Peaking strength
18 January 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
It is interesting to attempt to induce a strength peak in a stranger as opposed to yourself. This sounds a bit confusing so let me elaborate: I am working with a group of five folks, all were fitness neophytes, all were dramatically overweight and facing varieties of obesity-related health dilemmas. Id never met any of them before this physical transformation experiment began 120 days ago. Since September 15th 2005 weve worked together in three areas: cardiovascular exercise (outdoor walking), nutrition (taste-infused performance eating) and progressive resistance (power-training) training. In the latter, we got together three times and practiced three lifts for three sets each: squat, bench press, deadlift. Not a single other progressive resistance exercise was allowednot a single curl, leg curl, calf raise, overhead press, chin, pulldown, pushdownzero, nada, nothing other than the three lifts done three times weekly for three sets each. No abdominal work of any kind. My idea was to see how little we could do and still elicit results. What was the essential essence, the irreducible core that could be minimally practiced - yet still enough to elicit measurable results? Again these folks had zero weight training experience they were purposefully selected for this reason I didnt want any ex-athletes with lots of muscle memory that could be whipped into shape within 4-weeks time. On the contrary I wanted to make it as hard as possible on myself and my methods to prove or disprove the validity of the methodology. To make it more difficult, total training time for both cardio and weight training was purposefully limited to seven cumulative hours per week, one hour per day. Finally the only nutritional tools would be food purchased from the grocery store; no supplements, no pills, potions or fat loss products. By purposefully self-inflicting all these severe limitations and saddling my self with lots of self-imposed restrictions, the Purposefully Primitive methodology would rise or fall on its own merits.
Over the intervening four months the five participants made progress to varying degrees: one interesting phenomena was that those who bought into the totality of the three-pronged approach made the most improvement and those who bought into the three legs of the fitness triad the least made the least improvement. Those who bought into the program to varying degrees made progress in direct proportion to the degree they got with the program. I came up with the idea to end this experiment by having the participants compete at the AAU world championships: meet director Judy Woods was kind enough to allow our folks to compete and the table was set. As Ive said in the past, a person only thinks theyre training with focus and intensity until they put themselves on the spot and enter a competition at which friends, family, peers and coaches will be watching them perform in the white hot heat of the competitive arena. When you have a looming date with destiny, a competitive Armageddon that moves ever closer, training sessions take on a level of intensity that you never thought possible. This became readily apparent as I supervised sessions for my five competitors over the past 2-3 weeks. Squats got lower; benches were paused on the chest for long periods, deadlifts pulled smoothly as reps were dropped, poundage increased and the chatter and bantering diminished. A cold concentration took hold of the group without me having to say a word. The five some looked to me for guidance and I was struck with how training sessions for them were different than when I prepared myself to compete. I found that I was far more likely to change a workout for myself and far more inclined to be rigid when preparing others.
I found I was far less likely to improvise training when I was supervising others of course these folks were stone-cold rookies entering their first athletic competition of any type and for this reason could not be given the latitude to make their own training decisions. If the schedule called for 100×2 in a particular lift than thats what we adhered to - whereas if it were me and I felt a little off I would lower the scheduled poundage or reps in a heartbeat. Conversely if I felt really good the target weight or reps might be upped. I pondered if rigid adherence might trump loose improvisation but suspect the best approach might lie somewhere in between; the problem being I cant get inside someones head or body to determine if the ache, pain or illness is real (by my standards) or unconsciously or subconsciously exaggerated by people who dont really know what real injury or pain is. On the other hand you cant be overly dismissive of anothers complaint or you could risk real injury that can derail the progress train altogether. One of my participants picked up a nagging back pain that she felt was unrelated to our training it was amplified when she took on a part time job that required she stand on a concrete slab four hours a day. What was initially a slight irritation became a serious impediment that caused me to not allow her to squat or deadlift for six sessions. Had I been a little more insightful this might have been nipped in the bud by handling the initial complaint differently and a bit more sympathetically - who can say with any degree of certainty? Had I experienced what I am now sure she experienced, I would have given myself a few sessions off without a seconds hesitation. But Im learning. The whole deal gets its final report card in nine days. It will be very interesting to see how it shakes out and who in the group rises to the competitive occasion and if anyone is overwhelmed by it. Ill keep you posted
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