No matter what people want to believe money will not, and cannot buy you love as in the popular song, or progress in the gym. If it could then like most things you purchase with money you would own it for the life of you, or the product, and that JUST isn’t true when it comes to accomplishments in the gym or on the platform.
The fault I see time and time again is that people try and believe this is true. They hit a new PR and somehow feel they now have a right to that new load any time they step foot in the gym. Now yes, this can be true at very early stages in a lifters training life when linear progress still works, but that soon will fade. Soon you will hit a spot where you cannot live on the laurels of days past. You will hit a point where you must earn your right to lift, not only new loads, but as well the loads you have prior on a daily basis.
You have no iron god given right to a load you had done prior when the moons and stars were aligned and then sun even shined on your rear end for a moment and allowed you to hit that new personal best. That PR was earned from long past work and dedication with loads lower then it and so will the next PR be.
This is where patience and discipline come into play. Where punching that clock on a daily basis is a must, and you have to take each training session for what it is. Have the discipline to come in with a plan you aim to strike at, but as well the maturity and patience to earn that days training. A realization as well the further you go, the stronger you get, the further and further from one another the PR’s will become.
Eventually you will see months between PR attempts. Months between attempts even at the same loads you have done prior. This is where progress comes NOT from trying to go for new loads week after week, tearing yourself down physically and mentally only to regress. Progress comes from weeks and months of hard disciplined back breaking work, refining ability, stacking reps and sets of lifts you have done prior again and again. Looking to do them with just a bit more snap, a bit more ease. One more rep, one more set. Working through fatigue and hitting loads that you have done prior but in a fatigued state from having hit that same load 8 times before this attempt.
This is where you have to truly become a student, and love the journey your on. Progress is fun, training is FUN for everyone when its easy. Like Dave Tate once said in a seminar I hosted. “It’s easy to go from shit to suck, anyone can do that. It’s the going from suck to good, and then good to great that is hard.” To open the same seminar he had a great analogy. He held up a 5 lb plate and asked what it meant to the audience. Most said a nickel, a 5lb plate, change etc.. No! he was right in saying as, I paraphrase ,“This 5 lb plate can represent weeks, months, even years of hard work as you get more advanced. Busting your ass day in, day out, at things you’ve already done, earning your way up to add one more little nickel to the bar”
Wake up people. You have no right to anything when it comes to resistance training, not even the accomplishments you have done prior. You don’t own them. You have to keep at it HARD even to sustain the ability to do them let alone do more. You must walk in each day with a clean slate and a rough plan. Progress later in training is made when you go in with the mind set of putting perfect work in with loads you have done prior.
Earn your way each and every day you go to the gym to higher loads. If it’s there and you know it, strike while the iron is HOT. Though it is only after you make your current 80% ability your bitch that you have the right to even try 85% and so on, and so on. You have to gain a level of maturity and no when to step up and take your shots, and when to back off and take your lashings with loads you have done prior. Confident and knowing that by putting the work in you WILL earn your way to new heights at some point in the future.
No progress is made by you going in and failing while trying to hit 90%, 95%, 100%, or 105% on a day you aren’t able. You’re better off, and will make more progress backing the hell off and taking what you have that day getting some quality work in. Walking away proud of the fact you gave what you had that day, and maybe even a lil bit more, but you didn’t fail. You worked hard, you strained and succeeded.
Again early in training age its easy. One single training session can be considered an event that will cause a stimulus for adaptation. The beauty as well at this stage is you heal just as fast as you reach that stimulus. Each is short and quick. This is why most people see love the so called newbie gains.
Just know those are short lived. The longer you’re in it, the longer these adaptation causing events get. It may take weeks or months of stacking consistent training one on top of another, on top of another, with the accumulated fatigue, load, and volume, to create a stimulus enough to warrant adaptation in an advanced trainee. As well at this stage it’s going to take near as long, or as long for that adaptation, evolution, and growth in the human body to occur. Meaning the work you do today, tomorrow, next and last when at a higher level may not show its true teeth for weeks, or more likely, months down the road.
Again this takes discipline, maturity, patience, and awareness of your body. This is something you will see and find in damn near every single person/athlete and more so coach that has made it, or brought people from beyond mediocre to having made accomplishments worth recognition. If you don’t have it in you then maybe this isn’t for you. Or if you know you love training, lifting, but cannot control your own stupidity and pig headedness in your programming, that’s fine and very normal.
Recognize this. Turn your head off and find yourself a qualified coach to do the programming and thinking for you. What ver you do. For the sake of all the gods of iron and steel stop the stupidity and crying of lack of progress in your training and get in there punch the clock and start using loads you can handle and only move beyond that when you have earned the right to ON A DAILY BASIS.
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