DavThew
Level 6 Valued Member
After a recent SFG user day course, and a decent amount of reflection I have come to some conclusions about my behaviour in relation to exercise and program hopping.
My training age is quite young. I am 27 and started training with weights at the age of 22. As was pointed out on my course, “You get 2 years for free”, meaning that however you train in your first few years you will probably get results. After that you need to get smart. Furthermore in those first couple of years you seem amazing progress, doubling what you can press above your head within months, conditioning massively improving over your peers etc. This all leads you to expect that progress like that is normal, and achieving less than that is the fault of the program.
You feel the difference really quickly, therefore trusting a program is very easy. As you get older in training years you start to notice the subjective “feeling” changes take more time to set in with a program. You therefore decide that within a few days of starting a program that it’s not for you, and decide to hop to something else.
The guys who are best at this often don’t care what weight they are actually lifting. I remember reading Geoff Neupert writing about how one of the most productive times of his training was when he gave a month over to just doing the getup, often without weight. The pros know that you will have time to improve in other domains at other times.
This leads me on to workout ADHD. I suck at 8 week programs. I rock at 4 week programs. I can tolerate 6 week programs, but spend the 5th week telling myself that I’m almost at the end. I cannot actually remember a point when I finished a program that was formally 8 weeks. That’s not to say I haven’t trained for more than that time in the past. ETK ROP and S&S are both programs I followed for many months, but that was early on, when endless programs continued to show amazing results quickly. Now when I look at an “endless” program I end up thinking about how boring I might find it in seven Tuesdays time, this makes me think the whole program is boring. This derails me.
Working towards technical perfection in a move feels less satisfying in the short term than lifting heavy. It is much more satisfying in the long term. Having received a few fantastic cues from Claire and Roger on the SFG user course I enjoy every rep more, even if I am using weights that I might have laughed at a couple of weeks ago.
The point of training is not to impress everyone with how much weight you can lift. Whilst this is obviously not true for strength athletes who are competitive (powerlifters, strongman, olympic lifters)I am not one of these. Of course some of my friends are impressed that I can bent press the beast when they come to visit my home and ask me about that gargantuan piece of metal in the corner, but that isn’t the point is it? Most of them would be impressed with my doing that with 32kg.
My aims are as follows:
1. Be well conditioned enough to hike comfortably for long distances, to see beautiful things.
2. Be strong enough and well conditioned enough to be a good student of Tae Kwon Do.
3. Be able to walk down the street with my partner when we are both elderly, without a stick or frame, with as little pain as possible.
Training is not for entertainment, but enjoyment makes it much easier. Enjoyment is often tied to variety. I have no current “big weight goals”, yeh sure hitting Sinister might be great, but not enough to make me focus on it whilst neglecting my doubles work for that whole time. Too much variety/distraction is also a problem, to this end I am taking away my choice, I am selling my superfluous training equipment, trimming down to my kettlebells, pullup bar and ab wheel.
So how does this relate to choosing a program? Timescale is probably my big limiting factor. Whenever I do a longer program I worry about neglecting lifts from other areas. For the time being I am going to only work programs that are a MAXIMUM of 6 weeks. So right now I am doing a Chris Lopez swing program with TGUs; yes it basically becomes S&S in the end but I know there is a defined end point, and after that I might go onto something with double kettlebells, or maybe hit my snatch and bent press, who knows? That decision is for 5 weeks and four days time.
My training age is quite young. I am 27 and started training with weights at the age of 22. As was pointed out on my course, “You get 2 years for free”, meaning that however you train in your first few years you will probably get results. After that you need to get smart. Furthermore in those first couple of years you seem amazing progress, doubling what you can press above your head within months, conditioning massively improving over your peers etc. This all leads you to expect that progress like that is normal, and achieving less than that is the fault of the program.
You feel the difference really quickly, therefore trusting a program is very easy. As you get older in training years you start to notice the subjective “feeling” changes take more time to set in with a program. You therefore decide that within a few days of starting a program that it’s not for you, and decide to hop to something else.
The guys who are best at this often don’t care what weight they are actually lifting. I remember reading Geoff Neupert writing about how one of the most productive times of his training was when he gave a month over to just doing the getup, often without weight. The pros know that you will have time to improve in other domains at other times.
This leads me on to workout ADHD. I suck at 8 week programs. I rock at 4 week programs. I can tolerate 6 week programs, but spend the 5th week telling myself that I’m almost at the end. I cannot actually remember a point when I finished a program that was formally 8 weeks. That’s not to say I haven’t trained for more than that time in the past. ETK ROP and S&S are both programs I followed for many months, but that was early on, when endless programs continued to show amazing results quickly. Now when I look at an “endless” program I end up thinking about how boring I might find it in seven Tuesdays time, this makes me think the whole program is boring. This derails me.
Working towards technical perfection in a move feels less satisfying in the short term than lifting heavy. It is much more satisfying in the long term. Having received a few fantastic cues from Claire and Roger on the SFG user course I enjoy every rep more, even if I am using weights that I might have laughed at a couple of weeks ago.
The point of training is not to impress everyone with how much weight you can lift. Whilst this is obviously not true for strength athletes who are competitive (powerlifters, strongman, olympic lifters)I am not one of these. Of course some of my friends are impressed that I can bent press the beast when they come to visit my home and ask me about that gargantuan piece of metal in the corner, but that isn’t the point is it? Most of them would be impressed with my doing that with 32kg.
My aims are as follows:
1. Be well conditioned enough to hike comfortably for long distances, to see beautiful things.
2. Be strong enough and well conditioned enough to be a good student of Tae Kwon Do.
3. Be able to walk down the street with my partner when we are both elderly, without a stick or frame, with as little pain as possible.
Training is not for entertainment, but enjoyment makes it much easier. Enjoyment is often tied to variety. I have no current “big weight goals”, yeh sure hitting Sinister might be great, but not enough to make me focus on it whilst neglecting my doubles work for that whole time. Too much variety/distraction is also a problem, to this end I am taking away my choice, I am selling my superfluous training equipment, trimming down to my kettlebells, pullup bar and ab wheel.
So how does this relate to choosing a program? Timescale is probably my big limiting factor. Whenever I do a longer program I worry about neglecting lifts from other areas. For the time being I am going to only work programs that are a MAXIMUM of 6 weeks. So right now I am doing a Chris Lopez swing program with TGUs; yes it basically becomes S&S in the end but I know there is a defined end point, and after that I might go onto something with double kettlebells, or maybe hit my snatch and bent press, who knows? That decision is for 5 weeks and four days time.
