CONSISTENCY IS KEY

People often ask questions like: “What is the best way to (insert goal here)?”  This may be an athlete wanting to know how to gain weight, get stronger, faster, or more explosive.  It may also be a general fitness client wanting to get in better shape, drop their body fat, or move and feel better.  Regardless of the goal, the answer is the same: BE CONSISTENT!  

What do I mean by being consistent?  You see it all the time, people joining the gym and quitting after 4 weeks because they haven’t somehow miraculously lost 10-20 pounds.  Or maybe they try a fad diet and again don’t lose 10-20 pounds in 4 weeks, so they stop.  Or even with athletes, they are extremely motivated after that season ending loss and show up to train that following week because the loss is fresh in their mind.   Yet 4 weeks down the road as the pain they felt from the loss has become dull, they are nowhere to be seen. 

Here is where the key component lies.  If you didn’t lose 10-20 pounds in 4 weeks or didn’t all of a sudden become an elite caliber athlete in 4 weeks should you stop?  The answer for those of you that actually pondered that is a resounding NO!  If you do stop you are guaranteed to not reach your goal.  SO DO NOT STOP! Be resilient and keep plugging away!  Train harder and BE CONSISTENT in your approach.  That doesn’t mean that every once in a while you can’t take a day or two off to recover from your training, but when you start to take weeks at a time and have to start all over, you are just wasting precious time.  (Vacations or other issues like busy schedules do happen, but as soon as they are over, get back at it!)  If you can consistently train 4-6 times per week then do it.  If your schedule only allows for 2 workouts per week, then do it!  If you need to find some friends to train with for accountability or more motivation, then do it!  Just be consistent, because as the title to this blog says: “Consistency is key!” 

***On a side note, all Warriors that have been working hard of the last months, weeks, and days… keep kicking ass!  Each day is a new opportunity to get better, take advantage and PUSH THE LIMIT!

Exercise Technique: Training Aggressively While Staying Healthy

I am a firm believer in the saying that there is no such thing as a bad lift or movement, just bad form. 

What does this mean exactly?  There is a lot of debate in the strength and conditioning world over many different exercises and whether or not they are good for your body.  Are certain movements worth doing, or do they put you at too high of an injury risk? 

This is where I have an issue.  In my opinion it’s usually not the movement itself that causes the injury.  It’s the fact that the form of the movement is horrible due to either bad coaching or using too much weight for proper movement (which is also a sign of bad coaching).  You will see it all the time, just watch YouTube or even certain gyms’ promotional videos.  They have people with horrible form and a coach watching them do it and not correcting them.  Now, everybody is always in need of working on their technique, so to say that form in any of these videos should be perfect is unrealistic.  However, if you are the coach and you are either filming or being filmed coaching, you shouldn’t be watching somebody do horrible push-ups or any other movement, and not helping correct them.  To me, that is a red flag. 

While listening to a presentation recently, an Olympic weightlifting coach made a very good statement: watch highlight videos of a lot of the college football teams and watch their Olympic lifts.  You will see guys doing 315 lbs or more on a hang clean that look like they are about to crumble due to horrific form.  Rather than have that guy take some weight off the bar, work on his technique, then progressively work him back to heavier weights, some coaches continue to allow poor technique.  This is when certain “lifts” get bad reputations. 

Having an athlete getting hurt because they are doing too much weight, with horrible technique is just carelessness.  Then coaches, parents, and even athletes begin to talk about whether that “lift” puts them in harm’s way. 

So forget about anybody saying that squats are bad, or overhead lifts might hurt our shoulders.  Follow proper exercise progression and technique and these movements will put you light-years ahead of those not doing them. 

At Warrior Performance Gym we aggressively “Push the Limit” to ensure that you get the most out of your training while still maintaining a healthy body.  

Side Note: If somebody has an injury history or current injury, that changes the game-plan, otherwise...TRAIN ON!

"PUSHING THE LIMIT"

www.warriorperformancegym.com

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-Jon