Before you read this section make up your mind that you are going to listen. If not, just skip it. There are many articles in the strength and conditioning world about this topic and all elite athletes seem to sing the same tune.
We have all been through similar experiences and wish we could tell our younger selves what to do differently.
The problem is that our
younger selves probably wouldn’t listen and that is still the issue when trying to help novice athletes. So I command you to listen! These lessons are not ground breaking. Most people know roughly the right things to be doing – but actually doing them and being consistent about them is what is lacking. Outlined below are the things I would have absolutely hammered home to myself when first starting out strength training.
1. Emphasize Technique Over Weight: This is a perfect example of something that pretty much everybody knows, and knows to be sound advice, but is so infrequently followed. There is never a good reason to add more weight on
the bar if form and technique are sloppy. It is a hard thing to do, especially for younger athletes in high school or anyone lifting in a highly competitive environment. It’s a natural instinct to sacrifice form in order to lift more weight. But if an athlete is truly focused on the big picture, then honing technique and proper form are far more important than the weight being lifted. If the strongest person in a group has terrible form, chances are they will get injured and suffer major setbacks. But if a weaker athlete practices perfect form and stays with weights they can handle without sacrificing form, this athlete will eventually become the strongest lifter merely by persistence and making gradual, consistent gains while staying healthy.
2. Be Patient: To reach the top in any sport, particularly powerlifting and strength sports, it is truly a marathon and not a sprint. There are no shortcuts to the top and it takes time and consistent effort over many years.
Powerlifting is a unique sport in that the top lifters in the world make themselves easily accessible to beginners. Often times the beginners focus on what the top lifters are doing right now trying to emulate that. It is almost certain that the top lifters in the world did something different to get where they are at, than what they are currently doing. Often the current success is the only thing being observed and not the years of struggle, injury, and learning that went into getting to the top. This would be like taking someone who is just learning how to play basketball, and teaching them fancy through the leg dribbles and trick passing without teaching them the basics of a jump shot first. One of the most frustrating things I see with novice and
intermediate lifters is blaming lack of progress on a ‘plateau’ when not knowing what it truly is. Because the human body is exceptionally efficient at responding to stress and especially resistance training, gains come very easy to beginners. The longer an athlete has been training, the harder it is to continue making both hypertrophy and strength gains. Often what is called a plateau is not really a plateau. So many times a lifter thinks they have hit a plateau and needs to switch programs or ‘confuse the muscle’. It’s tough love but sometimes it really just takes time and persistence to get what you want.
There is a problem in today’s world with the need for instant gratification. If an athlete didn’t put 15 pounds on their bench press this month like they did last month, they think they have hit a plateau and something is wrong. There have been phases in my training where I have been healthy, getting rest and nutrition, and ecstatic to put 10 pounds on my bench press in a year. Rome wasn’t built in a day and you wouldn’t create an impressive wood carving with a few swings of a chisel and hammer – it takes countless hours of fine tuning to make a finished product with a very small tool. Sometimes you are healthy, getting plenty of sleep, eating great, training with great technique, have your programming on point, and the ONLY thing that will get you stronger is months and years of consistency and grinding.
3. Listen: Much of the best lifting advice I have received has been from people weaker than me. There are a lot of exceptionally smart people out there who may not be as strong as you, but have been through a situation in their lifting career that is similar to what you are struggling with. It could be a technique
issue, programming issue, or gear issue. Don’t automatically discredit another lifter’s advice simply because they are not as strong as you. Listen to everything that everyone has to say, filter through the nonsense, and pick out the things you think can be useful and try them out. Even a beginner may have figured something out or looked at something from a different perspective than you ever thought to.
4. Save the Ego: There is a huge selection of exercises out there that provide very little return in getting stronger but stroke the ego immensely.
Being a novice or intermediate lifter makes you especially susceptible to this because these exercises generally allow you to move more weight than you can do in your competition
movements. The risk
of injury is tremendously high and the reward of improving competition lifts is abysmally low. A good rule of thumb is that if you are moving more weight in an accessory lift than you do in your competition lift because you can cheat the form more, don’t do it. Some of the main lifts that come to mind are:
performing cheat shrugs with more than you deadlift, performing hip thrusters with more than you deadlift, and deadlifting with straps if your grip is a weak point.
5. Find a Role Model: If you want to have a healthy, successful strength career it is important to find people to look up to and make sure those people exemplify traits that you can follow to make yourself better. Find a role model who trains smart, consistently, and has shown improvement from year to year. Find somebody who understands training, technique, rest, recovery, and how to overcome setbacks and keep getting after it. Hopefully you can reach out to this person and pick their brain, get their advice, and learn from them. Brad Gillingham has been my primary role model as a competitor because he has been competing as long as I have been alive and, even as a masters lifter, is able to compete at IPF Open Worlds. Brad is also a taller lifter so I’m able to watch, learn, and emulate some of his techniques.
He has deadlifted 800 pounds or more over 100 times in competition which is one of the most impressive accomplishments I have ever heard of. Another great lifter who is still in the younger generation to look up to, learn from, and follow would be Mike Tuchscherer. Many lifters starting out choose role models based on notoriety and tend to gravitate towards the internet heroes. These lifters are usually just a flash in the pan. Typically they are
genetic freaks who put up some huge numbers with sloppy technique and have not studied and practiced the iron game for years. Throwing up some impressive YouTube lifts that wouldn’t pass in competition seems to get the followers and fans, but to truly be a great lifter, follow the athletes with track records of success in international competitions.
INJURIES
Play around in this iron game long enough and I promise your body will get mashed up.
Between college athletics and powerlifting, I have had a number of significant injuries:
Left and right knee menisci torn
Left and right hip labrums torn
Left and right shoulder labrums torn
Partially torn patella tendon
Numerous herniated/ruptured discs
I have been fortunate that I have not suffered a serious muscle tear, so I do not have advice on how to work around that. As can be seen from my injury history I have a tendency to tear the cartilage in my body. I’m not sure if this is genetic or
Winning the gold at the 2012 IPF Raw World Championships. I tore my first hip labrum on my 2nd squat attempt at this meet
just from years of pushing my body through college football and heavy powerlifting.
The most serious injuries I have suffered have been my ruptured L5-S1 disc and torn right hip labrum. I still fight both to this day and I’m sure I will as long as I lift.
I am a firm believer that the #1 opponent of an experienced lifter is injuries. If you can stay healthy so that you are able to train consistently, you can continue to get stronger. The biggest obstacle in continuous improvement as a lifer is having injuries set your training back weeks, even months. I will lay out some guidelines that I follow now to work around injuries. I have had a serious injury in every major joint and going through the school of hard knocks is the best way to learn how to get healthy and, if possible, train around the injury.
Do What You Can: Isolate the Range of Motion (ROM) that hurts, and work every inch around it. A small fraction of injuries are so debilitating that you have pain through 100% of the (ROM) or a similar ROM. Practically every injury leaves parts of the ROM pain free. Be creative and find these ranges and continue to train them hard. Using the safety pins in the power cage, you can set up any movement to isolate a very specific ROM. If the middle 1/3 of the squat hurts your hip due to a torn labrum, perform high pin squats hitting the top 1/3 of the lift then perform bottoms up squats stopping just short of the pain zone. I believe over 75% of strength can be retained doing this during the recovery from a serious injury.
Don’t Push It: Few things are worse than seeing the light at the end of a tunnel coming back from an injury and pushing things too soon and sending yourself backwards. It’s hard not to get overzealous and excited when you feel the strength coming back. But until you are 100% healthy through a full
ROM, you should not even come close to pushing a maximal effort lift. Get full ROM back, become pain free, and return to appreciable strength.
Get Full ROM Back: Before you can return to full strength, you
take a different kind of effort to stay on top of rehab and stretching to gain the full ROM back.
Know The Difference: There is a difference between being hurt and being injured. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and work though something that hurts but is not a serious injury. Lifting heavy stuff will take a toll and sometimes it just takes digging deep and putting the pain out of your mind to push through. But there are also injuries where pushing through the pain will only make things worse. Learn to be able to tell the difference between something that is hurt and something that is injured and consult a doctor if needed.
Coming back from injuries and squatting 904 lbs. in knee sleeves at the 2015 IPF Raw World Championships in Salo, Finland with 2 torn
hip labrums, 2 torn knee menisci, and 2 herniated discs