The World's Strongest Librarian

"... You're going to the gym with me. I think this will be good for you."
"Why?"
"Because I've been depressed before. I know some things. But listen, can I ask you a question?"
"Yeah."
 "Is there anyone you look up to? I'm serious, now. No jokes."
"I don't know," I said. What good would it do to say I looked up to my dad? Or my grandpa? Or the prophet or Pee-Wee Herman for that matter?
"Well," Dad said, "you've got to find someone to follow. Do you know who that is?"
"You?"
"I wish. But no. It's you. You have zero confidence."
"Yes, I do."
"Yes, you have zero confidence. No, I know that's not what you meant, but, no, you don't, and you know how I know?"
"Because you're in touch with Navajo spirits."
He exhaled hard through his nose. "Do you ever get tired of being so funny? It's a nice smoke screen, but I know you. Confident people do stuff. They get stuff done. They make things, even if it's just making money. You know what you're making?"
"It doesn't matter."
"You're making our couch sag. That's about it. You're making your mom sad because you're not trying. You're making your siblings miserable because you're acting like you're miserable."
"I am. I'm depressed and on a bunch of drugs. I want to take more of them every day just to feel different."
"This isn't depression and that's not their fault. But I don't want to fight. I think what we're about to do is going to give you a way to make some progress."
"There nothing important about lifting weights."
"There's nothing insignificant about progress. Let's just give it a try."

- From The World's Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne

Josh Hanagarne's memoir is a moving story about love and faith, both lost and found, with a lot of Tourette's and weights mixed in. It will be the most memorable book I'll read this year, and not just because I'm an acquaintance and fan of Josh's, but because it's that good. If you love to lift weights, or if you've ever struggled with faith, hope, and love, then this book will speak to you. Enjoy!

"Hyperextensions"

Back in the day, there was no such thing as a "reverse hyper", "45 degree back extension bench", or a "glute-ham bench" - there was simply the "Roman Chair". You didn't do "back extensions", you did "hyperextensions" (yes, I understand the difference in execution the terms imply however, in how people actually executed the movements, there is no difference).

It was (and still is) a great, great exercise. Underrated. These days, I use my glute-ham bench for hyper... er, excuse me, back extensions more often than glute-ham raises (though I like both).

Greg Everett of Catalyst Athletics wrote the following post on the exercise: Back Extension(s)

Producing Coherence in the Flow

Designers of interior spaces have found that a perfectly useless post positioned along the path to a fire exit may actually help people escape. Give evacuees storming toward a doorway a little something to avoid and you stagger their arrival slightly, allowing them to stream through the opening in a reasonably controlled flow, rather than colliding there at once and causing a pileup. The obstacle keeps you at the top of the complexity arc, preventing you from plunging headlong to the frozen end.
"You create a little turbulence," says Santa Fe Institute economist John Miller, who specializes in complex adaptive social systems. "By adding a little noise to the system you produce coherence in the flow." (Simplexity, pg. 52)

Much of training could be viewed as "adding a little noise to the system" to "produce coherence in the flow". Note that it doesn't mean flood the system, or blow out the speakers adding noise - a little will do.

The Wordle of Squat

Created with wordle.net

Workshop for Swimmers and Coaches

Last weekend, I held a free strength workshop for swimmers and coaches with Brock Leggins at his gym Ultimate Athlete Development. Swimming will always hold a very special place in my heart and I welcome a chance to give back to the sport whenever I can. Swimmers and swim coaches are always a fantastic bunch to work with. We had a good turnout with at least two dozen participants.

There was a lot of material presented to the group. Aside from specific exercises and drills, here are a few things that Brock and I touched on:

The Primacy of Technique and Strength

Proper technique is key, but no one is going to master swimming technique without the prerequisite strength and conditioning to maintain it long enough to practice. Bad technique = survival technique. If you've ever seen a little kid try to swim the butterfly before they are strong enough, then you understand what I'm talking about.
Once fatigue has set in and form cannot be maintained, it's time to call it a day and do something else. Practicing slop will make you good at slop. Short term, poor technique will be easier, but long term, it will limit our progress and put us on the path to endless plateaus and injury. We want to make the hard stuff look easy.

starts = hinge                                     turns = squat

"The goal is to keep the goal the goal" (Dan John)

When I was much younger and at a large meet, I was looking at meet results posted in the natatorium lobby and overhead a conversation between two prominent national youth coaches. It went something like this:

  Rational Coach: So, what do you have your kids do for dryland work?

  Mean Mustache Coach: I make 'em run. We run.

  Rational Coach: ... Huh, really? Why?

  Mean Mustache Coach: That really ramps up the heart rate and smokes 'em!

  Rational Coach: Hmm.

"Mean Mustache Coach" was a nationally known coach. He was famous for being an ass, but for a time good swimmers flocked to the program. Although the program was a draw for talent, it was not known for developing it. Eventually people figured this out. He forgot "the goal" which, in swimming and all its aspects of training, is to be a faster swimmer. Period. Swimmers running for conditioning makes about as much sense as a mixed martial artist doing marathons to improve his "wind".

"The goal is to keep the goal the goal." Squats for swimmers? Likely 'yes', but the goal is not a 500lb squat; the goal is a powerful and effortless push off the wall on every turn and a deadly breaststroke kick. Do we need a loaded barbell to achieve this? Maybe, maybe not - it depends the strengths and needs of the athlete.

It's NOT okay for your swimmers to be "fish out of water"

It was always curious to me that swim coaches, by and large, seem resigned to the fact that many (not most, but many) of their athletes are, quite frankly, not very athletic. Horrible posture, shoulder laxity, hyperextended knees, and a 10" vertical are NOT okay for your swimmers. Your swimmers need not be capable of dunking a basketball or playing rugby, but it IS important that your athletes are athletic.

I've met many great swimmers, and known a few - Division I All-Americans, Olympians, and world record holders. Most were AMAZING all-around athletes. However (among All-Americans) there were a few incapable of performing a single pull-up; they were sorely lacking in strength and, not surprisingly, after peaking in their late teens, performances were stagnant from year to year. Power, mobility, and technical proficiency form the base for a swimmer's long term growth. If any of these components is missing, performance growth will stagnate.

To be a great swimmer requires many athletic qualities that are not built by swimming exclusively. This is no different than other sports - being an elite baseball player may require great power, but playing baseball alone is not a good developer of power. In swimming, you must have strong and flexible legs and hips to have powerful starts and turns, but simply doing starts and turns will not be enough (except for the natural athletes). You will develop lats and pecs of steel as a competitive swimmer, but poor middle back strength and bad posture will make it difficult for swimmers to take advantage of them. Weak, inflexible hamstrings are a hindrance to proper starts and turns. Dryland training is a key to developing those attributes that your swimmers will probably lack if they do nothing but swim. Properly planned and programmed, dryland training will shore up weaknesses and accentuate strengths.

The Low Low Bar Squat

You've heard of a high-bar squat and a low-bar squat, but have you heard of the "low-low bar squat"? Not one I'd recommend, but an interesting squat variant nonetheless...

Showing Up

The first rule of doing work that matters 

Go to work on a regular basis. 

Art is hard. Selling is hard. Writing is hard. Making a difference is hard. 

When you're doing hard work, getting rejected, failing, working it out - this is a dumb time to make a situational decision about whether it's time for a nap or a day off or a coffee break. 

Zig Ziglar taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule before you start. Don't allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, "hey, maybe I should check my email for a while, or you know, I could use a nap." If you do that, the lizard brain will soon be trained to use that escape hatch again and again. 

Isaac Asimov wrote and published more than 400(!) books by typing nonstop from 6am to noon, every day for forty years. 

The first five years of my solo business, when the struggle seemed never-ending, I never missed a day, never took a nap. (I also committed to ending the day at a certain time and not working on the weekend. It cuts both ways.) 

In short: show up. 

(From Poke The Box by Seth Godin)

Related Squat Rx Posts:
Needles
The Dip

Remaining Coachable

 The Dude and the Zen Master

"You know what your problem is? You don't realize who I think I am."
- Jeff Bridges quoting his friend, Loyd Catlett

Today, my son was climbing at a local gym. We have a good time with it and we've been doing it regularly for about seven months. After my son finished a route and had descended, a young man, probably less than half my age, walked up to me and commented on my belaying, saying, among other things "We can't have you belaying like that." He wasn't trying to be a jerk about it, and it ended politely, but I was seething on the inside...

The thing is though - he was right... It's taking me some time to surrender my ego and really accept that I was wrong and need to accept the lesson presenting itself. It's easy to be sloppy about your technique when you're belaying a small child on an unchallenging route - and I was sloppy. Practice sloppy enough and you'll be sloppy when you can't afford it... For all I know, this young man might have saved my son's life in the future.

Remaining coachable is a key, maybe THE key, to continued learning, progress, and mastery. Peer-reviewed studies, elite status, thousands of friends on Facebook, even an impressive clientele list gives no one a corner on the truth which is always context-rich and complex. Once you become above criticism, beyond reproach, beyond questioning and lose the ability to laugh at yourself, then you've lost the beginner's mind. Something for all of us (me and you, newbs and gurus) to remember, and remember often.

Muscle Tussle

Going Clear

The dogma of the group is promoted as scientifically incontestable - in fact, truer than anything any human being has ever experienced. Resistance is not just immoral; it is illogical and unscientific. In order to support this notion, language is constricted by what Lifton calls the "thought-terminating cliche." "The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly-reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily express," he writes. "These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis." 

...the person expressing doubts about the church is steered into thinking about his own faults that led him to question... in the first place. 

 - Going Clear (pp. 144-145)

There is no shortage of dogma in the strength and fitness industry. Some groups and their members border on fanaticism. Be wary when someone tries to tell you that one training methodology or exercise or tool or supplement or diet is THE ONLY ANSWER YOU NEED to every question...

I'll Be Doing A Workshop March 30th!

If you're in the area and you're interested, let me know or contact Brock Leggins at ultimateathletedevelopment@gmail.com

Two Years Ago

Almost exactly two years ago, my wife and I watched on satellite television as Japanese newscasters forecasted a tsunami over 5 meters in height, and then later changed that prediction to waves of over 10 meters in height. We watched the waves crash into Japan's Tohoku region, where my wife's extended family lives and where we were married.
Now, two years later, the people of the Tohoku region are still removing rubble, searching for the remains of loved ones, and rebuilding what they can. Two years later, more than 300,000 are still homeless. がんばれ日本！