that are in need of a deload week.

There are many ways you can still train and not cause more stress to recover from: light reps for skill, doing only accessories, or, my favorite if trying to preserve the max effort method, an exercise variation that will be hard, but with much less absolute load than you are currently used to.

Using low boxes and specialty bars is a great way to do this in the gym.
It is important to keep your routine, and the mental benefits of still being able to “train” are equally important. You just have to find something you suck at and do it.

Maybe I’m talking too much from a place of privilege to let my self adapt to this type of weather, but it’s hard to forget that we are all capable of doing it, it just requires some discomfort a little attention and a lot of water.
Heat acclimatization is very useful especially in our ever increasingly warm world. It also has a host of other training benefits that I have touched on in past posts.
No, I’m not saying that we are better than you or that you should suddenly shut off your AC and get to it (although there may be a progressive plan you could use), all that I am highlighting is that we are all capable of adapting to this heat stress with the proper graded exposure.
Enjoy the weather and I hope whether you’re used to it or not, you can stay comfortable.

“Good Form” is an interesting topic. Did I do this squat with it? Many would say no, but for a young and hungry lifter who wanted to find the edge and learn to push past it, maybe this squat was perfect form. Exactly what I needed mentally at the time, but maybe not orthopedically.
Good form is almost more of a confidence in technique and ex*****on than it is a position in space through time. We try to teach that confidence to beginners so they too can have “good form”. No matter what, it takes time, and practice and building strength. Your form will get better as your form gets closer to the one you need to achieve your goals.
We so often fall short in looking at form on the surface that we forget about all the other ways something can be “good”, this squat is an example of that. The mentality and psychology and neural drive of this squat were on point, the positions? That’s up to you to decide.