The Minimum Effective Dose

More is always better right?  Well... not always.  In fact, maybe not very often.  An age old trap for lifters is thinking that if I just do a little more work every time I go to the gym, I'll keep getting closer to meeting my goals.  So you keep going to the gym and hitting it hard, sometimes twice a day, week in and week out. You start to notice that your shoulders are aching when you wake up in the morning, but you've got a deadline for your goals so you have to keep adding weight.  Then your knees start to hurt, but you need to get a few extra sets of squats in.  You're not sleeping that well.  Even worse, your progress has come grinding to a halt.  Now what?  It seems like adding even more work is the ticket to get the numbers moving again, but where is the motivation to train?  You're hurting, tired, and stuck.  So let's rewind, what should you have done?

Training is like medicine.  You administer a dose and look for a response.  You don't prescribe chemotherapy to someone suffering from a cold.  You tell them to go take some over the counter decongestant and wait it out.  It's the minimum effective dose.  If you start at the nuclear option, there's nowhere else to progress if that doesn't work.  In addition, most drugs have side effects.  The less of a drug you can take to get the desired effect, the less you have to deal with the side effects.  Thinking of training in this way means, I'll do the least amount of work in the simplest possible way that will garner a training effect.  It limits the side effects (excessive soreness, joint pain, potential injury) and it leaves me with options for increasing the dose when the current dose stops working (different set and rep schemes, more sessions, etc.).

We can look at this from a variety of angles.  If you're training for strength and a simple progression of 3 sets of 5 reps will allow you to make progress, why make it any more complicated than that?  Pick all of the low hanging fruit you can, because progress is going to be much more difficult in the future.  There's no need to add bands and chains and specialty bars when you're a new lifter.  There's no need to rotate workouts every week or to do odd lifts to build your basic movements.  Simply practice the basic movements with enough weight on the bar to allow you to make progress.

If you're a crossfitter, do the WOD with weights and movements that allow you to move with the highest possible quality.  Get used to your body and learn how to use it.  You probably don't need to be training 2-3 times per day, 6 days per week at this point.  Get your 3-5 training sessions in per week and allow time for recovery.  When the progress stops, then you can address the reasons and perhaps the next step will be to up the dose.

If you're a runner, follow a plan that doesn't run you into the ground 365 days out of the year.  I think the reason so many runners are injured is that they don't have an off season.  Repetitive pounding on your ankles, knees, and hips is going to take its toll.  Build your running to your competitive season and then bring the dose back down to allow your body to recover.  Couch to 5k programs are great, if they get you off the couch and prepared for a 5k.  However, it could be that you should take a slower progression towards being the runner you want to be to allow you to make progress over a longer period of time.

So take a step back and look at your training.  Are you doing too much?  Do you go into workouts recovered and ready to work hard, or are you feeling beat up and tired?  If the goal is progress, and it should be, then you need to keep the goal the goal rather than just doing work for work's sake.  Look for the minimum effective dose that will carry you towards your goals.  Be smart, stay healthy, and train hard!

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Reset

"...have you tried turning it off and then back on again?"

You can hear the tech support guy's tired voice intone over the phone the first step of every technology troubleshooting process ever.  He's said it so many times to so many people, many of them inexperienced enough with technology that turning it off might require a few steps, that the phrase has lost its meaning to him.  It's a wonderful thing to keep in mind that it's almost always possible to reset the system.  It seems like that is part of the natural process of things in life, although sometimes it can be forced upon you if you are not diligently keeping tabs on what's important.  Because everything in the world falls apart when energy is not being spent to keep it together and we have limited energy and attention to keep it all moving, we'll be faced with the need to reset a variety of things at various times.  So what does that look like?

As a husband and a dad, I need constant resets in family life.  It's easy to take the people who are always around you for granted.  So I need to reset my attention and where I spend my energy to make sure that I'm working on keeping family a priority both in day-to-day life and in the big 30,000 foot level decisions we make.  Otherwise people tend to drift apart due to the universal principle I mentioned above, everything tends towards falling apart.  In this case I like to reset by unplugging from the nonessential parts of life, focusing on my family, and then plugging in the other stuff little by little.

As a business owner and as an employee I need constant resets.  If you aren't diligent in what you are doing as your trade, it's pretty easy to get in a rut and start mailing it in.  Once things get stale, you aren't doing your best work, no innovation is likely, and someone who is still hungry and having fun will be vying for your spot.  My favorite reset from working is camping, but we all need some kind of break to turn it off so we can turn it back on again.  Recreation is literally re-creating yourself through play and various pursuits you enjoy so that you can return to work refreshed with some new perspectives and ideas to keep things moving forward in new and interesting ways.

As a lifter I need regular resets.  If you continuously load your body with more and more work, you will eventually either bench press a school bus or you will break.  While I've seen a few guys who looked like a bus was not out of the question, it's more likely that you'll develop tendinitis or tear a muscle or some other malady if you never reset your training to give your body a rest.  If you don't respect your body and always ask more and more of it, it will let you know that that is unacceptable.  You can't treat your friends and loved ones like that or you won't have many left hanging around you.  While an injury can be a huge set back, sometimes it's your body's way of forcing a reset.  If it happens to you, take the time to consider why it happened.  Are you pressing towards your goals with too much haste, not allowing for things like recovery and rest?  Are your goals even realistic?  Have things been hurting for awhile, but you're ignoring it or treating it with your daily regimen of vitamin I (ibuprofen)?  Maybe it will go away is a five word phrase that leads to failure.

Since this is mostly a training blog, let's think of a few ways your training could be in need of a reset.

1.  You've stopped making progress.  This is the clearest sign you need to rethink things and take a new angle on your training.  If something you were doing was working and now it is not, you need to assess and make adjustments.  Dan John famously said that everything works... for about six weeks.  When you stop getting stronger, it's time to reset.  That could mean changing exercises or doing the same exercises with different implements for a little while.  More likely just changing the load, sets, and reps will do the trick.  The newer you are as a lifter, the less variety you need in your training to keep making progress.  The simplest reset is just to knock about 10% of the weight off the bar and then build back up.  It seems like your going backwards, but the reset gives your body some much needed recovery and allows you to train long term rather than burning out in a few months.

2.  Your technique is falling apart.  It's pretty common for technique to suffer as you approach 100% effort on a lift.  While some small changes in technique might be okay, big changes under a load can lead to injury.  The easiest example for this is squatting. When I have a lifter who is making great progress in bar weight but they stop squatting all the way to proper depth because they are afraid they'll be stapled to the floor at the bottom, it's time for a reset.  In this fashion a trainee can unload the bar some, get a little rest, and practice the exercise for more reps with less load on their body.  As they progress back up in weight the rest and the skill practice lead to new personal records.

3.  You've lost interest.  Let's face it... squatting every week for your whole life might be a little boring for some people.  It's probably the best way to be really strong and durable, but only if you do it.  So if your program is so boring that you're avoiding the gym, it could be time to step back and reassess what you're doing and why you're doing it.  Then you can reset by setting up a new program that adds in a little variety or perhaps add a training partner for a better training environment.  This one also requires a critical eye for program hopping.  If you're making progress on your current program, don't hop around looking for shortcuts.  There aren't any.

4. You're injured.  It happens, and when it happens if forces you to reset.  This could be a car accident that was an acute and totally unexpected injury, but more often for trainees it's something that was totally avoidable.  You've been ignoring all of the warning signals and pushing your body to failure.  You haven't been eating enough of the right foods or sleeping enough or drinking enough water.  That knee has been aching for months, but you haven't stopped to try to figure out why.  When something finally breaks, your body is forcing you to slow down and reset your training.  Early injuries in lifting tend to be smaller than when you're strong enough to move weights that will really break your body when your technique is sloppy or you're over-trained.  Listen to your body and respect it by taking advantage of the above resets and you can probably avoid this type of reset.

Resets are a natural part of life and required to continue making progress.  While it seems like a step back, a simple adjustment to the way you think about resets will make them a constant companion and friend.  Rather than thinking of it as losing ground, think of it as an artist who upon finishing a part of his masterpiece steps back to see how it fits with the whole.  If it adds something to the piece, it stays.  If not, it gets reworked to bring everything together.  Stand back, take in the whole picture, and reset what is necessary.

Every Rep Is Practice

I spend a lot, maybe even most, of my time in gyms.  I'm blessed to coach and lift in environments where people are really working hard, but even though I get to train in solid gyms, it's pretty common to see people going through the motions.  It can happen for a variety of reasons, but I think the biggest one is inattentiveness.  When you are not present for each and every rep of a training session, you will get less benefit from your training and you will create bad habits that have to be retrained in the future.

Every rep you complete of every exercise you do is practice.  Whether you are practicing for grace and perfection in your squat or for wobbly broken knees and a back that is out of position on your heavier sets is up to you.  The biggest offender is warm up sets.  As you unrack the empty bar, you should move with the same precision and purpose as a world record attempt.  Ed Coan talks about the methodical nature of his squat set up in a recent podcast with Mark Bell.  He made the point that because every rep was identical and intentional that when he came to the heavier weights (and he knew about heavy weights with a 900lb deadlift at a body weight of just 220lbs) it was just like the light ones in technical execution.

Musashi, famed Japanese swordsman and author of the Book of Five Rings, when talking about training said essentially the same thing, only about 500 years before me.  He wrote that when one trained they should do so strongly and with purpose.  There is no sense in wasted reps done without attention to detail, striving for perfection.  In weight lifting they build bad habits that can lead to injury and missing your full potential as an athlete.  In sword fighting, it can get you killed.

Knowing that just going through the motions sucks the life out of your training, how do you stay present for each and every rep in a training session?  Start by simply making an effort to be aware of what you are doing.  Feel your breathing, your balance, your position as you move through your warm up sets.  Strive for perfection as you prepare your body to work hard.  Intentionally set aside intruding thoughts as you train.  When it's time to squat, it's time to think about squats.  When the work report or assignment from school starts to creep in, set it aside and practice focusing on the task at hand.  When your attention is divided, you will not work as hard and the work will not be as effective as a result.  Realize that this is a practice and it will take practice to master it.  When you are making an effort to stay focused on one thing, you will probably notice how distracted you tend to be as you move through a training session.  With time and discipline, you will be able to be fully present and fully immerse yourself in your training.  That kind of 100% effort, stretched out over a long period of time is the way to maximum results.  Remember, every rep is practice.  As you practice, you will develop habits.  Your habits will dictate your results.  Put your full attention into every rep, every day and watch your training take off.