Weights and Plates Podcast - #86 - The Rep Before the Set: Don't Make The Biggest Setup Mistake

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

In today's episode, Dr. Santana and Coach Trent discuss a common mistake lifters make before they begin a set -- the unrack. As Coach Trent says, the set doesn't begin when you descend into your first rep, the set begins when you step on the platform. Getting your mindset right, visualizing a successful set, and unracking the bar with authority and controlled aggression is oftentimes the difference between a successful set and missed reps, especially when attempting a limit set or new PR.   Online Diet Coaching and Strength Training with Dr. Robert Santana https://weightsandplates.com/online-coaching/     Follow Weights & Plates  YouTube: https://youtube.com/@weights_and_plates?si=ebAS8sRtzsPmFQf- Instagram: @the_robert_santana Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/weightsandplates Web: https://weightsandplates.com   Coach Trent Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream Email: [e-mail]  

Welcome to the weights and plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones my co-host. Yo, what's going on man? Happy Halloween. Fuck yeah it is Halloween huh? You're just you're just like a barbell monk over there. Pretty much, man. Just visualizing deadlifts and squats as the world passes by. That is it. And drinking whiskey. Yeah, tonight is Halloween. And see, here's the thing. This is how lame I am now.

I already went trick-or-treating with my son and ate some pizza with some friends and then came back, read to him to go to sleep and then came down here to record a podcast in the studio. And, uh, yeah. And we're just now getting started here. So that's, I was, I was done and dusted with Halloween by like 7 PM. And bro, you're a fucking machine, man. Uh, uh, well, it's, it's pretty easy. He's two. So, you know, it's pretty easy he's two so you know it's not like he's uh hammering candy yet you've uh you've inspired me now though yes well since this won't be released for a few days uh i'll announce it i just pulled 495 for five, or what they refer to as five plates for a set of five reps. Five for five.

I was not going to post it today because I posted up a clip from one of our other episodes earlier. But it is Halloween, so it's, you know, day of the deadlift, right? Right. Yeah, day of the deadlift. Should I do it like that? Day of the deadlift. Yeah, is it deadlift. Should I say, should I do it like that? Dia de los deadlift. Yeah, is it deadlift? Is it one of those words that just gets translated or transliterated into English?

Dude, I got to look up, I got to look at what Harry calls it. Yeah, let's dial up Harry. I think the word muertos is in there. Okay. I mean, yeah, right. That would work. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. I mean, yeah, right. That would work. Yeah. Yeah. So when is, yeah, the only time I've been to Dia de los Muertos is in Arizona. I was visiting a cousin of mine in... Peso Muerto. That's what he calls it. Ah, there you go. I guess that's what, I mean, it's proper. It's correct Spanish. You got to post that tomorrow as your celebration. But it's today's Halloween. That's the problem, you know?

Yeah. Well, you know, but tomorrow's like post Halloween. It's thematically consistent. Is it? I mean, it's November, dude. I think if I think of the word November, I'm thinking of Thanksgiving just from the word November. That's fine. All I'm saying is, you know what?

That post, that 495 for five, that deserves its own post on its own day. Let me think about it. It's a good poll. All right. Well, you got three hours, I think. Well, the day is almost over, so it's going to be noticed tomorrow, most likely. Maybe a few night owls will see it. Well, yeah.

Well, congrats, man. Yeah, we were talking offline for a little while before we turned on the mics here. But congrats. That's a huge pull. That's a huge pull. Especially, like, you know, what's that? That's two and a half times body weight at this point, right? Pretty much. No, I'm a fucking fat boy now, man.

I'm 203. Oh, yeah, I know. No, you're right. That's still two and a half. Yeah. See, it's hard for me to think about that because I hit two and a half at a lighter weight so many years ago. Right. Like, the only one I think about, the milestones triple, but I need six hundo for that. But yeah, I guess, I guess maintaining two and a half, whether I'm light or heavy is pretty cool. You know, like it's also a big PR. It's also a big PR too. Like, so we were talking about this earlier that you've, you put on what, 30 pounds of, uh, on your, on your deadlift for five. So your 5RM going into this training cycle is 465, right? Yeah. And mind you, this training cycle started 13 months ago. Okay. Yeah. So this year you've consistently added to that deadlift for 30 pounds. That that's pretty significant man yes and once what happened

once i crossed 195 i want to say i reset the deadlift because it got stuck i could not get 480 off the ground and then i started back up at 415 i may have been 190 low 190s at the time and then i just let my weight go up it's like fuck it you know that's what my post up that's what my post from earlier today was you know about yeah about, yeah, you're going to put on body fat and then, you know, kind of catches up and works itself out and then you lose whatever extra you don't want to have. Anyways, let my weight go up, start at 415. I think I started adding 10 pounds a week. I just did a weekly linear progression. Then I got to like 465 or even 455. And I'm like, you know, this used to be a hit or miss weight and this just went up clean, you know? So I'm like, okay, let's go up to 465. So I went up to 465 the next week,

got that for five and I'm like, you know, I used to have to repeat this a couple of times before I'd get the clean set of five and it was always an all out, you know, effort. And then the next week I'm like, well, you know, I did 475 in April. So usually when I'm training somebody, I'll go up by five pounds when I get close to the previous PR. I'm like, fuck it. Let's just do it. And I went up to 475, got five clean.

It was easier than when I did it in April. And then I'm, then a week passed and I'm like, okay, $4.85. Fuck it. Let's go. I don't even want to do $4.85. Right, right. Because of how good $4.75 went. I got that.

That was hard. I think I may have given myself two weeks, but then I got greedy. I'm like, $4.95. I mean, because who's going to do $4.90? I don't want change on the bar. For those of you who don't know, $4.95 is four plates, four 45s, a 25, a 10, a 5, and a 2.5. That's 490. Sorry, 490.

Yeah, right. So it's all the change on the bar except the 1.25 and the fractional plates, obviously. So I'm just like, fuck that. I want five 45s on each side. So I did it. Got three. That was all I had. There was not another rep in the tank. Okay.

So I'm like, okay, I know what I did wrong. In two weeks, I'll do 490. So I had two weeks, I did 490, I got five. And then two weeks after that, I did 495. It was a Thursday after a weekend I spent on my truck. And I think I mentioned this in another episode, I was bent over the engine bay all day. And my hamstrings were cooked until about Tuesday, Wednesday. And then that Thursday I went for 495 and I got a triple. And then I went for a fourth rep. This time it came off the ground, but I couldn't go any further. So I knew I'm like, yeah, I'm probably not all the way recovered from all that auto mechanic stuff.

So two weeks from now, we'll try it again. Now, well, now there's two weeks from now, we'll try it again. Now, well, now it was two weeks later. I got it. And that was the heaviest fucking set of five I ever pulled objectively and subjectively. I did the first one, and it reminded me of my linear progression. Remember trying when the first rep is like painfully slow? Right. Yep.

I haven't had that happen since I was a novice. And that happened today. I was like, rep number one, I was painfully slow. I'm like, just pretend you're a novice again. I remember thinking that in my head. I'm like, first rep, just fake hard. It's slow for whatever reason. It's just slow.

Just ignore it. And I'm like, just keep the time between reps short no matter how hard it is. And that was the only thing I cued myself, and then I got all five. And I think I closed my fucking eyes on the last two. My base was gonna explode man it was rough yeah i've never put it i've never exerted that much effort on a lift like i did

an hour ago that's see that's what that's what we're talking about when we say that sets of five especially limit sets of five are uh just absolutely fucking brutal it's because of that you know so if i look at the, if I look at the video, it doesn't look, I mean, it looks hard. I haven't watched it yet. I have not watched it yet, dude. Rep four and five looks a lot smoother than what you described, but I totally understand what you're talking about. And yeah, you know, I think, I think our buddy Andy Baker said at one point that, I think he said squatting a five hour rim, like when he said a limit set of five, he said, squatting a limit set of five is the hardest thing you can do in

the gym. And, uh, yeah, it's probably true. It's a deadlift is not far behind if, if, if at all. But yeah, limits sets of five are just fucking brutal and you don't under you can't see how brutal they are on camera it's that rep four and five man they're just there's just a world apart from doing a heavy triple like that and a heavy five dude i haven't watched it yet but you're the second person who said that it didn't look that bad right and to me i felt like i had nothing left my face felt like it was gonna explode i'm shocked i didn't get a nosebleed or pass out. It was fucking hard. Yeah.

And everybody that I've sent it to is saying, dude, you just got to put the last five pounds on it and do 500. And I'm like. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. I mean, you're right. I'm going to do it, but I'm going to fucking add another variable to it and just eat a shitload of food. And if I go up to 210 in two weeks, I don't give a fuck. Yeah, who cares, man?

I may not have this opportunity again. I mean, we're talking about a lot of weight and I'm not exactly a young buck anymore. You know, it might take me a couple of years to get back up to this if, you know, lifestyle changes or whatever, you know. You know, I always say that. I've, you know, been training pretty consistently since my late 20s, what, I've been training pretty consistently since my late 20s, what, 28 is when I met Rip. And all I've had to worry about is the gym and my dogs. And I have a pretty flexible schedule. But should any of that change, I may not get here again. So I see the point that you all are making.

But at the same time, if I want to rule out everything, I'm going to have to eat like a fat boy and just if i gain a bunch of weight in two weeks i gain a bunch of weight in two weeks you know but uh you just think about it like uh yvonne drago it's like if he dies he dies if he dies he does that's what fucking uh what you would call it that's what wolf just sent me he gets fat he gets fast yeah he gave me a gift for that because I was talking about the bench. He's like, bench 315 or die. And he puts it in. Right. He dies. He dies. So good.

But I just put a post up about this. I'm like, dude, I don't like having as much body fat as I have right now. But I want to get stronger, primarily at the bench. But fuck, 500 for five? I mean, I fantasized about it a year ago. You know, I'm like, yeah, that'd be fucking cool lifetime Lifetime PR, you know, get 600 by the time I'm 50. And I'm like, looking at this now and I'm like, what the fuck? I'm like, if I hit 500 for five, I'm probably good for 585 for one, which means I'm going to pull 600 in my forties. It's just a matter of when.

Right. Right. Yeah, man. That's, um, yeah, you, you gotta think about that. Right, right. Yeah, man. That's, um, yeah, you got to think about that. You know, it's like I said, for most of us, you know, most of us aren't Chase Lindley and starting at like, you know, the, the month that we hit puberty, the month that we hit Tanner stage four, and we have like as much possible training time in our life as we could, could ever, you know, conceivably have. Most of us are not that a lot of us are starting a lot later than that. Um, whether we fucked around in the gym or not, we're starting our actual training life later and you don't have that many years before you're compromised in some way, you know, whether it's, whether it's lifestyle, whether it's responsibilities, whether it's, you know, just age, catch up with you. Maybe it's, you know, whether it's just kind of nagging injuries, whatever it is. Uh, we don't have that many years. So when you have the, when you have the time and the window to do it, you got to go for it. Got to go for it. That's how I see it. You know, every time I'm peaking and going for

something like this, I'm like, this may be the last time. Right. Could be an injury, could be life. My life can completely change. Yeah, absolutely. So right now I'm like, am I really going to give up with five pounds left? No, I'm going to fat fuck myself if I have to, to get that last five pounds on there. And maybe I'll keep going, because 585 would be fucking a nice place to fucking end. And I think in the next decade, I could put another 15 pounds on it, maybe even shorter than that, you know, but, you know, being conservative with it.

If I can pull 600 by the time I'm 50, that'd be fucking cool, you know? Yeah. Pulling 600 at all is cool, right? Absolutely. But what I want to highlight to the audience is I didn't think I could fucking do that. When I was what? When I found Rip, I was 27, 28, and I said this in an episode. I got all these power lifters lit up and,

I thought you were talking about bench. I said, Rip made a quote. We don't see too many 400s and 500s in the gym anymore. And he's talking about commercial gyms, right? And I'm like, well, I don right and uh i'm like i don't want to pull five i don't want to squat four then you know and i thought that was sufficient and then when i did it i'm like well that's it end of the line well then fast forward i'm like what the fuck i just pulled almost i basically practically pulled 500 for five you know i did

495 technically right but it's so fucking close that i'm like yeah just you know i wanted five more pounds than that for a single. And I just did five pounds under what I wanted for all out lifetime max for a set of five, you know? And that blows my mind, you know? So, but to do that, this was my lifestyle. I own a gym. This is all I do, you know? Most of the time I sleep pretty well. I don't drink a lot of alcohol. My diet's pretty good. When I'm gaining weight, I lax up more than I'd like, but when you're trying to pound a lot of calories, it just happens. You know, you just start grabbing shit. Things get liberalized. I don't eat like a pile of shit. You know, I'm eating donuts and French fries, you know, but you know, I'm not eating a

perfectly organic fucking diet either, you know? I get enough protein and, you know, fiber's probably not as good as when the calories were lower. You know, it's just, you're just trying to get the calories in. And, but I wouldn't say that I'm bad. I give my diet like a B minus, you know? Yeah, that's, you know, yeah. Yeah, and you know, but you know, if you start adding responsibilities in, you know, I think about my clients, like if I had a small child

or two small children, I ain't fucking getting good training then. That's like out the gate. Like, it's just not happening, right? I've had puppies and I'm like, oh, a couple months, bad training. Well, now I'm looking at a few years, you know, if it's a human child. Oh, yeah. Right. But I got a small taste of that with the puppies. I had to like go in and I'm like, my training is going to shit because I got to wake up every fucking couple hours,

let this little animal out to piss, you know? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Pretty much for the last two years, like every single training session that I've done, I've been fatigued except for that one weekend in Wichita Falls that I talked about where I was like, I crushed my presses. I'm like, what? It's like, what's going on? What's wrong with me? Like, are these weights like wrong? I checked them a bunch of times. It's because you slept. It's because I slept while I was just, and I wasn't i wasn't thinking about anything else you know so anyway yeah it's it's all true well this is a good you know the story is being a parent of a

small child qualifier for trt yeah right right yeah i know, I'll let you get back to me. There's a good meme format out there. And it's like, uh, it's like your parents talking to you. They're like, first, first it was creatine or no, it was like, first it was caffeine. Then it's creatine. Like what next steroids? And then the face is just like, well, I mean, I don't know. Maybe? Dude, I bet if you went to a low T clinic, they'd give it to you. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. I've heard much weaker excuses get 200 milligrams a week. Yeah. So today I want to talk about something else, but this is totally related to what you've just experienced and just described with your 5RM. And that is a common mistake that I see people making, especially in the late novice and early intermediate stages of training. who have trained by themselves and not had much coaching before as well. And, um, and that is how you approach the bar for each of the lifts. You know, um, what you talked about

setting that, like having that cue to set your tempo between lifts or between reps, where you're just like, okay, whatever, you know, it doesn't matter. Just keep that tempo going, keep that tempo going. Right. Don't take nine seconds sitting there like between reps four and five, cause it's not going to help. And you know that, right? It's not going to help. You just got to keep that tempo going and just keep fucking pulling. Well, um, that mindset starts before you step on the platform. And this is where I see a lot of people failing when they're really lifting heavy for the first time in their life. So I'm talking about the guy who's, you know, maybe he's in month four or five of his novice linear progression. And there's nothing easy anymore.

Every workout's hard. We're scraping for every five pound jump. But there's still more in the tank. It just requires a whole new level of focus mentally and also a whole new level of detail physically and making sure you execute the technique correctly with a great degree of precision and it's more than this person has ever done before they've never really had to dial something in like that before yeah so i just want to i want to talk about that for each of the main lifts okay so yeah i mean we just talked about the deadlift let's start there right let's start with the deadlift the most common thing i see in the deadlift and we'll rank it the most common problem i see in the deadlift is the fuckers just don't pull it you know they like just start tugging on they just let it go too early they don't want to accept that fuck i gotta pull for what seems like 10 seconds 15 seconds or maybe to that person a minute you

know everybody's perception is different, but they feel like they're pulling for an eternity, and then you, the outside observer, just see them pulling for half a second, you know? And the thing about the deadlift that makes it unique to all the other lifts, a deadlift fleshes out the pussies, you know, really fast, because it's on the floor, you know, really fast because it's on the floor. You know, you have to start with an isometric contraction. That means that your muscles are not changing in length or your joints are not exactly moving. You're just producing a lot of force in those muscles against a stationary object until it's no longer stationary.

Then it starts floating off the floor, right? Now you're moving. Once you get past that first inch, you pull it, right? Now you're moving. Once you get past that first inch, you pull it up as fast as you fucking can. There are no brownie points for going slow. However, getting it moving, everything about that is slow and that is normal. Don't resist that, you know? People that haven't been coached by guys like us will just jerk it, let their back round, and maybe it'll go up and they'll just pick it up and then eventually they'll hurt themselves and some get away with it. You know, you see it in powerlifting games all the time. You see the ugliest 700-pound deadlifts. And it's not just that, you know, okay, it's heavy, your back's rounding. There's no effort to lock things into position. They're just trying to yank it off the floor because they're trying to resist the reality that the load is glued to the floor, and when done properly, it's going to move slow. It's going to move slow.

And the reason it's going to move slow is because you're locking everything into place so that you protect yourself, number one, and so that you pick it up in the most efficient manner possible. And you're using as many muscles as you can to pick it up. You know, the better your posture is when you're picking up that load, the more you're going to get out of it. All those postural muscles down your back and around your waist get bigger and stronger. That's why we, you know, when people tell me they go to like a posture coach, you know, these people exist. I don't know what they're actually called, but there's people that will help you work on your posture.

You know, my, this guy I knew in LA, I remember, what was the one called? I never got into this shit. I don't have the patience. Alexander Technique. Yeah, there you go. There you go. That's there you go that's it yeah yeah it was like how to sit properly how to stand up out of the chair like just deadlift you get your deadlift up yeah i see it all the time and it doesn't even take much weight like i see guys as soon as they like deadlift for two weeks they might be deadlifting in the high hundreds and or low 200s and they're like oh my posture improved, well, yeah, because you're maintaining it against a load. So now, you know, when there's no load, it's normal.

It's natural, right? Just like I said about working on my truck. I'm bent over the engine bay. My hamstrings got lit up the next day. My glutes got lit up the next day, but my back was not sore because these lifts, you know, carry over, you know? You're doing these things efficiently with an ergonomic device, the barbell. Then when you're out in a not so ergonomic setting, you don't get the aches and pains from bending over, right? Even if you're, like Rip talks about

this in the book, even if you're in a rounded back position, you know to maintain that position, right? You're contracting your muscles and stabilizing that rounded back position because you're picking up something awkward, right? It's not ideal, but you minimize the damage because you know how to lock all those things into position. I know my back wasn't totally 100% flat and beautiful when I was over the engine bay, but I was maintaining my position with intent, right? And I wasn't thinking about it. It was involuntary because of, you know, over a decade of lifting. So back to the main point here, the deadlift forces you to brace against something that's in a resting position.

You have to overcome the inertia of the barbell resting on the floor, right? Right. And inertia is a hell of a thing, and, you know, this can apply to anything in life. You know, an object at rest stays at rest until an external force that is greater than it is applied upon it.

And you could take that analogy and apply it to anything. To get something to move, metaphorically or physically, you know, you have to apply quite a bit of force, right? Yeah, you do. And it requires a force of will that is higher than the other lifts. You know, like you said, the deadlift is an isometric contraction to pull everything into extension in your back and get tight, pull all the slack out of the bar. And then you have the concentric part, which is pushing the floor, right. And driving the bar off the ground. Um, but there's no rebound in a deadlift. That's the other difference, right? Every other lift has some sort of rebound component in it, right? If you squat, you're starting from the top. There's a lengthening, right? Your hamstrings lengthen,

you know, posterior chain all lengthens, and you get a little, you get a stretch reflex, you get a bounce out of the bottom. That's right. On a bench press, you know, we teach a touch and go bench press here. But frankly, even if you're doing a paused rep, there's still that lowering component followed by the concentric. Same thing with the press. You know, the way that we teach the press is we create a little bit of a bounce in the hands using hip drive. Or if you're doing, you know, multiple reps of a press and you're rebounding out of the

bottom, you're getting some sort of bounce there. So in all of those cases, you have that stretch reflex to help with that concentric to get the bar moving. You don't get that in the deadlift, especially in that first rep. You kind of sort of get it on the following reps, but that first rep, you don't get it.

And so it requires an enormous force of will to make that bar move off the floor because it really does not want to. No. And you have to, you have to come out with, you have to come walk onto that platform to lift that bar with the attitude. Like you,

you almost got to get a little pissed off at that bar. Like the fact that it's sitting there on the floor and not locked out should piss you off. Like. Absolutely. That should absolutely gall you. And like today when i went into it this is the kind of mindset you have to have people i knew that it was gonna suck right and that's okay i didn't know that i was gonna fail though that's something entirely different

you can't go in there thinking oh it's gonna's going to be heavy. I might not get it. Fuck that shit. Cancel that shit right now. Get that shit out of here. Now, you can go in there and understand that it's going to feel like hell. And one of the other things I told myself was, well, I've tripled it twice now in the last month and a half. So the first rep is going to go up. However, I'm starting to relive the novice phase where that first rep feels like the last rep. And I made a commitment to myself. I'm going to ignore that first fucking rep. And I'm going to start the second rep as fast as I possibly can while still setting myself up. And I'm going to do the same on the third.

And I'm going to do the same on the fourth. And I'm going to do the same on the fifth. And if any of them stop moving, I'm going to make sure that i'm pulling on it for a good five seconds and i'm going to count my head while my face is exploding like so if it got up to like mid shin and stopped i'm going to go one one thousand two one thousand three one thousand four one thousand five one thousand with the adrenaline pumping and my face about to explode that this is what i committed to before i even started the fucking exercise because i understand what i'm going into you know i could easily think that rep one is all i have now i'm going into you know i could easily think

that rep one is all i have now i know better because you learn this in the novice phase the first rep on the deadlift's just awful i don't know why that is just it is yeah so i've had experience with that before it's been a while since i've experienced that i don't know why that's come back maybe it's because i'm at some pretty fucking high limits but i haven't felt that in 10 years you know and it was kind of cool you know in a sense but i went in knowing rep number one is gonna feel like a one rm and i'm gonna ignore that shit and i'm gonna immediately go to rep number two and i'm gonna immediately go to rep number three four and five i'm not gonna sit down there and masturbate the bar for fucking 10 15 15, 20 seconds before doing the next rep, which a lot of you motherfuckers listening do.

Yes. Cut that shit out. That's right. It doesn't help. There's no amount of breaths that you take at the bottom of that rep that's going to help make the next one move better. You know, just go squeeze up, go. Anything more than that is you're just delaying the inevitable. In fact, you're making it worse because you're psyching yourself out. Yeah. So what, what I think is

really important is the mental side of the game is what you're describing in how you, you, you visualize that whole set before you actually performed it. You thought about how it was going to go. You anticipated problems you were going to run into. And you've, you thought about what, this is what I'm going to do. And this is what it's going to look like. This is my timing. This is my tempo. And, uh, that's, that's, that's something I think all great lifters do. Um, whether it's a cue that, you know, you have to hit, you know, for me, when I squat, uh, I'm, I'm always thinking about like the midfoot and I actually, I, I can, I visualize myself almost from like the top down and I actually I I can I visualize myself almost from

like the top down it's hard to describe but I almost visualize myself as the bar moving in a slot right down over the middle of my foot on the way down and I know if I do that I know if I groove it right there the rest is just effort then I just have to push hard on the way up so that's what I do I before I even step on the platform, I'm just imagining that motion of like being the barbell and moving perfectly straight down, not going forward, because that's always for me, the issue on heavy squats is getting a little forward. I am the barbell, I just become that. When I'm going into a deadlift, I'm thinking about what you're thinking about, which is, you know, I'm embracing the suck before I step on the platform. And I, I, I see a lot of newer lifters that don't have any of this sort of

mental game going on. It, it, I'll see people like, for instance, even standing on the platform next to the barbell, next to the loaded barbell where they're about to pull, just kind of talking, you know, relaxed, maybe looking at their phone, checking an email between, you know, in the rest time and stuff. And like, they're not really actively preparing to lift the weight. They're in the rest times or they're, yeah, whatever. And they're just like right up next to the weight, standing on the platform, you know, just relaxed and, and doing whatever I, to me, that platform where you're going to lift is sacred space. Like, I don't even want to step on the platform when I'm not about to lift. I don't know if you do this, but like, I don't like, I don't like sitting there hanging on the

bar when I sit in the rack. I don't, I'm not all relaxed. Like, no, no, that like, I don't like, I don't like sitting there hanging on the bar when I sit in the rack. I don't, I'm not all relaxed. Like, no, no, that's, I got to get off of that because for me, I just, I think this has come from just thousands and thousands of repetitions, but I'm, I'm thinking about, I'm pacing around sometimes if it's a really heavy lift, I'm pacing around a little bit off the platform, getting my mind right to getting, just accepting that it's going to suck, accepting that I'm going to have to really put in some hard effort, visualizing. And then when I step on the platform, it's like my brain just goes, okay, here we go. Here we go. I'm ready. We're doing it right now. And it's

almost automatic now. But I preserve that space of where the bar is, whether it's sitting on the platform or if it's in the rack on my platform, I preserve that space. When I step on the platform, it's business time. We're ready to go. And I don't, I try to creep a separation between that. If I'm jacking around, I'm just checking my phone or whatever. I'm sitting on the bench or I'm not, I'm off the platform. But I see a lot of people that don't do that. And I don't think you can truly lift a heavy weight if you're just sitting there, you know, all relaxed, hanging on the barbell, you know, chatting with your gym buddies 30 seconds before you go try to attempt to PR. It's just not going to happen. You know, I took, I just remembered something. Some asshole on YouTube. I don't think he was an asshole.

He said he liked us. Kept saying, I say, you know too much. Things people bitch about. Yeah, you're from Chicago. I'm from Chicago, bro. Get fucked. You know? But keep listening.

That's how us Illinois people talk. A couple things i want to hit on there so this reminds me a bit of high school swimming we had to do starts right where you're on the starting block and then you have to wait for that you know i don't know if it was a some sort of shot or whistle i can't remember what the sound was it's been so fucking long i haven't been a swim meet for 22 years yeah high school did they do the gun they did a gun at like you know olympic meets right i mean this was fucking you know chicago suburbs so who knows maybe it was a some sort of a horn you know i don't fucking know it should have been a gun if it wasn't but i can't remember uh however i never had a problem going off the blocks you know so i have all this

adrenaline built up you know and then once i heard the sound, I just go, but there were people that would like tweak out with that, you know, their starts kind of sucked. And I bring this up because fast forward in my master's, I had to take a sports psychology class. I took it as an elective, mostly because the undergraduates had to take sports psych, motor learning, exercise physiology, and what was the fourth one? There were four class, biomechanics. So I wanted to take them all at the graduate level because I didn't have a traditional undergraduate degree in exercise science. Mine was in family and consumer sciences, which is a fancy name for home economics,

and that's the degree you get to become a dietician. They've changed the name and whatnot. I think back then it was home economics with an option in dietetics because you had to take more medical type classes. But anyways, home economics was an important subject back in the day that people don't give enough credit to. That's another topic for another podcast, and I'm kind of getting on a sidebar here, but the point is when I got that degree, I took those classes because I wanted to make sure I learned what somebody in the bachelor's learned, except I had to write about it a lot more,

so I learned it a little bit more in depth. So the sports psych class had a section on anxiety, and they divided it up to, and they divided anxiety into whether it was cognitive anxiety or somatic anxiety. And to define it simply, cognitive anxiety refers to when you're anxious because you have a bunch of thoughts in your head. The anxiety is related to thoughts you're having. It's like, shit, what if I miss this? What if it's too heavy? What if this? What if that? What ifs? That's a good way to think about it, right? There's other things you can get anxious of, but what ifs are a common one, right? Somatic anxiety is like the butterflies in your stomach. You know, your body, you know something's coming, you get those butterflies in your stomach, right?

Yep. And I can't remember exactly what the graphics were, but it was one of those things that has a U-shaped curve, right? Not enough anxiety, you perform poorly. Too much anxiety, you perform poorly. Too much anxiety, you perform poorly. But what she highlighted was you can leverage that anxiety to perform at a high level, especially the somatic anxiety. I can't remember what she said about cognitive, but just what I will say about it is you got to shut that shit completely out. I don't see it as productive for performance, but I do remember when she talked about somatic anxiety, or if you've already forgotten what I said, the butterflies in your stomach, you could leverage that to perform at a high level. You can let that out on the performance, right? But again, U-shaped curve. If your anxiety gets too high, whether it's aggro, you know, your somatic anxiety, another word for that is aggro. You know, I had a coach use that term once where you just want to fucking just go crazy and let out physically, right? Lash out physically on the bar.

You know, that can throw your form off and fuck everything up. Or you can just go in there super zen and then it doesn't move because you don't have enough. That happened to me, actually, when I pulled 490 for five a month ago. I was listening to, interestingly enough, I was listening to Santana. So pretty mellow, you know, rock music, you know? Right, yeah. More groove than aggression.

Yeah, this was more newer Santana. So I think in the last 20 years, it was that song with Chad Kroger. Is that the lead singer of Nickelback? Oh, I thought you were going to say Smooth with Rob Thomas. No, that's party music. This one was more chills. Is that the lead singer of Nickelback? Oh, I thought you were going to say Smooth with Rob Thomas. No, that's party music. This one was more chills. Is that his name, the lead singer of Nickelback?

Yeah, Chad, yeah, Kroger, Kroger, whatever. Was it Kroger or Kroger? Something like that. Yeah, something like that. Anyways, that song came on, and I'm like, I recognize the voice, but I like the music, you know? Right. Because Santana makes good music. voice but i like the music you know um right because santana santana makes good music so i was listening to that song getting ready for the lift and uh it put me in a good mood because

it's a good song but then like i got the rep up like five inches and i couldn't keep going then i'm like all right that's the music there's a fucking problem you know i'm too chill so i walked away stopped the camera restarted the ritual put my my Ozzy song on. I don't want to stop, by the way. That's my PR song for the deadlift. And cranked the volume all the way up. I didn't even rest, dude. Then I went back in there and did five. There you go.

Yeah. Huge. Huge. You know, I let the anxiety calm down too much, you know. I was too chill. So you can be too chill, you can be too anxious. You know, I tend to see too anxious being more of a problem, especially on the cognitive side. I think guys get in their head a lot and think about shit too much.

Like, you know, they're just worried about it, you know? Yeah, like you said, they start thinking about everything that could go wrong about it. Yeah, that you have to mute. You have to press the fucking mute button on that. Right. There's nothing productive about that. and that you have to mute you have to press the fucking mute button on that there's there's right there's nothing productive about that the only thing your brain should be doing is focusing on certain parts of the movement so that you're controlled so okay you need a little bit of the cognitive stuff to make sure you replicate what you've been practicing but if you've been

practicing well that most of that should happen automatically right so you need to think about what you're doing to an extent but that's like like, you know, to a very low extent. You don't want the analytical part of your brain getting too active. You want it active enough to do what you've been practicing. But it's one thing maybe, you know, on a heavy lift, maybe you can think about one thing. And yeah, I think a practical thing that I've developed, and it's kind of funny. I don't even know like when I started doing this, but, um, I just, I just started doing it at some point. And now it's like, I have to do it every time. Uh, when I squat, I'm going to talk about the unrack here in a second. That's, that's my next topic I want to hit on. But when I unrack the bar and I,

I get back, I step back into position and get my squat stance. I tell myself, I give myself a little mantra before I start the set. And my mantra is super simple. I just tell myself, yes. Like I, I unrack, it's super tight. Come out of the rack. I step back. I'm like, yes, I have to do that. And I'm just telling myself like, Oh yeah, this is gonna fucking go. This is going to go today. Like tomorrow. I don't know, but today it's going to go. And, um, I, I tell myself that every time, I don't know when I started doing this, but it's really helped. And I think what that is, is, um, I'm visualizing before I step on the platform, I get on the platform and then I'm performing, right? I have my automatic stuff that I go

through. The unrack is a big part of it. I'm about to hit on that in a second. But when I come out of the rack, whatever thoughts are floating around, like, you know, like, you know, what if my, what if I get hurt? You know, what if my needs, what if, what if, you know, blah, blah, blah. That mantra helps me shut all that out because I have a thing I'm going to say. And I'm like, yes, yes. And I've, I know people that have all sorts of mantras. Our friend, Charity Hambrick, she was a very, very good master's strength lifter. Gosh, what she squatted 350 pressed, you know, I don't know if she ever really hit a big one rm in a meet because she always was a little flaky on the press on meet day but she doubled at least 170

in training it's crazy pulled in the mid 300s all at 40 i think she pulled 45 years old she probably pulled 400 i think she pulled over four. Yeah. At 45 years old, by the way. But anyway, Charity would always have things, you know, and for her it was, it was motivation. It was sort of getting, you know, getting amped up to actually do, do the workout, which for her, you know, being really strong was everything was heavy. Right. And, uh, for her it's, um, I have the power to start this today. She'd tell herself that I have the power to start this day. Then, then like, you know, the list of things that she's got to do, it start coming up and interfering. And, you know, it's like, Oh, but then this person's calling me, I got to respond to that. And I have

to do all these things. But then the mantra comes back, I have the power to start this today. I have the power to start this today. And that would, you know, that was kind of her little trigger hers, her, her, her thing to get her in the mood and in the, in the right frame of mind to go do the workout. Um, so there's all sorts of mantras and they can be simple. They can be, it doesn't matter how stupid they are. Um, they're for you, but I think that it gives you something concrete to tell yourself and you can't think about anything else when you're doing it. When you're, when I'm telling myself, yes, I can't think about anything else when you're doing it. When I'm telling myself, yes, I can't think about what if my left knee pops. You can't do both at the same time. So it's helpful in that regard.

You know, maybe we should, I don't know if Rory would be good for this or Darren, but this whole thing of worrying about injury when you're lifting is likely to cause an injury. Right. You know, and if you're injured and you're training through an injury, thinking about how the injury is coming along makes the injury last longer. You know, that's a whole nother episode. I'd like to get one of those two in, you know, we can bounce that off. But I know physical therapists are aware of this i remember yeah sure my friend used to slip and the pt would say oh you have

runner's knee what the hell is that called again uh there's a word there's a name for it femoral oh patellar femoral femoral syndrome yeah some jones yeah you know she was just weak she squatted it went away it never happened again but years she would have a slip not even fall just a slip and then her knee would hurt and go through physical therapy but the one thing they got right was they told her walk normal don't favor that fucking knee you know right and uh i will add to that walk normal and pretend it doesn't hurt put it out of your head uh. Again, this is another episode, but this ties in because if you're worried about getting hurt, you're more likely to get hurt. And if you're hurt and you're worried about the pain not going away, it's going to stay longer.

I'll tell one more thing on this point, because I talk about injuries a lot on this podcast, but one more point I'll add to that is there's a book, I got to get the name of it, somebody sent it to me, I wish I could remember who, that talks about pain. And one of the stories they give is of this guy who shot himself in the foot with a nail gun, went to the hospital, got rushed to the ER, was freaking out, screaming in agonizing pain. They took his shoe off, it went through his toes, like between the toes, didn't actually pierce his foot. He believed his foot was pierced, that he got impaledaled he was screaming and yeah no blood didn't even touch him wow yeah i just went into shock probably you know and i know yeah yeah i know this is hard to comprehend but your brain has a lot of control over what pain you experience you know and that's not me saying pain is fake. You know, some things fucking hurt, you know, tendonitis hurts, you break a fucking bone,

that hurts, you know, you tear a muscle, that hurts. But focusing on it makes it worse. And focusing on the possibility of that happening is probably going to increase the possibility of that happening. So let's back it up. Why the fuck are you in here? You want to push your limits and set new ones because you adapt to that and you like those adaptations, bigger, stronger muscles, more functional strength, right? If you want that and you've committed yourself to the journey that is involved in achieving that, then you accept a level of risk above baseline. And I've been talking about this a lot lately. So, you know, you don't have the right to sit there and think about pain and injuries when you're about to hit a PR when you've committed yourself to this process. You know, you've already accepted a level of risk above zero. Is that risk large? No,

it's not. But you've given up your right to freak out about it. At that point, just quit fucking lifting. You know, and I don't say that to many people, but you have to make that decision that, you know, it's counterintuitive, but it's necessary. Like, I'll give you a better story. I'll tell you my mindset on this, and you can adopt it however the fuck you want. I tore an adductor, my first one at the NLP, the novice linear progression for those of our new listeners. And it has happened because the first three months I trained, I assume because I put a bar on some part of my back and squatted down and back up that I knew how to squat. Turns out I didn't, and I tore an adductor. I got coaching. He cleaned up my technique. It was a starting strength coach, and I ran the linear progression again. That

adductor healed fairly quickly. Three months later, I'm back up to where I left off. I surpassed that, and then the left one started hurting. My dumb ass kept going, even though I didn't learn from the first time. I had the same exact signs and symptoms and kept pushing except this time i got 40 more pounds on it right um what happened there was i got form creep i didn't realize that oh wait i'm not moving the way that that coach taught me three months ago because i got 100 more pounds on the bar you know right yeah so i tore the left one and uh then that took 10 months to heal. And in that process, my deadlift went way up. That was an under-trained lift. I had been squatting since I was 18, and I never really deadlifted. So my squat and my deadlift were the same for years. But that injury basically opened up the door to get

my deadlift up because as I learned, so, oh, funny thing, second time I tore, when I tore the second adductor, the left one, was five days before my seminar. And then I still went, but I wanted to meet Rip. I wanted to go to Texas. I wanted to see the WFAC. I'm like, I'll just get whatever done I can. I don't think I'm going to pass anyway, you know, for this coaching part of it. So Rip found a way to allow me to squat.

I could barely walk. Like one wrong turn and my fucking groin would give out. And I'd like you know kind of that knee kind of collapsed down on that side you know and he just turned my toes forward and he showed the the audience all the other attendees like look this is how you can get him to squat you turn toes forward takes the adductors out of it so i got through the squat with 135 and then when it got to the deadlift, where I'd topped off before the injury was 330. And then we got 315 up that day for a set of five because my toes are forward. So yeah, long story short,

because of that, I just kept training it that way. My deadlift went up, didn't aggravate the injury, but I could not squat. So back to what I'm saying about cognitive anxiety and fear. When the squat got up into the upper 200s, I started getting, this time I started getting fear because now I've gotten injured twice and it resulted in me collapsing and dropping the bars and the safeties. The second time, this big roided out dude had to carry me to a couch, you know, it was kind of funny. And there was fear, of course. The second injury, maybe because it happened a second time, the first, I was keen to go back. The second one, once it got heavy and I was still feeling some pain, I think that's what

it was. The first one, the pain went away a little bit, fairly quickly. You know, by the time it got heavy and I injured the other side, the first side was fully healed. Second side didn't heal quite so quickly. So I remember the first time I got into the 300s, I was freaking out. Like, I think I squatted high and just racked it, you know, like, like I was very hesitant to do what I needed to do. And I had to walk away from the rack. And then I'm like pacing around the gym. I'm at a small powerlifting gym in El Segundo. If you're down in the South Bay in California, a four-star gym. That's your place to go. My buddy Jason owns it now.

But anyways, I'm pacing around. I'd say this gym was probably, what, 1,000 square feet maybe. There were, what, five racks, three on one side, two on the other. It was pretty tight, you know. And I'm thinking and I'm thinking, I'm like, how do I fucking work through this, you know? I'm like, I don't want to get hurt again. And I'm like, well, dumbass, there's your problem. If you don't want to get hurt again, don't get under the bar.

That's what I told myself. I had nobody yell at me. I didn't have Rip in my ear telling me, don't be, you know, if you don't want to get hurt, don't fucking do this. That's what he would say, but I didn't have that. So I had to like walk myself through it. And my conclusion was, well, I'm either going to go down or I'm going to stand back up with it. And if I get hurt, I get hurt. Fuck it.

And then I went and I did it and didn't think about it ever again. And eventually I healed from it, worked up. I put, what was that? I got hurt with 335. I put 75 pounds on that squat since, probably more. I just, I'm not really motivated to squat super heavy right now. And I'm on a safety squat bar. My strength is still there. I'm not hurt. Uh, I think I'll probably PR probably get four 15, four 20 this year now that I've made some programming adjustments, but, uh, you know, it's safe to say that, you know, by the middle of next year,

maybe early spring, I'll have put a hundred pounds on that squat since that injury. Right. And I've not had knock on wood, engineered wood, I guess is what I have here. Uh, I've not had an injury like that again, but the takeaway there was, that was the one time I got in my head about getting hurt under a barbell. And what I had to do was I had to accept that I could get hurt. Yeah, this may sound foreign to a lot of you because of things we've talked about in other episodes. The heavier the weight gets, the higher the risk. Now, that risk is still relatively low compared to other sports that are more dynamic and require more agility. It's a pretty low risk. Lifting weights is a pretty low risk because you're standing in one position, you're loading,

there's no impact, there's no change of direction. It's not dynamic for the most part. I mean, you're moving the weight, obviously, but your body's in one place, right? So, you know, the risk of serious injury is nonexistent. I've never had a serious injury. I didn't have to get anything reattached there, you know. Right. Yeah. I just had to heal a muscle tear, most likely is what it was. But I had to accept the worst-case scenario to get out of my fucking head. And that's life advice in general.

You know, if you're going to go do something and push limits, you have to accept the worst-case scenario. Otherwise, you're going to block yourself from pushing, forging ahead, you know? Right. Yeah. I remember when I played football, I had a coach tell me, and I can't remember which coach this was, but I had a coach tell me one time when I was young, I was probably in junior high, I was playing defensive end and, you know, I was not a big guy, right? So I was not a lineman-sized guy, but it was a junior high, so you get all sorts of types there and everybody's in a different stage of development. So I had the ability and the aggression to play defensive end and I was doing okay at it. But early on, against some of the bigger guys that would hit hard i was struggling and he said hey listen you know if you just are waiting to get hit

and you just you're just sitting there like oh you know kind of bracing yourself for getting hit he's like you're gonna get smoked every time they're gonna fucking pancake you hit he's like you're gonna get smoked every time they're gonna fucking pancake you um but if you come off the line trying to hit them first and you are just attacking all the time he's like doesn't matter even if they own you you'll pop right back up and i never forgot about that i i was like oh yeah and he was right he was You know, if you're sitting around sort of waiting for the impact, trying to brace, you know, like, if you're shying away from the impact. And that's the thing, you know, when you play football on the line in particular, every single play, there's an impact. If you're playing a skill position, if the ball doesn't come your way, no impact, right? But when you're on the line, it doesn't matter if the quarterback spikes the ball, you're still getting an impact, right? So you really have to get over that pretty quickly if you want to do well there. And I have carried that lesson with me in my physical life since then. If you go and attack the weight and you decide this is my ride. I get to decide what happens here. It makes a huge difference on how things move.

And that's another thing about moving heavy weights, especially on the squat where you have a bar that's on your back. You know, the deadlift, like we said, it has its unique challenges to get the bar off the ground and overcome that inertia. That's a unique challenge. But you don't have with a deadlift, you don't have this thing crushing you from the top. You have that on the squat. That thing is just crushing you down into the ground. And if you come out of the rack timid and just like, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if it's going to go today.

And you come out of the rack and you just feel all that weight, just bearing down and just trying to just absolutely drive you and smash you into the ground it's over man you can't you can't squat heavy like that you have to have the opposite mindset where it's like i'm gonna attack the bar this is my set i get to decide when the bar moves and how it moves and i'm gonna descend under control and i'm gonna explode up out of the bottom but i get But I get to decide when that bar moves. It does not move me. I move it. And that's a huge mindset shift that makes a big difference. You can't be halfway dialed in on a heavy squat. You have to be 100% dialed in. All or nothing. So this leads me to the other major point I wanted to make, And that's that this is the

biggest mistake I see of people that are, you know, like I said, in that late stage novice, early intermediate phase, we're handling weights that are truly, truly heavy, truly heavy in the sense that if they do not execute them with very good technique, doesn't have to be perfect, but very, very good technique. And with a lot of effort, it's just not going to move. It's the unrack. All of this stuff starts with the unrack. So I've found a lot of people,

they imagine the squat. Let's just use a squat as an example for now. They imagine the squat starting when they're in their stance and they're going to descend for that first rep. That's the beginning of the squat starting when they're in their stance and they're, they're going to descend for that first rep. That's the beginning of the squat. It's not, that is not where the squat starts. The squat starts when you unrack the bar, the unrack is so important. I always teach people this because I find even if they're squatting with decent technique, you know, they get their, their back angle looks good. Their stance is good. The bar is in the right place. They're shoving their

knees out, all that stuff. They're getting to depth. Even when all that looks good. I still find a lot of people make this mistake, which is they come out of the rack soft. So a simple thing I teach everyone, when you get underneath the rack, take your grip, get underneath, get underneath the bar, make sure that bar is in the right spot. Okay, now, just because that bar is in the right spot does not mean you stand up. You are not ready to stand up yet with that bar. Now, the bar is in the right spot. Pull your elbows in towards your sides, towards the center of your body, and pull your shoulder blades together. You can do this right now. Just make your squat, you know, just mime your squat stance and your squat grip in the air.

Pull your elbows in towards your sides, pull your shoulder blades together towards the center of your body. And you will feel your upper back get super tight. When you do that, you'll feel all that, all that musculature tighten up and it creates what, um, I've heard other coaches call the meat shelf, right? Where the bar is resting on this big mountain of meat and your upper back. Now, once you have done that, you are ready to stand up out of the hooks, take a step back and get in your stance. But you have to establish that level of tightness before you come out of the rack, because if you don't do it there, you can't do it when you're under load. It's not going to happen. And this also goes hand in hand with

being able to attack the bar. You can't attack the bar if you're soft and relaxed, you have to be tight. And the thing about this is there's notches to this. So, you know, every time you encounter new PR weights, you have to learn how to dial that tightness in one extra notch. You know, and I run into this, like when I'm, if I'm doing like volume work, let's say I'm doing some, you know, four sets, five, and I'm doing 315. I mean, I don't have to be a hundred percent locked in to execute that, right? I can sort of be, you know, I don't know, 80% locked in. I don't have to be a hundred percent tight for that. I try to be, but I don't have to be. But then if I'm going to squat 375 for five, I absolutely have to be a hundred percent locked in. And again, 405 for five, I've got to go that extra notch that you

have to continually find that extra notch of tightness before you unrack the bar. And it's just, you know, I imagine I've never squatted 450 for five, but I imagine the same thing, you're going to have to continually find another notch of tightness. And that's just a that's a huge element of lifting heavy that starts before you even get the bar out of the rack. That's 100% correct. Yeah, and, you know, that's the problem that I had on the school. Well, part of it was programming. I had too much intensity.

I was doing like 90% for my volume, and my intensity was 405, 410 for 5, so a different topic. But I will say that once it gets past 400, I certainly struggle with managing the weight. And it's not fear-based. It's just learning what that feels like. And it doesn't help that my volume is too heavy. So I think this time around, when I get back up there, I'm going slow. I'm at 365 tonight after I finish this podcast for five. So, you know, I got a ways to go.

I do that when I kind of burn out on it. I go back down and I go up slower, you know, and it's also allowing my deadlift to go up. So I'm not complaining, but I think I'll hit a squat PR once I get back up over 400. But yeah, no, I like got through the 315 to 350 range. And then I figured out the 350 to 400 range. And once I got over 400 for sets of three to five reps, never quite mastered how to handle that. This last time around, it got better.

But I think the safety squat bars added a whole new layer because I have to use my abs more since I can't use my back quite as much. You know, I can't leverage off the bar. Yeah, you can't get that meat shelf nearly as much. Yeah, exactly. No, no. So I understand what you're saying um on the press and the bench press what i've kind of noticed is that the problems tend to be more technical in nature i find that a lot of guys especially are willing to grind a bench press

and i think it's just because we have been exposed to it from a young age you know uh however this is another topic that ties into this what i have seen on the bench more than the press, I think people just start hating the press because it's so damn technical. It's not that heavy and it just sucks. I never really see people freak out whether they're going to get it or not. It's more like it just suddenly fails for one reason or another. And the reasons are, we can go through that in a different episode. But I don't really see a lot of anxiety with the press. They just go for it and it either goes bad because the technique sucks or for some other reason.

Or they get it, you know, on the bench. And this could probably apply to any lift, but I see this a lot on the bench. Just because, like I said, people are willing to grind it, especially men. If they miss a weight, then there's anxiety once that weight comes back. And this can happen on any lift, but I really see it on the bench because it's one where especially male lifters have the most experience, you know. And it's not as intimidating even though it should be because it could kill you. You know, that bar is going over your face and throat. Right.

Yeah. It's the most dangerous lift out of all of them. I mean, people are most keen to grind it out, you know. out of all of them. I mean, people are most keen to grind it out, you know? But once a bench press has been missed, then that anxiety kicks in, that cognitive anxiety, you know? And I've certainly experienced that this run because my bench, for all intents and purposes, has been, not technically,

but I feel like it's been stuck for a decade. You know, I hit 290-ish back in 2015, 295, my buck came up, I don't count it. But then from 2015 to 2020, it just stayed around the same place. And then I gained a little bit of weight that year, and I got it up to 310 overnight with minimal programming. I was doing three sets of five once a week. And then when that stopped working, I did a heavy triple and some backoffs. And when that stopped working, I ran up singles, got 310, couldn't get 315. So I'm like, well, that was a leverage PR. You know, I got bigger and you can push more with more weight on you. So I'm sure I probably gained some muscle maybe. I don't know.

I just, I can't attribute it to programming. It was a joke of a program. So that's why I feel like, you know, that happened, but I don't acknowledge it because I don't feel like I worked for it. You know, it just kind of happened. Fast forward now for the last year, I've been programming the bench press intentionally. And I got to about 260 and that was a first set of five. My previous best set of five was 267 and a half for five. And I had to repeat 260 a couple of times to get it. And then I was changing programming variables and I got to 262 and a half and I was stuck there for about three months. And I just kept adjusting things, adjusting things, adjusting things in the direction of less, less is more, right? So every other week, then I took tonnage down on the second day. Anyways, it finally moved. I got to 262.5,

got 265, got missed 267.5, got it the second time. Missed 270. Got it the second time. Missed 272.5 a couple weeks ago. Made a modification. Going to go again. What I will say is, all through the 260s and up until now, there's anxiety around it because of all those missed reps, you know? Sure. And it's better than it used to be because every time I miss a rep, I'm like, well, this is an opportunity to figure out why and change something. But that

doesn't erase the reality that next time I bench, I have to deal with this bullshit in my head because I'm like, fuck, here's the thing. It feels fucking heavy coming down, just like a squat, right? And I got to ignore that and push it up and also make sure that I keep myself tight. That's the challenging thing. And I squat the bars on your back. You got that feedback to help you out a little bit. On a bench, you know, you can wear an A7 shirt and improve the grip. You can use a wooden bench and get rid of the squishiness of the, you know, the padded benches that, you know, you typically see. So, you know, an A7 shirt, a wooden bench, that helps.

But it is so easy to want to just unrack that bar, let it slam on your chest and go back up because you're anxious and i see that a lot yeah and i want to do it in fact i did it when i got 270 i did and i knew i did it and i'm like this is sloppy but i got the fucking trampoline to knock your chest a little bit yeah oh fun i mean i wasn't a total bad offender but yeah like i let tightness go i let go. I let things go because it was that situation, what I said, that U-shaped curve, too much aggro. Yeah, right. I was too aggressive with it, and I didn't maintain all the things that I had to maintain. And a bench, it's more challenging because you're lying on a bench, you know, and it's easy to slide off the bench. It's easy to flatten your back out.

It's easy to forget about your legs, you know. There's a lot more stability required in a bench than these other lifts. And I know that sounds funny because you've got a big bar in your back that's several hundred pounds heavier when you're squatting. But on a bench, the bench itself is an instrument to help you improve tightness. You've got the floor to deal with. You have to lock yourself into this supine position that ideally doesn't move. Now, we all end up moving because, you know, the nature of it, right? But you have to lock in this position. And supine means lying down for those of you who have not had an anatomy background.

So you're lying down and you're trying to lie down in a way where your body's not going to move when you're lifting the weight. And that's fucking, you know, requires a lot of focus, I've found. It's very deliberate. When it's heavy and, yeah, when it's heavy and you've had a bad experience with that particular lift, you just want to fucking just get it over with quickly. Yeah. That adrenaline can take over to a point where it's unproductive. You're thinking about the push up and forgetting about everything else. You're focused so much on pushing up that you forget that you've got to lower it under control with your leg drive intact.

100%. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It's the same thing as the unracks. With your leg drive intact. 100%. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's the same thing as the unracks.

Like, you know, you're not, you know, just because you got your hands on the bar in the right spot for the bench, you're not ready to take that bar out of the rack at all. There's a lot of things that have to happen. Yeah, the best benches I've done, I have felt so incredibly locked in. Like, my hip flexors are tight. They sometimes, you know, some people cramp, you know, cause they've got, they're, they're driving their legs. They're driving their ass back. Um, uh, in my, my, again, it's kind of the similar motion as a squat, right? Where your shoulder blades are pulled together, really tight, locked in chest, lift it up as high as you can

towards the ceiling. And then you set your feet into position and drive your ass back towards your chest your chest comes up even a little bit more because of that leg drive and now it's like you are just so if you do this right you are so incredibly locked in the literally the only thing that can move is is the bar can move down and you don't even have to like think about where the bar is going to go because that that chest position manages the the placement of the bar it will go where it needs to go um but yeah the best benches i've ever done i've i've felt so incredibly locked in actually you know i finished the bench and i've got a little bit of a you know like uh my back is like almost spasming a little bit because it was just my arch was so incredibly tight um

it's important this this is the difference between being an okay lifter and a good lifter i'll never know what it is to be a great lifter but i can at least be a good lifter i think um i will say on the press on the press the unrack is an important part that a lot of people forget about. The press is very difficult because it is extremely technical. It's the one lift where you cannot be off by an inch in your bar path. It's, that's too much. Yeah. 1% off and that's, that's a miss. Um, you can be 1% off on a deadlift and squat, even a bench press. It's fine. You have to be very, very, very on your bar path with a press. However, again, it starts with the unrack.

I see a lot of people that come out of the rack kind of soft, and they walk back into their stance, and then all of a sudden, now that they're in their stance, they want to lift their elbows up and get their elbows up into position. And guess what? If you're lift, if you're, if you've got a heavy weight in your hands, you can't do it. You literally cannot get your elbows up where they need to be. If you're actually lifting heavy. Also, you're not going to have a full, um, your, your trunk is not going to be maximally stiff because you can't take a full breath and hold it when you don't have your elbows up already. The pressure of that bar crushing down and putting pressure on your lungs is enormous

when it's heavy. So you have to come out big and tight. And I've found this makes a huge difference with me. And I've been an okay presser. I've pressed 242 for a single, I've tripled 225. I've pressed 205 for three sets of five. So I've done plenty of pretty heavy presses for my for me. And yeah, it makes a big difference when I get over, you know, really, for me, when I get over 200. Everything has to be perfect, including the unrack. And there's just no, I can't be 75% locked in when I, when I come out of the rack. So, um, the one thing is, and this is part of the technique that we teach. So this, this should already be learned if you've been coached, but it is something people mistake. So I want to point it out. Your elbows should be in front of

the bar before you come out of the rack, right? So when you elbow should be in front of the bar before you come out of the rack, right? So when you, when you step up to the bar, you take your grip and then you get up close to the bar. You should be able to rotate your elbows forward and in front of the barbell. So the tip of your, your elbow is in front of the barbell before it comes out of the rack. A lot of people miss this thing. They want to like walk up to the bar and then like their elbows are now below the bar and then stand up, walk back and lift their elbows up. Nope, it needs to be up before you come out of the rack. Basically-

That exits your shelf as well. That's right, that's part of the shelf. Basically, the bar in your hands should look exactly the same as you unrack as it does when you're standing and ready to start that first rep. There should be no difference in your hands should look exactly the same as you unrack as it does when you're standing and ready to start that first rep. There should be no difference in your elbow position. And then the second thing is just anticipating that heavy crushing weight in your hands and pulling your elbows in towards the side of your body to create this extra sort of compressive force in your upper body.

This is something that you'll learn as you get more muscular. I did not really learn this until I got bigger and I put on some delts and some pecs and some lats. But as you get bigger and stronger, as you pull your elbows not only forward in front of the bar, but as you pull your elbows in towards the center of your body, you'll feel your pecs compress against your bicep. You'll feel your delts get tight. You'll feel your triceps get tight and you'll feel your lats underneath your triceps bulge out.

And that actually acts as like this whole thing acts as like a trampoline. Like I can feel like right here, I'm doing it right now with air and I can feel my triceps stacked on top of my lat. You know, when you pull that elbow in, now you got to have some lats for this to happen. If you, if you haven't really been training very long, you may not be able to feel that. But as you, as you do gain, gain more muscle, you can feel that. And that creates this huge, like, trampoline that helps you start that first rep. So, you know, it's all these little details that matter. add there. I've, you know, the wrists tend to loosen up. Yeah. People will try to rest it in the palm of their hand. You know, that's something we tend to try to fix early on. Yeah. Active wrist. You want to, yeah, I squeeze that bar. This is the one lift you want to squeeze that bar. You want that, you want your forearm and wrist completely vertical as we teach it,

so that it acts as a shelf when you take it out um so i'd say i've seen some of that you know people get worked up and you know they'll unrack it sloppy like what you're saying and uh then not shrug it yeah right they'll just lock the elbow out and let it back down you got to shrug the traps you know you don't want to uh impinge your shoulders that's how you fuck up your shoulders on a press is if you don't shrug right um but uh i don't know it's unless you do it for a while maybe compete in strength lifting i just don't see a lot of people that i train that are like gung-ho about i want a ginormous fucking press you know right yeah it's you know they just and they miss and they just don't care you know they don't care as much as the other lifts for some reasons. Today I'm speaking a lot of the psychology around this and the psychological aspect of approaching these lifts.

And with that one, I see slop and laziness. I do see that. I'm trying to think of things that got to me. So, like, I wanted 225 and I, you know, for a long time I didn't think it was possible. Then when I tripled 200 or 205, I was like, uh, I think this is, it's there, it's happening. And, uh, then I tried to peak it and I couldn't get it up after 215. That was the most I can go up. And that was a five pound PR at the time. And, uh, I was like this, no, it's there. So I need to unlock it. How do I do that? So I pin pressed until I couldn't pin press any heavier.

I pin pressed 255, 260 didn't go. Or maybe it was 257 and a half. I might have been going up by two and a half, but I couldn't get 260. It just slid across the pins. So I'm like, okay, it's time. Let's go back down. Went back down, got 225.

I'd say that when I watched that video again, it was legal. I think I could have been a little bit tighter. Probably just, I'd probably walk out fast and just go into it, you know? Yeah. And in one sense, you want to do that because you've been practicing thousands of reps at various intensities, working towards that, and you have to get to a point. This is something I didn't touch on earlier, but I really want to make sure it gets in here. You want to get to, you got to get to a point. This is something I didn't touch on earlier, but I really want to make sure it gets in here. You want to get to it. You've got to trust yourself.

You've got to trust your body to do what you've been practicing. That's part of sports in general. You practice, practice, practice, but then when you're out in the field, whatever it is you're doing, you've got to turn all that analysis off and trust your body to do what you've been practicing. And I think you could speak to this too, Trent, with music.

It's the same concept. You practice, you fuck up, you fix the fuck ups, fix the fuck ups. But if you have to go do a live performance, you're tuning all that out and you're just relying on yourself to do whatever it is you put in the hours to do, you know? Exactly. Yep, exactly. Yeah. You know, you've touched on there, the speed in which you execute the set. And that means the speed of everything, like how long does it take before you step on the platform to when you take your grip on the bar? How long does it take you to get set and unrack?

How long do you take between the unrack and starting the first rep? And, you know, I think there's, there's some variation there. I've seen great lifters that are pretty speedy, you know, they don't, they don't waste any time. They get right out of the rack and they get after it. I've seen some great lifters that are pretty slow. You know, like a lot of big squatters. Like watch, you know, like Ray Ray or Ray Williams or who's that guy?

Jesus Olivares, who's got the IPF world record squat. So not quite as heavy as Ray Ray's US pl squat but he's this guy i think is gonna squat 1100 raw it's insane um but you know these guys they're they're pretty slow you know they they get set underneath their bar they stand up they take a step back and it's like one step back okay we good another step back okay we good okay stance okay we good. Another step back. Okay, we good. Okay. Stance. Okay, we good. Okay. Huge breath, pause, and then go, right? So it's a long process and there's other people who come out really fast. I think the point, what I've seen is that everyone that's a good lifter is deliberate about that process. There's no part of that process that's accidental.

a good lifter is deliberate about that process. There's no part of that process that's accidental. Um, they have, they've, and that goes back to exactly what you said. It's the practice, right? So when you're, when you're in, when you're in the gym training, the whole thing, like when you step on the platform, that's all part of the set and you're practicing the way that you're approaching that bar. So be deliberate about it. Um, yeah, I don't like to waste much time when I press. I'm not going to stand there for three seconds before I start the first rep. I'm going to go right after it, but it's very deliberate. I'm not rushing through anything. I'm not sloppy in anything. Everything that I do has a purpose and I'm executing it. And now it's automatic. It's just like warmups. I yelled at a guy yesterday because he's like, oh, I just can't set my back because it's only 175 on the deadlift.

And he's pulled in the high threes. Actually, low fours. He did pretty good. And I'm like, dude, I can set my back with 20 pounds on the bar. I'm like, don't give me that shit. That is practice. Your warm-ups are practice. When you do the work set, you tune all that out.

By the time you're at the work set, you're not thinking about much. You're just moving and you're trusting your body to do what you've been practicing. If you're still thinking about shit when it's that heavy, then it's going to not go very well. You're going to start fucking things up. The purpose to warm-ups and the purpose to training, you know, there's some overlap here. When you warm up, you're practicing the movement. You can think about it, tear it apart, overthink it, and do all that shit when it's light. Once you get to that last warm-up, there's no more thinking. You're just trusting your body to do

it. Once you get to that one RM, after going through all the training at the various rep ranges, you're no longer thinking. You're just moving, and you're trusting that you've ingrained that habit. Example, what I said earlier about my truck. I didn't know, I didn't think about hinging my hips, keeping my back and abs set and locking my hamstrings in place. My body just did it because I've deadlifted thousands of times with heavy weight that it is now automatic. You have to adopt this with your training. When you warm up and do all your warmups with intent, the work set should simulate the warmup if you've taken your time and thought about what you're doing at those lighter weights. By the time you max out all those lighter weights that were hard,

your heavy sets of five, your heavy triples, heavy doubles, all that has built up to this peak performance that you're doing at a meet or in your gym, and you have to be able to just move and assume that you're going to move the way you've practiced because that's the purpose of practice. And I remember this with other skills. You know, I brought up music because when I used to DJ, I'd be really overly perfectionistic about beat matching. That's what DJs do. They try to get the beats to line up so it sounds like one song and one seamless song that never stops, right? Right, right. And I'd be so anal about it when I was in my bedroom. But when I go to a nightclub and it was time to DJ, I'd tune all that shit out. Yeah.

I'd just fucking go and it sounded fucking fine, you know? It sounded fine. I sounded better than practice because at this point, now it's time to turn off. You're performing, you know?

And this is something that, like I said, goes back to swimming. Like, I never thought about the start. I just went and then I'd sprint or I did the distance event.

I didn't think. I was very good about that. And I've, over the years, I've had to think about ways to articulate it because I see a lot of people struggling with that. Yeah. A lot of it's trust, and it's a confidence thing. Competence, a guy once told me, competence is confidence.

If you practice something thousands of times and you've done it well thousands of times, then you should be able to just move or do whatever it is, perform the the action and have it work out the way it's supposed to. You know, you may not lift the weight you want to lift because it may not be there that day, but everything that you need to do to maximize the chances of that will just work out because you've practiced, believe in your practice. A lot of this is psychological. That's where I've been talking about today. Believe that all of those thousands of reps

whether it's a squat deadlift whether it's playing the piano or the guitar whatever it is that all those thousands of reps where you were overly overly perfectionistic will translate to you not thinking about it just doing it you have to believe that yep exactly i think people that have have some competitive sports experience, they've got this under their belts. They may have to rediscover it if it's been a long time since they've been competitive, but a lot of people that have played competitive sports

at some level, even if just like high school, they get this because it's something you have to overcome even in high school. If you've never had that experience, then that's essentially what we're talking about is you're developing the mindset of a competitive athlete. And dude, this is how it happens. It's interesting, because I applied this academically to, you know, if I had to learn something, take a test, write a paper, give a presentation, I'd look at it over and over again, read it over and over again, second guess myself, go through all that process. Then exam day would

come. I'd just tune it out and start answering questions. I'd be like, it's there. I put the reps in, it's there. I just believed that. I didn't really think about my answers. I would just answer, answer, answer. Then I would double check, obviously. But when I go through that first run, I would just answer questions. I'd read and answer, read and answer. Or if I had to present, I would give my presentation. The questions would come at me. I was always good at answering questions. I would just answer to the best of my ability because I prepared. I'd look, expose myself to the information. Did I get a perfect score every time? No, I was a pretty good student in my classes. I got mostly A's in my master's. In my master's, I got all A's. PhD, I got mostly A's and my you know my master's and my master's i got all a's phd i got mostly a's got a couple b's you know um so with that stuff i was

fine presentation they'd ask questions and i'd have to go around in circles for some of them but most of them you know i'd eventually get to what they were asking me you know yeah um and it was the same process it was just lots of reps at the thing that i was trying to perform at a high level at and then when it came time to perform and express that intelligence that I was trying to develop, I wouldn't think about it. I'd just fucking start saying things if it was oral or writing things down if it was written or circling answers if it was multiple choice type deal, you know? And I believe that it was all there, and I treated it just like a sport. Like, when it came time to do that, I would shut my brain off and just, I'm like, I have to trust that it's there. Yeah, that's right. Because if I started thinking about

it, I wasn't as sharp, you know? And so this is a life skill that applies to both physical and cognitive tasks as well, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's well said. Yeah, I think that's, I haven't really thought about it much. Like I said, I just do it. I think that's in essence what I'm telling myself when I say yes on the squat is I'm just reminding myself. It's just my, it's one word to remind myself, like, dude, you've done this thousands of times.

That's just five more pounds. That's nothing. You've basically almost already done this. You just got to add five little pounds. That's it. So I'm just encapsulating that one word. Yes. And then I go. almost already done this. You just got to add five little pounds. That's it. So I'm just encapsulating that one word. Yes.

And then I go. I have a guy here who picks up a five and holds it. Yeah. And you're like, what's just this much more? That's right. Yeah. It's a cool mantra. Hold that weight. That's it.

That's all. It's nothing. So yeah, there you go. There's a little psychomacology for you. Sure. To the extent that we can. Yeah. Say yes, people.

A little technique work, but this is almost like the technique before the technique. Right? The rep does not start when you have the bars in your hands. That's not when the rep starts. The rep starts before you step on the platform. Just remember, people, this is my closing argument here. If it's exam day or if it's the day to get on the platform whatever it is you're doing you're not gonna think of something novel at this point you

know if you you're either ready or you're not yeah so you're either gonna fuck it up or you're not so just accept it and put in your all and whatever you put into it will show most likely you know you might have an off day and that's not your fault, you know, but aside from that, you know, if the stars align, you're having a pretty decent day, not even a great day, you have a decent day, then what you've put in is going to show. You just have to adopt that belief because trust me, you're not going to find a novel strategy at that point in time, whether it's maxing out at a power lifting meet or taking a final exam or doing a dissertation defense or giving a sales pitch to a business that you've been trying to secure as an account for fucking months and months and months. Once you get to that point,

you're not fixing anything major. So there's no use in overthinking it. Just go in and perform. Just perform. Right. Or, as Trent says, say yes. Yeah. Just say yes. Say yes to the squad. And don't be a pussy. Don't be a pussy. Please.

Please. Come on. You owe yourself. Pretty good. Better. All right, man. Well, let's sign it off on this. Let's close out.

Yeah. Thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com. If you are Thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at WeightsAndPlates.com. If you are in Metro Phoenix, I'm at Weights and Plates Gym, just here in South Mountain Village, just south of Sky Harbor Airport. Most of my content drops on Instagram and YouTube. My Instagram handle is the underscore Robert underscore Santana. We are on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Weights underscore and underscore Plana. We are on YouTube at youtube.com slash at weights underscore and

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