Sometimes I Lie… for Your Own Good
Being a good trainer or coach requires more than just technical know-how and the best stopwatch money can buy – some of the best coaches in the industry have different psychological techniques they can use with their clients to “push their buttons” and get the best results they can. Over the years I’ve come away with a few – after all, I’ve had clients over the years who have referred to their sessions with me as “therapy with a sweat.”
One of my favorite techniques on the training floor?
Lying.
To your face.
Like, really lying.
And I don’t feel bad about it, because it works, if you know who to use it with.
I’ll give you an example. One of our training programs at AST over the last 6 weeks has been this steady progression in the 6-rep range, with a big emphasis on developing strength with compound movements – pressing, rows, box squatting, deadlifts, things like that. At one point chains got involved, even though Mr. T was nowhere to be found and nobody was filming 50 Shades Part 20 in our gym.
They’ve been doing sets of 4-6 reps, then finishing it off with a technique I learned from John Meadows of Mountain Dog Diet – the challenge set. A challenge set is simply taking a given weight, and going all in with it and trying to get as many reps as you possibly can with it. There is no “do this many and you’ve hit your goal” – the intention is to take yourself past the point of it being uncomfortable and reaching complete and utter muscular failure.
I have been training under John’s programming for a little over two years now, and have done many a challenge set. One of the things I love about seeing them come up is the way he writes it – you might see something like “work up to a weight that’s a tough 8 reps. Now, on the last set, do as many as you can. I did 20 reps. Leave nothing in the tank – this should hurt.”
“I did 20 reps.” With a weight that’s tough for 8 reps.
Bullshit, right?
Not at all. For most people, there is a gap between muscular failure and mental failure. Mental failure could very well start at 8 or 9 reps, where it starts to get really tough, lactic acid is starting to pool in your muscle, you’re already tired from what you’ve done up to that point, and you just want to “check the box” and move on. Mental failure and muscular failure rarely line up in the beginning – after all, your brain is a muscle too, and it needs to be trained with strength and stamina just like your legs or back.
I’ll be honest, to this day, I don’t even know if the numbers John writes into those programs are real or not – I just know that if he says he did 20, then goddamn it, I’m going to do 21.
And I’ve been using that same technique with many of the AST members doing that program right now. On Monday night, I had a group of four guys doing floor presses that I’ve been coaching every Monday for the last 6 weeks. Knowing it was the last workout in that program, I started their challenge set by telling them “the best anybody has done so far today is 12 reps. Everybody needs to beat it.”
All four of them got at least 12 reps, with the best performance reaching 16. Using a weight that had been tough to get 6 reps with (not failure, keep in mind – if true failure is a 10, this would have been an 8 or 9 under normal circumstances).
The best part? Nobody had done 12 reps that day. I pulled it completely out of my ass. I knew I could get away with it because those guys had been feeding off of each other’s intensity the entire block, and nobody wanted to be at the bottom of the pile for the day.
I had the same experience the next day I was training one of our clients who had just gotten back from a vacation and was feeling it. When the challenge set came around, I told him about the 16 reps that had been done the night before, and then told him that the best anybody had done on their rows was 18. He ended up doing 18 presses, and 26 rows. It took almost the entire workout, and he looked dangerously close to needing to find out if we’d changed out the battery on our AED machine, but he did it. His personal best up until that point a few weeks earlier was 11 presses, and 12 rows, with less weight. (Sorry, not sorry, Derek!)
And finally, I was training a couple of clients this morning for their leg day, and I haven’t trained them in probably a good 2-3 months. Being that it was their last leg day using the sumo deadlift, a technically challenging movement that they had been working hard on improving, I wanted to see if anybody would call my bluff again.
“Leo, the best so far is 14.”
He did 16.
This was my first time in 3 weeks even doing this particular workout with any of our groups. Again, I pulled it completely out of my ass. It was worth it.
Or, maybe I made this entire story up and none of it ever happened.
I feel so deceived! Was definitely one of the best leg day’s I’ve had though, so I’ll forgive it.
Thanks for lying Zach!