Weights and Plates Podcast - #76 - Leaving Behind the Quitter's Mindset

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Strength training demands a lot from a trainee, especially after the honeymoon wears off (i.e. the novice linear progression starts to get hard). It's hard work, short but intense, and involves facing fear on a regular basis. As you advance into intermediate territory, the time between PR's increases, and requires patience and persistance. The stronger you get, the more you have to pay attention to your recovery factors -- food, sleep, and stress -- to properly recover from workout to workout. Strength training is a weed out process, you might say, for those looking for the easy way out. There are many looking for an easy way out that quit when things get hard.   For those who persist, however, strength training offers many benefits beyond the physical adaptations. Strength training teaches patience and perserverance. It teaches you how to face fear by exposing you to gradually more difficult tasks (adding weight to the bar in small, regular increments). If you stick with this process, you can aquire a tough, resilient mindset, and leave behind the quitter's mindset.   Weights & Plates is now on YouTube! https://youtube.com/@weights_and_plates?si=ebAS8sRtzsPmFQf-   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream Email: [e-mail]  

Thank you for tuning into the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Good evening, friend. How are you today? I'm pretty good, man. This evening here at Phoenix, I'm pretty good. Yeah. If we couldn't tell, yeah. Yeah. A little bit of yawns there, but good. Well, I hosted a, well, I don't know if you want to call it a meet or not. I'm going to call it a meet. It was a strength meet, a strength lifting meet in my garage this weekend. It really wasn't a meet because there was nothing official about this. There was nothing sanctioned about this. Uh, we, we, we generally followed the structure of strength lifting. Uh, however, I was the sole and, uh, the sole arbiter of, you know, whether a lift got

passed or not. Uh, but we had a good time. We had a good time. Uh, three of my clients from that happened to be local came up and, uh, and I had one guy who was remote, who did all of his lifts in a gym. And so we just, we just still impromptu, you know, meet. Then I, I hopped in there and joined him and it was a good time. I had, we had three plate PRS, all three lifters added a plate to one at least one of their lifts. So we had one guy who squatted 405 for the first time. It's pretty exciting. We had a guy pull six plates for the first time. It's pretty nice.

And one of my, is she my youngest lifter? She might be my second youngest lifter. I have a very talented woman that I coach who is in college. And she's been lifting for about, gosh, about a year now. I think it's been right at a year. And she squatted three plates for the first time. And it was fast. I think I sent you that one. Yeah, I saw that. She's, uh, she was a competitive swimmer in high school and, uh, she's, yeah, she's explosive. She's strong. She's got the build for, for powerlifting. You know, she's short, she's probably five foot one. And, um, and she just has the attitude, you know,

she has that attitude where she just attacks the weights and I don't have to, I never had to teach that to her. You know, that's something you have to teach some people, but she just does it. You know, she's got the competitor's attitude. When she gets on the platform, she focuses and she puts a hundred percent effort into it. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's wild. She is not the typical person that I train. If she keeps going, you know, if she's going to squat four plates, it's going to take a lot longer, but she's going to, she can, she could easily, she could definitely squat four plates. I'm not going to say easily. It's not easy, but she could absolutely squat four plates. That's just to stay on it,

you know, time. Yeah, that's right. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, but unfortunately, not everybody has that intensity and sometimes you can it, and other times, you know, you can't. And that's what we wanted to talk about today, you know. You know, I've been racking my brain about this for the past week since I told you I wanted to hit this topic, about what word I want to use. And the only word that comes to mind, and you have a better one, by all means, is cowardice, you know. There's a lot of cowardice in the weight room oh that's a good question if i had to put a weight a word to it yeah i think that's i think that one's fair i think that's a fair word to use i don't know if i have a better one off top my head but uh i'll accept that one yeah there's there's just a lot of cowardice and by that i mean

we live in a society of instant gratification, right? And we are in an industry that sells instant gratification, 12 weeks to, you know, insert your fitness goal, right? Right. And sometimes you get people that hire us or that, you know, join my gym. Actually, nobody's joined here that's like this. I'm kind of tucked away, but they join a gym, right? here that are that's like this i'm kind of tucked away but they join a gym right and they think it's going to be fun and games to get you know an extreme result right like they want to get ripped

they want to get big they want to get stronger right they want to pull 500 they just think it's just going to be fun you know they like look at it as recreation and maybe when you're going through the novice effect the first month it's that you know it's recreational it's fun but then there comes a point like with any skill it's not not fun anymore, you know, and shit gets hard, right? Shit gets unpredictable. You're trying to balance what you're doing here with your lifestyle, you know, and, you know, it's not easy. Easy is the last thing that it is. And you start getting the complaints when they miss their first rep, you know, or if they miss a weight more than once, you know, best case. And that's going to happen,

you know, like when you're no longer a novice, things are unpredictable until we figure out how your body responds to stress and how you respond to stress too, right? Like, not everybody responds to stress the same way. And sometimes I have to make programming modifications because the psychological stress is too great. But this idea that it's going to be recreational to get from 100 to 500 on deadlift, you know, or to gain, you know, 15, 20 pounds of muscle mass, that's just, that's mythology. That's not what happens. It's not recreational. You know, it's fun in the beginning.

There are times where it's fun, you know, but a lot of it is you're just kind of clocking in, clocking out, doing the work, doing a little bit more each time, right? And there will come a point where you're missing reps or your sleep is shit or your kids kept you up or you didn't eat enough. And then you go into the gym and everything's stapled to the floor and you're tired. You're tired, right? And you're still going to show up. You're not going to stop fucking showing up. You know, that's the last thing you want to do. But that's often what a lot of people want to do. That's where the cowardice thing comes in. It's like, okay, it got hard. I'm just going to stop. And then I'm going to, you know, not do it for like a year. Then I'm going to do it again for real and then recycle the same problem, right? is you are teaching yourself.

It's kind of what dogs do. You're now reinforcing this behavioral pattern and you're teaching yourself that it's okay to bail as soon as something gets hard. That's something I talk about a lot in different contexts here, but it's a habit that you're teaching yourself and you'll do it with the weight room. You'll do it with guitar. You'll do it with anything.

If you have to teach your kids something, you'll probably give up and throw a temper tantrum because you're tired. Fuck being tired. You know, shit's not easy. You know, it's one fucking hard thing after another. That's life, you know. I think it's, our friend Carl Schutt is fond of sharing this quote.

And I can't remember who it is off the top of my head. I believe it's G.K. Chesterton, but I might be misattributing this. But anyway, he says that anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Absolutely. And I like that. I really like that. He was, in my mind, I'm not sure where the quote comes from, so I haven't read the source text, but in my mind, he's a champion. He's championing the amateur in that case. And, uh, you know, I, I, I think part of this problem is, is, is fueled by social media. You know, uh, we were just sending videos like, you know, a few days ago on Instagram, we were sending like posts back and forth with each other of this guy.

I can't remember what his name is, but there's this guy who was like strict pressing 315 for 10. Right. And, uh, he pressed 405 for two. I think he inclined 495 for like a set of five or something. You know, it's just these absurd numbers. Right. And, and not like it wasn't even that hard or it didn't look that hard, right? In the video, he's not like he's struggling that much. And these are just like absurd, insane numbers to someone like me. And there's, you know, and there's probably not, this guy's a nobody. I've never heard of him before. You know, he's probably competitive power lifter or something, but, but he's, it's not like he's Thor Bjornsson or something. He's not a celebrity. I'd never

heard of him. And here's this dude doing these incredible feats of strength. 405 double. Yeah, for a double. Yeah, in the press. It looks like he might even had three. Well, I think this is one of the things that social media has done to us

is we see the end result all the time in this media media and that's all it is, right? It's just the result of somebody's training cycle led them to this point that they're now posting on social media. And we never saw all the training that led up to that. And, um, and we're also people, there's a, there's a bias there that people who are really good at whatever the thing is in this case, getting really strong really strong um they're going to want to post more than people who aren't very strong you know the guy that's struggling to get a 135 press is probably not going to be posting his stuff all over social media no sometimes but not as often no and uh yeah so i think i think a lot of people and i feel for the younger kids here

i think a lot of people just are they see that that and they're like, well, if I can't be that, then it's not worth doing. That's right. And I'm out. And I've seen that behavior a lot. I remember I was roommates with someone in college who had this a lot. Like he wouldn't, he would, he would never, he would not try at something so that if he failed, he could always say like, well, I didn't actually try that hard. You know, if I tried, I probably, I would have, I would have done it. But it was a cop out, right? It's, it's, you know, you can't, you can't fail if you don't try. That's right. And I see a lot of that nowadays.

Absolutely. I sound like an old man. Nowadays, I see a lot of that. Absolutely. Everybody wants easy, you know? But, you know, but it's a lot, I think it's easier. It's never been easy. There's always been people that have been, you know, that have taken the easy way out and quit. But I think it's easier to hang in there when you're surrounded by a smaller group of peers and you're not constantly looking at this huge pool of people that includes world-class lifters.

Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's the beauty of my gym and some of the other coaches' gyms is that you don't really get a lot of that. Somebody might accidentally develop into that, but that's rare. Most of the time you walk in here, it's just normal people, you know? And some stronger than others, some weaker than others, you know, it varies.

But everybody tends to show up, and sometimes life pulls them away, and they make their way back. But, you know, I can't say that somebody's come in here and said, I'm just going to consciously make the decision to miss because I'm tired, you know? I'd say, dude, I'm like, i'm tired you know that's yeah i'd say dude i'm like get fucked you know uh like what tends to happen is you know i'm just gonna push this workout back i'm gonna push this workout back and push this workout back then before you know it they've fallen off and they come back you know it's occupational hazard you know that happens but when you know when

somebody like tells you you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, I'm taking a week off because I'm tired, you're fired. Simple as that. Insert Trump there, Becca, 15 years ago or whatever. You're fired. What was that, 20 years ago? Before you do the little hand thing where you push your hand forward. Yeah, but my point is that there's a lot of things causing stress, right? You have the stress of the training.

You have the stress of your life, right? My job is to try and make the training stress accommodate what the hell is going on with your life stress. And sometimes that means you might be on an old man program, not because you're an old man, but because you're stressed out from other shit, right? The goal is to keep showing up above all else. I'm tired. Go fuck yourself. I'm tired too.. You know, so is Trent. Right. So is so are all of us. You know, we're all tired. You know, you got to show up. It's like you're going to stop brushing your teeth because you're tired. You know, it's like that's how I frame it to people, you know, but there is going to come a point where, you know, it's no longer the novice phase. longer the novice phase. You're no longer in the honeymoon phase as they use in other industries. And you have to troubleshoot problems. You have to troubleshoot, how could I show up and get something productive done? And there's various ways to do that. We talk about it on this show.

But if you're just bailing from the first sign of stress, you're just setting yourself up for failure. You're never going to get anywhere. you're selling yourself short and you're teaching yourself bad habits here's the deal the the the number one way to fail at training yeah and i'm saying the word fail in the correct context here you know how i feel about that uh the number one way to fail at training is to not show up the second way is to not eat food. But here's the deal. Even people that show up regularly and they don't eat any food and they're really underweight, even they get stronger. That's right. Not a lot. They're severely hampered by their habits, but they do get stronger. They do get stronger. So the only way to guaranteed fuck up your training is to not show up. That's right. And, uh, the, the people that I, that I have trained that miss a lot of workouts, they spend their wheels a lot. And, you know, part of

it is part of is just obvious, right? They're not getting the training stress because they're skipping workouts. But the other thing is we never get in a groove as a coach and a lifter because you're talking about like, you know, managing, managing the programming around life. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I do. But I can't do it if you don't show up to, to work out. I can't see how you respond to stress when, when you're not in the gym and, and whether you're, whether you are training with someone else or if you're trying to program for yourself, it's the same thing. You'll never get those data points if you don't show up. And especially true when you're tired. And the thing is, this has been my life for the last two years. And before that, I started a business at one point and left a job. That was really stressful and took a lot of late nights. I worked to become a starting strength coach on the side. That was a lot of work and a lot of late nights. I worked to become a starting strength

coach on the side that that was a lot of work and a lot of long nights. Well, um, you know, I've been, I've been living this life for really the last several years, but especially the last two years since having a kid. Well, a lot of times I surprised myself at what I'm capable of physically. And I've built the habit over years of training now to go in there and put the effort in. So that's not a problem for me anymore. But sometimes I underestimate what I'm capable of, even when I'm tired and mentally not 100% there because I've got so much other stuff going on in life. You know, sometimes my workouts suck and I underperform. But more often

than not, I do better than I think I will once I get into it. You know, I went to the coaches conference a few weeks ago in Omaha on three hour sleep and got lost trying to park my car, barely got to the airport. I got to the thing as the gate was closing and I had one meal. I went to Qdoba and then I PR the deadlift, you know, like, yeah, meal. I went to Qdoba. And then I PR'd the deadlift. You know, like. Yeah, right. I almost skipped. That shouldn't have happened.

I almost skipped the deadlift. I came very close to skipping it that day. And then, you know, I'd already warmed up because we'd been doing a clean instruction with Rip. So, you know, I was like, well, I've already started pulling. All right, might as well keep going, you know. And did that. Then I'm like, all right, well, I'll do the squats too. 360 for five sets of five or four sets of five after that. And I got it done.

And then I was crashing pretty hard for the next day or two. My back was smoked. Right. Yeah. It's just smoked after that. You know, you get it done. You show up. You gotta show up, you know? And that's the thing. You had a bunch of reasons. You could have said like, well, you know, I didn't sleep. Like I should probably punt this to tomorrow or the next day or whatever and uh you know sometimes that's the right call but it's a slippery slope right right and that's the thing you tried it anyway you're like fuck it let's just go hey just warp up here we're at that's right and you know i get a lot of guys you know i had a guy that just stopped showing up for months,

and I kept messaging him every week. He's an online client, never responded. Then finally he responds, like, I'm glad you kept messaging me. He was ashamed that he didn't show up, you know? I respect him. You should be. That'd be a shame, too. You know, a little shame can light a fire under your ass, right?

So what we're talking about is where you're just like, you know, I'm just going to rest. I'm just not going to do it. You know, it's like, there's the door walk out, no refunds, you know? Right. Right. Well, yeah. I mean, it's just, you know, with that attitude, I can't, I can't help. There's nothing I can really do. No, you can't fix that. If you don't show up, I I'm willing to do anything else, but I can't, you know, someone who's, who, who doesn't show up. I, I just, I can't help. Um, and you can't help yourself that way. So, you know, I'm curious, like, why, why do you think this has happened? Um, cause we like to talk about on this show, we'd like to talk about physical culture in general. about physical culture in general.

And, you know, back in my day, high school, in high school, we called these people quitters, right? That was, I never wanted to be a quitter. When you benched 315 in high school. That's right, yeah. Yeah, it keeps going up,

the older I get. 270 becomes 275, becomes 300, becomes 315. Everybody's benched 315 in high school except me yeah that's right that's right uh but yeah i mean you know that i'm curious where this comes from there's a it's always been around i remember plenty of kids who quit football in high school that's what i that was the main sport that i played was football i I remember plenty of kids who gave up. So, you know, this is, this is a common experience in humans, but why do you think it is? I think that it's just become more socially acceptable to quit,

you know? I mean, you hear all these jokes about participation trophies, you know, You know, I mean, you hear all these jokes about participation trophies, you know, this would be a great topic to get Steph going on because, you know, she could say a lot about this. But, you know, I think that it's just been like, oh, you know, you don't want to push yourself too hard. You don't want to get hurt. There's like a lot of like fear around getting hurt and not even physically hurt, just, you know, safety in general. You know, people are just. Oh, yes. There's this hyper awareness of every possible safety risk there is and at the end of the day you know you're unsafe everywhere if you kind of go by that like i was just bitching yesterday about how

the fucking uh hikes in phoenix the mountains are closed now during extreme temperatures which means the entire summer you can only hike in the morning and at night, you know? Or no, after dawn, before dusk. So you have limited hours, and it's all because some people go up there, don't properly hydrate, and then die. You know, then they've got to helicopter them down, right? So now they've got to punish everybody for that, right? And it's in the name of safety, right? But people have been hiking these mountains for decades at the least, centuries probably. You know, there are natives down here, you know.

Yeah, I was about to say, there's probably some natives that have been doing it for a long, long time. That's what I'm saying. But my point is, like, I drink plenty of water, get plenty of electrolytes, and I don't have a problem hiking in the summer. I can hike when it's 120 out. You know, I just make sure I take care of myself, right? And there's, you know, safety precautions that you are responsible for taking, right? But now because people have died, there's all this fear porn about hiking in the summer, you know, in Arizona. Meanwhile, people have been doing it for a while, right? Or like park hours, right?

That's the one that really pisses me off. Like, oh, you know, when you're in the city of Scottsdale or the city of Phoenix, of course, cities, right? and some county parks, it's like, okay, yeah, we're only open after dawn and before dusk. And you have to be out by dusk. And I'm like, well, what the fuck? Basically, anybody who works can't hike now, you know? And then you sit there and put this stuff out about wanting to be more active. And it's like, oh, for your safety? It's like, what?

Because some people are dumbasses. I can hike at night. It's called a headlamp, you know? You can bring a dog with you. You can, you know, bring a firearm with you if there's wildlife to worry about. There's a lot of options there, you know. Sure, yeah. But these are just prime examples of, like, think about it.

They just instituted these rules, which means even five years ago, those rules weren't in place with the heat at least. I don't know when the park hours started, but now they got these electrified gates that close, you know, to make sure that you don't, you know, put yourself at risk, you know, of, you know, falling off the mountain. It's like, dude, you're hiking a mountain. You know, what's funny, California, you can surf and you don't know when you're going to get bit by a shark. You know, there's a chance that a shark will eat you. Yeah. You know, you're allowed to surf. Well, I was about to say, I bet, I bet the risk of drowning from surfing is way higher than the risk of anything you do hiking. Probably, yeah. I mean, I feel like anything involved in the water, that's way more risky.

And for the life of me, you know, like, I hate fucking government. But I'm trying to figure out, I'm like, man, if there's one hill I die on, start gathering signatures and get something on the ballot, it would be to eliminate park hours. But, you know, I don't know if I could fight all that safety, safety propaganda that would come out saying, oh, my God, your children are going to die because they're going to sneak out of your house and get in the park at night and fall off the mountain, you know, or get eaten by a mountain lion. Right.

But, like... Yeah, safety has become, like, it's almost like the unassailable excuse. You know, like, if you're like, well, you know, I don't have time or I don't have, you know i was too stressed out or or whatever then it's like well people can see through those excuses pretty easily yeah but but safety is like it's like the last bastion it's like well you know i don't want to be i don't want to get hurt you know i don't want to lift that heavy weight i don't want to get hurt right and it's it's almost like well oh yeah you know that's that's very reasonable you know don't want to get that heavy weight. I don't want to get hurt. And it's almost like, well, oh, yeah, you know, that's very reasonable.

You know, don't want to get hurt. That's eminently reasonable. And you should never get hurt. There's this expectation that you should never get hurt. You should never make a mistake, that nothing should ever go wrong. Nothing should ever happen. Yeah. I would always say, like, you know, not that this was really that much of an issue in Fort Worth,

but when I did coach in Fort Worth, I'm like, if you drove to the gym, then you were already in more danger than you will ever be inside this gym. That's right. Like if you drove, especially if you drove on the highway, so like when I driving to the gym back and forth every day, when I had to get an I-35 driving from Fort Worth to Keller, thatller that that is dangerous that is very dangerous in fact i saw a lot of wrecks one time i saw a car that was on fire it was pretty kind of funny i saw it on the way on the way out from the gym i saw a car that was on fires it was in the the shoulder uh somewhere on 35 and i saw it on the coming back to the gym later in the evening. And it was completely, it was the most burnt object I've ever seen. It was just like every, every single

aspect of that car had burned. Like all of the paint was completely and utterly burnt. And the whole thing was just like a dull gray. I was kind of impressed. I didn't know anything could burn that much. It was just like this weird gray shell. was kind of impressed. I didn't know anything could burn that much. It was just like this weird gray shell. But anyway, I saw stuff like that all the time driving out there. That's dangerous. Absolutely. And people do that all the time, right?

So, so the safe, yeah, the safety thing, it's, it's impossible. You can't, you know, there's no way to, there's no way to avoid that. Even if you could somehow live in a bubble, like the bubble boy from Seinfeld. You remember that guy? Yeah, you're not going to never feel like shit. Yeah, even if you could do that, that still has its own risk, right? Doing nothing has a lot of risk.

Absolutely. So, yeah, I think I have a theory. I have a theory. I think it seems to be less common nowadays for young people to get involved in sports and, or like hard physical activities. And I think it was more common in the past. You know, like we are of the generation where we grew up as kids, at least without the internet. I don't, I didn't really have practical access to the internet until I was 14 or 15 and it was real slow, you know? Absolutely. If y'all are wondering what that sound is in the background, I don't know if you can hear

it. There's a massive thunderstorm happening right here. So hopefully, uh, hopefully it doesn't knock me offline. Right. We lost power last week for two straight days because of a huge thunderstorm. So hopefully, hopefully it doesn't knock me offline. Right. We lost power last week for two straight days because of a huge thunderstorm. So knock on wood. But back to my point, I didn't really have the internet access to the internet until high school. And even then it was pretty slow as dial up. Now, some people that I knew had DSL, but it was expensive and it wasn't that, you know, my parents weren't going to pony up for it. So practically, I really couldn't spend too much time inside. There just was a limit to what could hold your attention. And so we spent a lot of time outside.

And it was just all the dumb shit the teenagers get into, right? Like we'd have airsoft wars and we'd, you know, shoot the hell out of each other. you know, shoot the hell out of each other. And of course the guy that has the CO2 powered pistol rather than like the, you know, electric powered pistol, his shoots really, really hard and is really painful. So, so everybody else's, it's like a, you know, it's like an arms race. Everybody else has got to get one. Of course. And, uh, you know, and then we started just, yeah. So then we all, you know, we started shooting each other with these like high powered, like air, air pellets and air rifles. Uh, yeah, we did a lot of those kinds of things on top of sports.

And, um, I think there's something foundational in doing hard physical activity as a kid, whether it's an organized sports or outside of, outside of that, that teaches you about effort and not quitting when it gets hard and when it hurts. Yeah. Learning how to push is just, that's where the skill of strength really kicks in. You know, you hear that term thrown around a lot. Um, to the point where I've mentioned it many times, like I did a couple years of high reps and one of the hardest things I had to get back to was pushing those heavy weights when they're five or less reps with a lot of weight you know and i'm still kind of dealing with that like i never really got good at squatting over 400 you know from a skill component like

every time we'll get over four i would feel crushed by it i would just find a way to get it up you know and it's not sloppy you can look at videos, but I never felt command over it like I do other lifts, right? Right. So this time, I've been really focusing on that, and I have to psych myself up more. There's a lot that goes into it. There's a lot of anxiety, you know? And there's the whole mindfuck of, shit, rep four was almost, you know, I barely got that. You know, it was a limit.

Then I do rep five, you know? And then I look at the video, and it's like, no, rep four wasn't, it looks, you know, pretty normal, you know? And I know that, and I know this, and it used to not be a problem because I did it for so long and built up to it, you know? But now that like I had that break, I'm like, man, I don't think I'll ever do high reps again, you know? Right. Yeah. It's, it, it, it is, it's hard. It's hard. You have to find this new notch. And, uh, I was actually, we were talking about this after the little meet that we did. So, um, my client, I don't think he'll mind me, uh, giving them a little shout out. Chris Young pulled 585, six plates here. And, uh, it was a great pull. We were talking about the experience of that and I've never pulled 585. So I don't really know, but I remember what the, what it was like to pull 405 the first time and what it was like to pull 500. Right. And, uh, I, I, I feel this more keenly with the deadlift because there's no,

there's no bounce. There's no rebound in a deadlift. Um, but it's true of all the lifts to some extent. And that's that it's not like you get to 500 and it feels like 405 did when you were weaker. It feels worse. It just keeps getting more and more crushingly hard. And it just, the experience of your body being compressed and trying not to get completely folded up. It just gets, it gets more and more and more intense. It never stops. It never gets easier. Now you could contrast that with a squat, let's say, and that's the, yeah, it feels heavier in your back, but there is a little bit of a stretch reflex involved. You know, there's a little bit of the bounce, so you can groove a squat better or worse, you know, from rep to rep, but rep but a deadlift you know one rep pulled from the floor from a dead stop where there's you know there's no consecutive reps it's there's none of that right it's just a hard concentric uh so it's like the purest feeling of of this phenomenon we're talking about but that's the thing he's pulled 500 he's pulled

550 now he's pulled 585 guess what it just gets harder and harder and harder never easier i mean there are different levels of this shit and we'll sit there and say yeah strength is relative and sure but these absolute loads matter too like there's just different layers of hard the further down that rabbit hole you get and you know i talked to guys who are big you know for the 250 500 is double body weight for them that is still not the same as you know 380 for me you know right uh and they explain it they're like yeah 500 still fucking heavy i've had i knew a 700 250, 500 is double body weight for them. That is still not the same as, you know, 380 for me, you know? Right. And they explain it.

They're like, yeah, 500 is still fucking heavy. I knew a 700-pound deadlifter who once told me 500 is heavy, you know, and he would have to deadlift it. It's just there's different layers of hard, you know? And you have to overcome that. I mean, most people listening probably aren't going to pull those kind of numbers. I'm not going to pull 700, you know? So don't take that as a, you know, recommendation that you need to spend a lifetime trying to pull 700. That's not what we're saying.

But, you know, let's say you're going from 200 to 300. That's one layer of difficulty. Then 300 to 400, that's another layer of difficulty. And the further down the rabbit hole you get to try and push more and more adaptation, i.e. get stronger, the more demanding that's going to be, you know? And it's going to challenge you psychologically too, you know? I've said it before, strength teaches you to deal with fear, you know? Endurance training teaches you to deal with pain. Yeah. No, I think that's very accurate. And that comes back to what you said, you know, cowardice. Yeah, I think the flip side of that would be bravery, right? And that's back to what you said, you know, cowardice.

Yeah, I think the flip side of that would be bravery, right? And that's what it takes to get underneath a bar that you're not sure that you can lift. It takes some bravery. Now, it's a different degree of bravery than, like, you know, a guy running into a burning building to save, like, some of his teammates in combat, right? So I'm not trying to, you know, that guy would show up to his workouts though. That's right. But, but it is to a smaller degree. It's the same kind of thing though. Right. Getting up underneath a bar that you're not sure you can do, but you try it anyway. Um, and you've got that, you've got the anxiety, the butterflies start kicking in, but you do it anyway. You just try it and you try your hardest. Yeah, that's bravery. And, you know, Uncle Aristotle talks about, and really even Plato talks about this too, like, you know, what is virtue, right?

These ancient Greeks were concerned with like the question of virtue and the, the word that we have now, virtue, um, it comes from a Latin root, but there's also an earlier Greek root. And that was, um, a rate. Hopefully I'm saying that correctly, but it meant excellence. That's one of the ways you can translate that into English. So virtue to them was an action that you, it's something you do. It's not a quality that you have. It's something that you do. And so to them, to say that you're brave, well, that, that, that means that you have, you do and have done brave things. It's not like, it's not like this thing that you can possess without ever displaying it. It's not like this thing that you can possess without ever displaying it. And so the way that you would acquire bravery then would be to go and do brave things, right? Seems pretty obvious. But there's a lot of people who I think would lay claim to like, oh, yeah, I could be brave, but they don't actually do anything brave. Though it's time to, yeah. So you're not brave, right? You can't claim that, right?

It's not true. You can say it all you want, but it's not true. It only becomes true in the doing of it, right? And that's the process of acquiring virtue. Now, why would you care about virtue? Well, it's just, it's a more, you know, having acquiring virtue leads to a more fulfilling life. Right.

You know, you learn more about what you're capable of and it has crossover, right? Like you learn to be brave underneath a squat bar and it carries over into other parts of life. When you encounter something hard, you're like, well, I don't know what to do here, but I'm not gonna quit and I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna keep trying. And you learn how to do that underneath the bar in a very controlled environment, training in a, you know, with a very

controlled process of adding a little bit of weight every time you lift. And when you learn that, um, it makes it easier to, I don't know, I'm just picking an example that's close to the heart. Wake up at 3am with the screaming baby and then, you know, and just, and hold them all night. And you're like, I don't know what to do. Maybe there is nothing to do but just endure But you can do that and not give up and not quit Because you've done other hard things in life And training just happens to be a really good one A cheap one easy one, you know Yeah, yeah, it has a lot of benefits, you know

We think we talk about the physical benefits all the time, but there's, but these other intangible benefits are part of it too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it transfers over, you know, if you do one hard thing and see it through and get, you know, into a fairly advanced state with it, it teaches you something about not just dealing with fear, but you get, there's an endurance component too. You know, there's an endurance component to strength training because to sit

there and miss the fourth rep three fucking weeks in a row, and then have to figure out why that's happening and try something else and then miss the fourth rep again and then try something else. Like that's an endurance deal right there. You're dealing with pain and you're dealing with fear, you know? Yeah. So it's, you know, quite the interesting thing. But then let's say you want to go learn another skill and you get through that honeymoon phase where, you know, everything's easy in the beginning. And then you get past that and it's like, why can't I reproduce this result every time, you know? Same thing, you know, go learn an instrument. You know that better than anybody, Trent.

You know, you learn an instrument. Right. You know, in the beginning, I would imagine that things happen pretty quick. But then it gets to a point where, like, there's these basics that are inconsistent. You know, I remember that with DJing. You know, I always think of just learning how to match beats. I kind of got the basics down. Then I'm like, fuck, why can't I get it, like, all the way right like these other guys that have been doing it for 10 years? And then somehow in year three or four, it was like, oh, there we go.

You know, I'm not thinking about it anymore. It's like breathing, you know? And that's the same thing with your squat technique. That's the same thing with, you know, pushing a heavy weight. You know, you learn these things and eventually the basics become like breathing air, you know. It's just getting through that phase. The endurance part of this is that early intermediate to solid intermediate phase where it's up and down, left and right, in and out. You know, like, you know, you're're good one week you're bad another week you know like once you get past those predictable

gains of weekly linear progression and you're into well shit why did i miss this week it was easy last week why did it go from five reps to one rep like that is the weed out phase in my opinion oh absolutely and uh you know and it yeah things, things get streaky because you hang in long enough and you get these, you get these like runs four to six weeks where like shit's just moving, you know? And why? I don't know. I don't know. There's so many factors, but it is like, just enjoy it. And then, you know, don't forget about the grindy phase that you had to go through before the streak happened. When, when they, when it gets grindy again, when the streak is over. Yeah, it does. It takes a lot of fortitude to get through that. to my ability to endure and persist. If I have any physical talent,

it's really just that I won't quit. I just persevere. I'm not a good athlete. I was never a good football player. I played, you know, I was able to get on the field and play regularly in varsity, but I wasn't a star athlete.

I mostly played on special teams. You know, I got into the game on defense a little bit, but I did get to play. It wasn't because of my athleticism, that's for sure. But I just, You know, I got into the game on defense a little bit, but I, but I did get to play. It wasn't because of my athleticism, that's for sure. But I just, you know, I was able to mentally just go a hundred percent on every play, but I didn't, that didn't just, you know, come out of nowhere. I credit a lot of that to the way that our coaches trained us. And what I remember is that in the off season, we had our football period. It was the last period of class. And of course it would go after school too, right? So it was

roughly two to three hours, um, this block, cause we had the hour and a half long period and we'd stay an hour to an hour and a half after school as part of one big long practice. But this was the off season. So we were doing strength and conditioning and we would do, I believe it was, it was every other day for sure, but we would do Monday, Wednesday, Friday weight room, Tuesday, Thursday was conditioning. So we'd be out and this is January. So it's actually pretty cold in North Texas. Um, we'd be out in the field with our cleats and shorts and running just calisthenics and drills you know doing stuff like monkey rolls and and you know running routes and squares and running giant laps around the whole campus and stuff and because i played in defense

the defensive coordinator was in charge of our overall workout. Offensive coordinator was in charge of the offense's workout. Well, the thing that the defensive coordinator did was we would not leave the field until offense was done. We would always go after them. Always. And every once in a while, they would decide, like, okay, well, we're not going to leave until y'all leave. Okay. So we'd be out there for four hours. You know, it's like 630 and we're still fucking running around, you know, and we're just dying. You know, everybody's puking everywhere and, you know, you're just, you're, you got blisters and your hands are raw because, you know, you're on this just torn up field.

because you know you're on this just torn up field um and we wouldn't they was somebody they would have to break first so you know that's a stupid way to train from the perspective of actually getting strong and conditioned that's stupid right but it actually did teach us something important which is that uh which is to endure and and to you know mentally to endure and, and to, you know, mentally to endure, especially when you don't know when the end is coming. And that that's hard. That's a very different skill than enduring something where, you know, the duration of what you're going to do, right? If you're like, I got to run a mile. Okay. Maybe, you know, maybe a mile is easy for you. Maybe it, maybe it's really hard, but there's an end to it. It's like, once the mile's up, you're done. You get to relax. You get to lay down. Um, what if you have to run and you have no idea how long, you know, could be a mile, could be 10 miles, could be 35 miles, could be 500 miles.

A whole nother animal. It's a whole nother animal. And so we, we did a lot of that kind of stuff and looking back on it, I'm like, you know, that actually taught us actually taught me a lot about just having, you know, finding that reservoir mentally to hang in there and keep going. And I believe that's kind of what we want to recreate to some extent in our own training. Now, we know what the end is. We have a plan. We're going to do five reps. That's right.

So there is an end, but when you're, you know, having that experience is the difference between giving up on a workout, giving up on a set and hanging in there and at least trying it right. At least making the attempt. Your stress tolerance goes up quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think, you know, but if you don't have that, if you get to adulthood and you haven't had some experience like that, you know, for you it's probably in the pool, right? Oh, yeah. Pool, I used to bike to.

I'm sure there's some brutal practices there. Yeah. Yeah, it was crazy. You had to wake up at 5 in the morning, in the water by 6. It was Chicago, so you're already cold, and then you're jumping into cold water. You do it for two hours. You go to class all day. You go back afterwards, so you're already cold, and you're jumping into cold water. You do it for two hours, you go to class all day,

you go back afterwards another two to three hours, and during winter break, you do it on the weekends too. Yeah, it's brutal. Yeah, it was crazy. Just like thousands and thousands of miles. So I relate all this because this is an experience that some people have when they're young, but not everybody has it.

And so if you reach adulthood and you haven't had this kind of experience or the equivalent of it, um, you're going to have to go through something like that to, to learn. And you have to understand this, this is where some people are coming from. Um, this is the experience that some people have had and, and, and where they're coming from when they, you know, when they're training, if you're trying to compare yourself to others. So yeah, I don't know. I don't really have a good answer of how to teach that, how to walk somebody through that other than just to point it out and be encouraging and just point out effort and lack of effort when I see it. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And it's, you know, on one hand, yeah, I'm being a dick.

I'm giving you shit, you know. I'll admit it. But on the other hand, it's for your own good, you know. I'm not going to enable you being a coward, you know. If you're going to tell me that you are choosing to be a coward and that is your choice, then I'm going to tell you the cons of that because you've paid me money for my expertise, and I'm going to share it with you. I'm going to tell you that it's bullshit and you're basically teaching yourself bad habits you know and i will use a lot more colorful language you know if you and i are having this discussion yeah sure sure we're not we're not we're not

supposed to pat you on the back and tell you it's okay that's not what a coach does you know that's right that's not what we do you know we're going to tell you it's bullshit. You know, somebody needs to. Just like somebody needs to tell me that my, you know, 500, probably 515 deadlift is bullshit. You know, like somebody needs to do that so that I can push harder. You know, like I'm with Rip on that. You know, there's productivity there. You know, if you're trying to accomplish something, then the bar has to keep going up until, you know, you're done, obviously, you know. And only you can decide that, you know. But if you're done before're done before it even starts no fuck that i'm not letting you off the hook there right yeah yeah that we've got to be honest with ourselves right you know if you want to quit

because you know you don't want to try that hard and you don't want to put the effort in just say it just admit that to yourself um but don't get frustrated about a lack of results when you've also willfully skipped training and you've given up on the workout and this is this is where our our pet word failure comes into play right there's only really two there's two ways that you fail a workout or you fail a set. Um, one is if you bail in the middle of the set, right? You give up on the, on the set. That's right. You said, you said that, uh, in an Instagram post, it was great. You said you only fail if you bail. That's right. I love that. That's, that's exactly right. There's a second way to fail though.

And that's when you just don't even try it in the first place. Right. I don't know. I didn't think I would get it. Or like, you know, I don't think I, I don't, I don't know. I was kind of feeling a little like sore here. I was just really tired from the night before. And you just don't even try when you've don't even attempt it. That's a failure. You have shorted yourself by doing that. You've shorted yourself the experience of having to deal with that, you know? Exactly. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what else there is to deal with that you know exactly i'm not sure i'm not sure what else there is to say about that yeah i don't have anything else to add about that you know like you know don't be a coward you know i have another word in mind i'm not going to say it here

uh don't be a coward you know show up load the bar with what you're supposed to do try it if doesn't work take 10 off finish that you got punishment sets two people you know just because you got three doesn't mean the set's over you owe me two more you know that's right yeah and yeah that's a good point so we should we should just hit on that really quickly so if you're wondering like yeah so so what what do you do if you load up your work work set and you try it and you actually fucking try you know that's what does that look like on a bar um that means that like i want to see minimum five hard seconds of grinding against that bar that's right but i want to push hard on that bar for at least five seconds and you can do it a lot longer than

that you can you know look at some of my videos they're really grindy lately oh yeah i've got yeah so somewhere out there my first 500 attempt is like a it was like a 13 second Oh, yeah. I've done attempts. know if you actually put in that level of effort and you you really honestly tried hard at it and you miss then um i always say take a minute or two maybe three minutes if you need it and come back to it and try it again because sometimes you just something was wrong with your setup and you're making a technical error and it goes the next time when it's sometimes you do that and it's just stapled right there's just nothing's happening there that's when you do exactly what you just said you need to drop the weight a little bit not a lot here's the thing you need to have some numbers in your head of how much to drop the weight because i've sometimes i've run into people who will drop the weight like 30 percent right and

finish out sets you're like that's just bullshit yeah you know you went back to warm-ups essentially yeah um yeah five to ten percent is is a good sort of rule of thumb there just depends on what you're doing yeah to start right so if you're doing like presses um you know i'd say five percent try that first um if you're doing a squat or deadlift probably ten percent take ten percent off the bar and then finish out whatever the number of reps you had for your work sets. If you're going to do three sets of five, do 15 total reps at that

adjusted weight. Yeah, if you owe me five or 15, you got to give me five or 15, not 14, not three. You got to do it. You don't just say, well, I missed. I'm going home. You got to do your punishment set. That's why it's called that. Yeah, I think we hammered that pretty good, don't you think?

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think so. I mean, we can keep bitching, but I don't think y'all want to hear that. It was a good, it was a good old fashioned bit session. Yelling at clouds. Yeah. Therapy, man.

Therapy. Yeah. Therapy, man. Therapy. I love how if you go back and read old literature, there's always the like hard-ass old guy. Yeah. That's the same character. He's the same.

It doesn't matter like what century or millennia you go back to. Yep. There's always that guy. I love, he's in the Iliad. Yeah. So like literally the earliest literature that we have in the Western world is Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And there's this character Nestor who's in the Greek army, you know, trying to siege Troy and Nestor's an old guy, right? He fought with, he fought with guys that are the dads of the soldiers of, of a lot of the soldiers in the Greek army.

So he's the old guy and, you know, he's always ranting about like, you know, I, you know, I've, I fought with gods,

you know, and you, you, you're swine, you know, you're these anyway, old man yelling at clouds. It's great.

Yeah. But it's true. You know, this is, this is part of the human experience. And, um, I don't know,

like one of the things that training has done for me is, is made me want to live more of life. I want to experience more of life, not less of it. I don't want to shy away from experiences in life. And, um, but, but I had to learn that. And it's not something that you learn, especially in our modern, modern world where there's all sorts of distractions and things that will kind of sort of like comfort you as you hide away from life experiences. And I don't know, that's just me. I want to experience more of life, not less of it. And this in training is one little piece of this. And it's that reinforcement for me, um, that, that this process, what we just described is that practice that I use to stay in touch with, like actually putting effort

out in the world and trying to acquire some of that virtue of bravery that we were talking about. I think you summed it up quite nicely there. Yeah. All right. Well, where can people go and sign up with you so you can yell at them for being cowards? Yeah. If you want to get yelled at by me, you can yell at them for being cowards? Yeah, if you want to get yelled at by me, you can find me at weightsandplates.com, on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. I'm here in Phoenix. We got a gym. It's called Weights and Plates Gym. It's just south of the airport in the South Mountain Village. Come check us out. And yeah, how about you, Trent?

come check us out and uh yeah how about you trent yeah if you want if you want me to do the same to you in my own style so we have different styles here we're like djs right we've got different styles that's right um if you want if you want to uh experience that with my flavor then you can go email me jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com and ask about online coaching. I do offer online coaching to a limited group of people. I usually cap it off at about 30 people, but I do have some open slots now. So if you want to sign up, you're interested in signing up, email me there jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. All right, y'all. We'll talk to you again in a couple weeks.