04 Sep Getting Sweaty vs. Training
Getting Sweaty….
I have a quote I drop from time to time, particularly with new clients, when they are training with me:
“It is easy to make you sweat, it is hard to make you better.”
Like many of you, I started my strength training career in high school, a testosterone fueled school gym when the only concern was how much you could bench, and football coaches ran the gym with no concern except whether you worked yourself into a stupor.
Often times, the success of a training program was judged by how many people puked or were so drained they could barely drag themselves out of the gym.
Let’s get to the point, the aim here is not to beat you down so that you can’t function the rest of the day.
If that is what you are looking for, there are plenty of cheap little boot camps that will make you do a 5k of burpees followed by an insane of box jumps and all the crap that wears you out, but does little to help you address your specific needs and goals.
Training
Activity is preferential to being sedentary, but in truth, designing a program that is effective, engaging, and safe while simultaneously helping you with your fitness and physique goals is equal parts art and science.
Our society has a very short-term memory and is bored easily. Keeping people engaged in their goals is a challenge as is creating an atmosphere of camaraderie, energy, and enjoyment. Quite simply, if people don’t enjoy doing it, they won’t do it.
If you have found some stagnation in your training, here are a few easy to apply changes that you can immediately implement to get more out of your time with me.
1. Lift some damn weight! If you are staying light because you are a woman and are afraid of getting big, let me tell you, it’s not that easy! If it were most guys in the US would look like Schwarzenegger. Women have, typically, 5-10% of the muscle-building hormone Testosterone. You can’t get as big as men naturally and certainly not with the Rep, set, and rest schemes I have for you here. Don’t be afraid of big numbers on the bar or your sheets and slap some iron on there!
2. Record your progress on your sheets. This goes hand in hand with the first point. How do you know how much weight to lift, if you don’t know what you have done in the past? Yes, the sheets help us to know what to do, when and where to do it, but mostly it allows us to track our progress to make sure that we are continually improving.
3. Push yourself harder during the finisher. The finishers are designed to give you that feel that you just got your ass kicked. People do want that so after I give you what you need, I give you what you want. However, too often, people coast through them. I know you are worn down some when we get to the end, but pushing yourself harder and harder is how we improve. Our body adapts to stress, and unless we continue to increase the amount of stress, our body plateaus. Let it all hang out and scrape yourself up afterwards.
These simple times will not only improve the quality of your workout, but they will improve the quality and quantity of your results. As long as your form is up to par, get after it and continue to get better.
After all, you’re going to be here anyway, you might as well get something out of it?.
For more information, particularly for women, check this great article out on training mistakes women make: http://www.t-nation.com/training/10-mistakes-women-make-in-the-gym
