The Only 4 Things You Need To Know To Get Strong

Hanley · 14-06-2016 9:57am #1

(cross post from an email today)

I was driving home after watching Sarah squat 130kg yesterday and got to thinking;

"what makes her so special? why has she been able to achieve a feat of strength most guys will never manage? does she have some special, unique characteristic that sets her apart?"

(...obviously apart from having me as a boyfriend!)

Before you read any more, watch the squat, it's a 78kg girl crushing 130kg: https://www.instagram.com/p/BGl1ITaLgxf

There is something she has that most don't. 4 things that set her apart.

She'd even mentioned one during training when I said how good her warm ups were looking:

"good, it's only taken 6 years".

It's the same thing JP has, and Eric is getting.

It's one of those things that you "know", but you can't really describe succinctly.

If I could only use one word to describe it, it'd be "grit".

Here's how it breaks down...

======================
The Only 4 Things You Need
To Do To Get Really Strong
======================

1. Follow A Reasonably Solid Training Program
As a beginner/intermediate lifter any good program you follow should work. You don't need €1,000 irons to learn how to hit a golf ball. It might help and speed up your progress, but it's not 100% necessary.

A reasonably solid program will have frequent exposure to the competition lifts. It'll have some element of periodisation. It will include muscle building work. And some prehab/rehab stuff to keep you healthy.

It'll be partnered with a sensible eating approach (sometimes, I STILL forget how much better my training is when I eat well) and adequate sleep/recovery.

I could tell you "omg if you don't train at RevFit there's no hope" - but that's not true. I always boast that we get 6 months of gains in 6 weeks, and 2 years of gains in a quarter of the time for newbies but even that presents a problem - you hit your intermediate plateau sooner, and the grind starts earlier than it would otherwise!

2. Show up
I really believe the hardest part of any training cycle is the mid way mark. Take the 80% max rep squat cycle I'm doing now. I'm not ashamed to say I'm SICK of it. Like I genuinely hate it and want it to die.

It's boring as ****. It hurts. Every set of every day is a mental battle. And I don't enjoy the thought of it (..midworkout it's good craic, but before and after it's not).

Showing up to those training sessions and accepting that even though this one may not be fun, it serves a greater goal, is SO important. Your training won't always be enjoyable, but it's always important to get done.

The enjoyment tends to come when you're part of a team and you can see everyone else suffering with you. It's my favourite part of the RevFit powerlifting team and the reason why I try to coordinate my sessions to train around them as much as possible.

3. Keep Showing Up (this is the #1 most important thing)
Back to JP... he trained with me in my very first bootcamp group all the way back in early 2012. He's been showing up ever since. Seriously... I don't think there's been a 2 week period since then where I haven't seen the guy .

(...and if there was - it's cos he was in the states hiking)

Same could be said for Wes, James and numerous others.

By virtue of the fact he kept showing up, he went from never lifting weights to pulling a very comfortable 172.5kg last weekend. I don't think JP would be insulted if I said he wasn't genetically gifted. He's a regular lad with superhuman work ethic. He keeps showing up. He never complains. He's just chips away each day and is winning as a result.

Here's a vid of his opener for Saturday's comp. It's only about 7.5kg below his last tested max. I'm INCREDIBLY excited to see what he does this weekend: https://www.facebook.com/RevolutionFitnessIreland/videos/1209291752436934/

4. Try Not To Get Too Injured Along The Way
More so than anything, powerlifting is a sport of accumulation. If you hang around long enough, train hard and follow sensible programming - you can't help but get stronger.

You can't transform your muscles, bones and connective tissue overnight. Once you've learned the skill of lifting, there's very little tweaking tekkers will do. You just have to settle into long training cycles grinding out reps.

The longer you can do it, the more varied the exercises are, and the faster your recover, the quicker you'll get strong. Doing that necessitates staying injury free (..and if you're following point 1, you should be).

Powerlifting is hard on your body. You'll have days where you feel beat to **** and things will ache. That's par for the course. It's why we deload and its why we manage volume, intensity and the frequency of exposure to movements - to limit the damage in so far as possible.

Sometimes though, you'll just push a bit past where you should. It happened Ian last week. He was riding an AMAZING wave of training and was due for huge PRs, then test day came and it just didn't materalise. He'd peaked the week before and didn't get to see a true reflection of his strength on test day.

That sucked, and it really hurt, but the good news is we caught it in time - he's onto a 2 week deload after 16 weeks of hard training. If we'd left it any longer, he'd probably start to break down. And that's no good.

Some of the strongest guys I know are in their 40s and 50s. They're lifting 20-30 years. If I'm still functioning the way I should be at that age, there's no way I cannot be freakishly strong. And you can too.

..but look - a big part of all of this is having the experience to not **** up those 4 steps.

ford2600 · 14-06-2016 10:34am

Hanley wrote: »

If I could only use one word to describe it, it'd be "grit".

I don't care what the sport is or how talented someone is, if they haven't got that they have very little.

A little bit of madness helps to...

whippet · 14-06-2016 12:33pm

i'd also put in 'patience' there. Something I've learned very quickly - it won't happen overnight and it you can get your head around slow steady progression you will do alright

Blacktie. · 14-06-2016 2:30pm

ford2600 wrote: »

I don't care what the sport is or how talented someone is, if they haven't got that they have very little.

A little bit of madness helps to...

There's a very good TED talk on this actually. It's done by the author of a book all about it. Which I can't think of right now

. Been meaning to check out the book for a while actually.

jive · 14-06-2016 3:15pm

There'd be plenty more strong people if there was more mobility / flexibility work done. Most people are able to sack up and consistently lift tin while in a caloric surplus, problem is most end up with minor issues which get compounded and become major issues as they progress. Injury leads to regression and lack of interest and/or repeat injury and the cycle continues.

shakedown · 14-06-2016 7:05pm

Blacktie. wrote: »

There's a very good TED talk on this actually. It's done by the author of a book all about it. Which I can't think of right now . Been meaning to check out the book for a while actually.

Angela Duckworth.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/education/edlife/passion-grit-success.html

The Only 4 Things You Need To Know To Get Strong

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