Let’s talk about the approach you are taking into your training every day. Everyone likes to get a good sweat on and feel like they have crushed it in their workout every day. But are those really the markers we want to be focused on for long term improvements and benefits, let alone what we use to decide if the workout was actually a good one or not?
Consider this fundamental concept, the brain doesn’t know what’s right and wrong. It only knows what’s useful based on the inputs it receives.
Right and wrong is what you think. Think about that for a second.
Thinking a workout was good or bad is purely a thought we have. We need to dig deeper and create better intentions for ourselves in our training and our focus. With this in mind it is imperative we set our intention for every workout to ensure we are working on providing the best inputs possible to our body and our brain to allow for the best output to occur.
For example, let’s talk deadlifts. The big scary lift a lot of people are afraid of. Most often I hear people going into a deadlift workout with language like, “Deadlifts scare me” or “I’m not very good at these”. Both valid points but both ineffective inputs for ourselves to improve. This initial dialogue already sets a tone for ourselves that things are probably not going to go so well and we have already lost focus of what we want to get out of deadlifting to begin with.
Turn your inner dialogue around
Instead what if we adjusted our focus and intention too, “I want to feel my hamstrings and glutes contracting on every rep regardless of the weight on the bar”. Now we have gotten specific. Now we are actually giving our self the opportunity to get something truly effective out of our training. Not on just one rep, but on every rep.
Now I get it sometimes we want to just train to turn our brain “off” and just move. That’s totally fine. But it doesn’t excuse us from still setting intention for the day. If “just wanting to sweat” is truly what we want to do then there are still intentions we can set to get the most out of the day. Let’s take the deadlift scenario again and assume the workout called for you to find a heavy 3 rep max for the day. If your intention is to just get a good sweat on then building up to a heavy 3 rep max for the day is not in your best interests as you will not have the proper focus to effectively do so. What I mean by this is, sure you may hit a heavy 3 rep for the day but did you do so target the areas we want to be working during a deadlift or did every rep use a different area. Rep 1 was all back, rep 2 was forward and quad dominant and rep 3 looked like an angry cat. If this was the case, these reps are not doing anything for you to move the needle forward for your next training session.
Instead, what if you adjusted things and instead of aiming to hit a heavy 3 you aimed to hit 3-5 sets of 10 hamstring and glute targeted deadlift reps with just nasal breathing. Given your original intention of just wanting to get a good sweat on, this change in approach will more effectively allow that to happen and continue to move the needle forward for you.
So, moving forward let’s reframe how we approach and think about our workouts. Yes, we can go into our workouts wanting to crush them but let’s be specific and intentional with what that actual means. Does “crushing it” today mean lightening the load and focused on controlled breath throughout? Does it mean attacking the specific piece but with a very specific target area you want to feel and if you don’t feel that then adjust something to ensure you do? Something I always try to do is never end a workout or a specific part of the days training on a bad rep. If my last rep sucked and I didn’t hit or feel the desired output, then do it again and correct it.
Let’s dig in and demand more from ourselves so we can see even greater growth moving forward. Unsure of how to set specific intentions with your training? Ask us!
Level Up Your Life!
