It's Exercise, Not An Exorcism
“Do as much high quality work as possible, as often as possible, while staying as fresh as possible.” ~ Vladimir Zatsiorsky
Sometimes I’ll flip through the health magazines to “see what’s going on” in the fitness mainstream. Amazing revelations on every page! “This 5-minute Ab Blaster will obliterate your obliques & terrorize your transverse abdominis!” “Do high-intensity interval training on Monday to burn off Sunday Funday!” “This brutal complex will destroy your deltoids, cauterize your quads and blitz your biceps”! I’m only slightly exaggerating. You’re probably familiar with this rhetorical strategy— metaphors of destruction and punishment abound in the glossy world of Popular Fitness.
In case it’s not obvious: I’m not a huge fan.
Other than the false promises, my issue with metaphors of this sort is that they erode the underlying goal of all training: improvement! When we talk about training as destruction or training as punishment, we tend to forget that our time at the gym is about making ourselves better. It’s about setting goals and working to achieve them. We’re here to build something, not to burn something down. Consider the term “work out.” What are we working out—the demons? It’s exercise, not an exorcism.
I encourage you to think of your training as a practice. It is a small chunk of time where you pay mind to your body. As it turns out, it goes both ways—your body can also pay your mind. This is not to say that you shouldn’t train hard. You should train hard. But you always keep your technique perfect. This will obviously help prevent injury, but it will also make you stronger. I’m not going to get off into the weeds on motor patterns, but suffice it to say that every time you do a wonky rep, your body gets the input of the wrong motor pattern. Do this enough, and your groove for that lift is permanently altered, you’re less efficient in the pattern and you are less strong than you should be.
Photo by Jesper Aggergaard on Unsplash
If we start thinking of training as practice, maybe we’ll be more inclined to stop while we’re ahead so we can train again soon, rather than getting so worked that we have to take the rest of the week off or, worse, injure ourselves. If we start thinking of strength as a skill, maybe we can bring mindfulness into the weight room and become much stronger while avoiding the overuse injuries that are far too common in the strength game.
For clarity on this issue, I really like Vladimir Zatsiorsky’s summation of the core principle of training: “do as much high quality work as possible, as often as possible, while staying as fresh as possible.” Don’t miss that last part: while staying as fresh as possible. That’s the easy part to overlook.
The equation that answers Zatsiorsky’s riddle is the holy grail of strength & conditioning, and I won’t claim to have it all figured out, but how about some bullet points to sum things up?
Only do quality reps. Grinding out sloppy reps just to hit an arbitrary number (even if the training plan I wrote calls for it) won’t do much for you unless you’re a bodybuilder.
Do what you can, and be obsessed with making it perfect. This applies to lifting weights and climbing rocks and playing guitars and…pretty much everything?
Train frequently. Pick a handful of lifts and practice them often until they improve. Simple.
Stay fresh. Take a light day if you need to. Use whatever recovery tools you need to use—foam roller, massage, hot tub, etc. Don’t be afraid to cut a session short if you don’t feel right.
Also: don’t ever skip warmups.
The weight room is not a place where wars are waged. It’s a place where clocks get punched. Pay no mind to the hyperbole of the fitness mainstream.
Training is a practice. Strength is a skill.
Fall in love with the process and the practice becomes a pastime.