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