Learning the Factors that Lead to Success
I admit by this time in my life I consider myself to be somewhat older. At my current age of 52, I have had ample opportunity to observe what goes on in the field of strength training and in life in general. In my younger years I was focused on being determined, being willing to sacrifice, and the concept of pushing myself beyond the ordinary with the goal of obtaining extraordinary results. I’ve learned that consistent effort is a part of success, but there is much more to success than putting forth extreme effort and sacrifice. Now I’m more inclined to focus on precision, correctness, and finding the right level of difficulty in order to improve instead of focusing on the greatest level of difficulty in order to improve.
Lessons From Life
Although this article is actually intended to be about strength training, I am going to be occasionally deviating from strength training in order to make a point about strength training. That being said, by far my favorite sport is basketball. Even though I love weight training, I’m much more suited to playing basketball than I am to being a strength athlete. One thing I’ve learned from basketball is that correct repetition at the right level of difficulty will bring improvement. For example, if I shoot 100 free throws per day, I don’t have to keep shooting more and more free throws every day in order to improve. I can improve over time by simply continuing to shoot 100 free throws each day, and then get better and better at it by making more free throws out of 100 than I could in previous weeks or months. Likewise, a sprinter doesn’t have to add on more and more running to their workouts to get better. What they really need to do is to get better at running the same distance. Going farther, training longer, pushing harder; this will help only if a sprinter hasn’t already been training enough. But if they have been training enough, then doing more is missing the point, because the real point is simply to get better at running the same distance by running it faster.
My Approach
This type of thinking is my basic approach to strength training. I’m not trying to do better by attempting to use more weight, reps and sets in every workout. I’m simply going to repeat the same workouts and get better and better at doing them. How am I getting better without doing more? By continuing to work out until the weights become easier to lift and I can lift them faster. As time passes from one workout to the next, I want to finish my workouts without being taxed as much as I was at the start of an adaptation period (please refer to the basics of PPT on this website if you are not familiar with the term, “adaptation period.”). Once I’ve become better at doing a workout, I can then increase the weight a little and start a new adaptation period by allowing that workout to become easier again. The general strategy during an adaptation period is not to keep making the workouts harder, but to get better at doing the same workout so that it becomes easier.
Finding the Right Level of Difficulty
Back to basketball again. Players don’t improve much by only shooting easy shots that they can make with little effort. On the other hand, I have observed many players who fall in love with long range shooting and they keep throwing up dozens and dozens of shots that are simply out of their range. They end up missing over and over again with little improvement in spite of a lot of practice because they are too far out of their range. What a player should strive for is a shooting range that presents the right level of difficulty that allows them to reinforce the skill they already have, yet still challenges them to slightly expand their shooting percentage or shooting range. This is the level of difficulty that serves as an optimum practice zone for consistent improvement.
How Success Comes
When there is correctly performed repetition at the right level of difficulty that is neither too hard, nor too easy, success will come; not just in basketball, but in just about anything in life; including weight training. It’s not simply doing something the same way over and over that brings success, but doing it the right way over and over again, along with doing it at the right level of difficulty that brings success.
Doing things the right way in terms of weight training means picking effective basic exercises that are done with outstanding technique. In terms of training difficulty, it means using a mix of weights that will allow sufficient volume, sufficient rep speed, and a sufficient amount of weight within workouts, and it means using the marker rep, the limit set, and a training frequency that is individualized according to a person’s own recovery and retention ability. Repeatedly doing things right, and doing them at the right level of difficulty is what works and leads to success. Ask yourself if you are applying these concepts to your training and consider making adjustments if necessary. Best of training to you.