Category: Lifting Mindset

I have referenced this before, but can’t seem to find it on here, so it’s getting it’s own post.

J.C. Hise was the old timer that pulled 700lbs without warmup after hoboing his way across the country on a freight train to visit a friend in New Jersey.

There’s a few times this story is referenced on The Tight Tan Slacks Of Dezso Ban, I’ll let you search for them.

700lbs cold, and after a rough trip, now that is strong. Our need for warmups and perfect conditions is largely mental weakness. We’re capable of far more.

-J

(Something of a flow writing response after reading this : “The Reality Of The Fitness World”, read it so the named at the end make sense.)

I refuse to believe that anything a human can do with drug help can not also be done without the drug help.

A human body is still a human body either way, both ways, juiced to the gills, “natural/drug free”, and natural/drug free.

Mindset matters far far more.

Just how many times have you felt low energy, berated yourself into doing physical activity, and actually had good lifts that day, far beyond what the indicators indicated?

Man, how many times that’s been the case.

My opinion? There’s a misconception that soreness is guaranteed. Drugs, no drugs, whatever.

Work capacity can be damn high.
(It may take you a decade of mostly full body decent volume activity.)

Take any “crazy” soreness inducing protocol, and I guarantee that someone out there at some point did it nonchalantly waking up the next morning fresh as a daisy ready to do it again.

See if you can find on Ditillo/Dezso Ban the anecdote of the old man out 20 rep squatting an NFL player back in the day…work capacity, still feeling fresh, years of ADAPTION.

Personally I was thrilled to see Eric Bugenhagen doing 20 reps squats daily, it showed that I’m not the only one doing things like German Volume Training (10×10) squats on a daily basis.

I’ve likely said, but at least thought “fuck you, neither of our numbers are high enough to dip into recovery”.

State of mind is huge. Think like the above whatever numbers you are at.

Adaption is a thing, it exists, despite what everyone in your gym will say. And go hard enough, which really is quite a moderate amount, and oh boy, you’ll adapt…BIG TIME.

If frequent anything was the norm we’d have far better performances on any of those things, be it well anything. I don’t want to have to list EVERY damn exercise here.

The mistake people make is in taking the time off. Bob in the above link fucks himself over by not doing his damnedest on those stairs with more frequency. Yeah, it sucks at first, but then you adapt. The frequency forces your body to learn to function more quickly, and more often than not Newton’s law of an object in motion staying in motion applies. This extra motion will also make at least some of the soreness go away too.

The goal as a natural is to be so mad that you outwork and make progress past EVERYONE, be they natural, on steroids, good genetics, whatever.

Bob should have in mind running faster and longer than Joe while wearing a back pack, goddamn ankle weights, work boots, while shouldering Jessica, and still walking down when he’s done… breathing in victory and (hopefully) fresh air from the building roof.

TO OUTWORK AND PROGRESS PAST EVERYONE!

Go to the gym, and PT at home.
If you don’t go to the gym that day still PT at home, and maybe also lift in the yard.
PT, PT again, then PT some more.
Build up a FREAKISH work capacity and recovery ability.

EVERY DAMN DAY do at least a minimal amount of physical activity.

See that you CAN up the calories and OUTTRAIN them.

See that you CAN function fine on low calories, or low sleep, or while very sore. See that these factors can be combined, and…

See that you’re ALWAYS capable.

Get fucking mean and DECIDE…

THAT YOU WILL FUCKING WIN!

-J

Hard work is very conditioned, very much perception.

Between sets I pace around, shake out my arms and legs.

During the last rep or two I make a little noise, dropping the lever a few reps into the burn.

Yeah, I’d repped the stack even with some isometric holds, and slower negatives, but I stopped only a few reps into the burn.

It’s not like I used every intensity multiplier.

All in all it wasn’t truly all that hard of a set, after all, if it was would I really even have been able to do 5 sets in a roughly 10-15 minute time span?

Long rest periods for me yeah, but it definitely wasn’t a Metzer HIT set.

The girl using the leg extension after me throwing her head back in strain likely wasn’t going any harder either.

Imagine a person having a fully stocked bodybuilding gym…but with no prior knowledge, nor ever hearing any gym talk.

A twilight zone of an empty gym, with infinite weight, and every machine, but no lifting literature, YouTube, or talk.

Just the illustrations of the exercise.

With no preconceived notion of effort and using only common sense, this person would get far stronger, far quicker, and not act like they’re working hard until they’re far past where we act like we are straining.

Seeing a million grimaces of Tom Platz has conditioned us to act like that. We don’t need to.

-J

The weights are for building yourself up, not tearing yourself down.

You’re going too far if you’re snapping shit like that Viking did with his mast back in the day.

I’m not saying to not push, to not test yourself…I’m trying to hammer out a philosophical point here.

It’s insanity to push a barbell to the point you break down. Frankly, you should have seen it coming a long while prior.

The gym shouldn’t be so important to you that you’re willing to break yourself over it, especially when you consider the plain fact that more people have been strong without gyms than strong with gyms.

The gym is a simply a subpar substitute for something missing from our lives in the modern world…and no giant squat or big arms will truly replace it.

Ego.

We’re not conquering all that much physically training, at least not at the intensities you, me, everyone is truly training at the large majority of the time.

Lifting weights is a very easy and simple thing.

It’s not hard to lift more, longer, better.

You don’t need a billion helping hands in the form of dieticians, trainers, partners, air conditioning, calibrated plates, machines, and so on and so forth. In fact you’re better off with less.

Ahh, back to the original point.

Weights are for building you up.

When they are tearing you down, be it physically or mentally, you need to get introspective and reevaluate. Find out where you went off course.

The best days were truly those at the beginning, full of wonder and hope, where you were in it for all the right reasons.

Where location didn’t matter, where what equipment you did or didn’t have didn’t matter, when it was pure. No dues, sometimes locked out of the weight room, when those around you were as paint on a canvas that you hardly noticed.

Maybe I’m quitting the gym, maybe not. However I know this, I’m never done training.

-J

You ever heard those anecdotes of the little granny flipping a car off her grandkid?

I’ve read a million times stuff saying the average human being off the street, untrained, nothing special is walking around tapping into maybe 30% of their physical abilities.

I’ve seen it said that the world record holder is likely tapping into the 70%-80% of their true abilities.

Think about that for a second…the world record is leaving a good deal on the table, be this strength, endurance, or power.

I’ll use the example of Magnusson’s world record raw deadlift:

(Not the angle I’ve usually seen it from, though the side view of a deadlift is likely preferable, notice how low he dips, and…the blonde on the right holding the sign looks better from this angle.)

Now picture that as a 1269lb – 1450 raw pull…that’s what we’re talking is on the table…for Benedikt Magnusson specifically.

You have a governor/regulator on your physical abilities.

It can be shut off or ignored to a degree through training or circumstances. See the mental aspect:

Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.” – Henry Ford

and…

Your tendons and ligaments often are acting as this governor over your muscular power.

Partial reps, and other overload methods being a way to both up percentage that the governor kicks in at and strengthen the tendons/ligaments themselves.

Your muscles are actually capable of a lot more than your’re doing, catch those tendons and ligaments up and oh boy…you’ll be doing some high caliber shit.

However I stand by the mental being the far more important side. See the frequently used granny example, and whether you think you can or can’t.

Ever just not be able to grind through a weight? Particularly one that you know that you can do, likely having done it many a time in the past?

I’ve been like that for a while with ~500lb deadlifts. I’ve pulled 495 cold before, I’ve pulled 505 on an axle (both raw). Why am I missing them? It’s mental, that governor/regulator signal switches on signaling my brain to “dump it” at about knee height.

Now here’s where it gets weird.

I still have the necessary strength in every specific muscle group, that signal is a psychological thing. I’m actually stronger on everything now than when I was pulling 5 plates on a regular basis in the not so distant past, and…

I can hack past it…with a twist, by using simple variation.

If I didn’t have the necessary strength for a 5 plate pull, I wouldn’t have been able to hit a 495 Jefferson deadlift with a good deal of horizontal swinging of the barbell. In fact that Jefferson lift would look to any fitness YouTuber as me asking to “snap my shit up” or other such nonsense. Yup, I’m not weaker.

That’s my governor/regulator in action in frankly an annoying ass way.

We have far more performance potential than the level at which we are  currently performing, all of us, from the weakest runt to the world record holder.

Now that you know this, you can go past it.

-J

Ok, a rundown:

•You could go to the gym without headphones.

This is the option most “me” considering it’s my idea. The goal here is to get into the moment and become oblivious to the garbage pop over the gym’s speakers.

(Even when lifting with headphones, I often toss them for PR sets and/or top sets on certain movements.)

• A pre-made playlist.

•The 1 song playlist. (Basically you pick one song and have it on repeat for the entire session. I swear I got this from Bold And Determined, but I can’t seem to find the post.)

Recently done with:

though I’ve used songs across all genres depending on mood at various times.

•Something nourishing to your brain and soul…classical music (got the idea from Brooks Kubick), or bagpipes (my spin on that, listen to music that is part of your soul, the music of your blood).

There, I just simplified lifting music for you considerably.

-J

P.S. follow the classical and bagpipe music links, you’ll thank me.