Don't Make these 3 Mistakes!
Garage Strength
What are some crazy mistakes you have made in training/coaching?!
What's up everybody? Welcome to Dane Miller Strength Secrets. I'm pretty excited for this one. I want to go over just three monstrous mistakes that I see every single weightlifter doing. I think this can carry over to bodybuilding, powerlifting and other strength sports as well. I think it helps that I'm around Olympic weightlifters all the time and I hear their complaints all the time and I acknowledge them and listen to them. And finally I just sat down and thought “what are they doing on a regular basis that's leading them to one: thinking that somebody cares about their negligence of training and two: that they feel obliged to complain but not actually do something about it effectively?” So I wanted to put this nice little podcast together and we're going to title it “The Three Things you Should Not Do as an Athlete Revolving Around Resistance Training and Strength.”
So let's start this off. Poor recovery. We've got Olympic weightlifters that constantly will complain about their knees or their back or whatever it is, their hips. First off, we have to acknowledge Olympic weightlifting is a very demanding sport. It's very difficult. It's a lot of stress. It's a lot of physical stress on your body that forces crazy adaptations of the nervous system, and general neuromuscular adaptations that lead to technical improvement and strength gains and to foster the growth of those adaptations. What's behind everything? What's driving everything? If we can think about it in this regard, that you go into a training session and you're trying to challenge your body, you're trying to change your body, you're trying to tune in your nervous system to respond quicker and to execute a faster, more precise. So that matters.
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We know for a fact that we also need to work on scar tissue throughout our body with stretching, rolling out, and any semblance of manipulation. So it's important to have somebody in your life that can help you with mobility, that can manually manipulate you. That can also provide you with a daily plan and approach to joint integrity. If we're going into the gym and we're going to create this insane demand of stress, we've got to have joint integrity in the back of our mind. And that means two sessions a day of 10 to 15 minutes of mobilizing. And that does not include your warmup or your cool down. That means in the morning, and at night, you should be doing something before your train/post-training. You've got to take care of those joints and you've got to use that time to optimize your recovery to create that better adaptation.
On top of that, you need to make sure that you are getting 1.8 to 2 grams of protein per kilo of body weight. That's the most ironic thing with weight lifters is they understand the crazy stress and adaptations that their body is undergoing, and then you ask them what they're eating and you layout their nutrition and they're eating maybe a 1 gram per kilo body weight and you're challenging them to increase this and they complain and they make things up and they'll tell you they're doing it and then you look at them like you're injured all the time or you feel fatigued, you feel tired, you clearly are not getting the protein intake that you need to get. There's been so many studies over the last 12 months that have come out. Meta analysis, specific studies that have shown the sweet spot is 1.8 to 2 grams per kilo body weight. 1.6 is where it starts. If you're in a training system that's Olympic weightlifting based, it must be 1.8 grams per kilo body weight to 2 grams per kilo body weight. Poor recovery is that number one first mistake.
Second one. Poor focus in training. When we're focused on training, that means we're not complaining, we're not talking to everybody around us, we're not looking at our Apple watch, we're not checking our texts, we're not checking our Instagram, we're not talking to other people about random things that might be sparking or floating through your slippery brain. We've got to be sitting there going, “Hey, I've got goals. I'm in the gym. I want to accomplish this. I need to fix my technique. I need to focus on my strength. I need to focus on even my recovery during training. I should be having a protein shake while I'm even training, so I feel a little bit better and I can have a bit of a little bit longer push. I'm going to be focused. I'm not going to care about 600 things that are going on on social media. I'm not going to care about my Apple watch. I'm not going to care about my text messages. I'm not going to talk about my stress.” The biggest thing that I see on a regular basis that leads to this poor focus in training is just telling other people what is bothering you. My elbow hurts when I caught that snatch. And then you talk about it for 10 minutes. My knees hurt and then you talk about it for 20 minutes and you proceed to not have good recovery.
This poor focus in training sort of seeps into other areas of your life. Then you're sitting there going, “I don't have good focus in training and I'm not recovering well, but I'm still just going to keep talking about it instead of doing something about it.” That's the underlying theme here behind Olympic weightlifters is they love the post things on social media. They love to tell people what they're doing. They love to talk about what they're doing. We're like the CrossFit stepchild, right? We want to brag about this and that, but we don't want to do the little things that can get us really really good. At the end of the day, this is the number three mistake, is that no one cares.
No one remembers who won the U.S. National Title four years ago. No one remembers who made a world team four years ago. At the end of the day, you have to worry about yourself. You have to focus on your training. You have to focus on your recovery. You have to optimize all of your time because you have such a short window to be as good as you possibly can be. You have a short timeframe to compete and display the strength gains that you've made and the strength adaptations that you've made because of the efforts that you've put in prior to this. So recognizing that no one else cares is a very, very quick way to check yourself and recognize that the only person that really cares about your performance outside of your coach, and maybe your mom is you. If you are the only one that cares, then you are the one that needs to hold yourself accountable to recover as well as possible. Don't make excuses. Don't lie to yourself. Don't lie to other people. Don't make things up. You must eat this way. You must sleep this amount every night. You must do mobility in the morning. You must do mobility at night. You must do mobility before you train and after you train. You must meditate two times a day because no one else is going to do this for you. No one else is going to pick up your slack. When you get on a platform and you lift like shit, no one else cares but you, and you're the one who has to deal with the fact that you didn't properly prepare to become the best Olympic weightlifter that you could possibly be.
These are the three mistakes that you should never make. Don't have poor recovery, don't have poor focus in training and stop thinking that other people care about your success. Because at the end of the day, no one really cares.
Once you recognize that, you'll start to build that system around who you are and who you want to become and how you want to get there. That's when you will achieve that elite level status of Olympic weightlifting.
Dane Miller
Dane Miller is the owner and founder of Garage Strength Sports Performance. He works with a select handful of elite athletes building comprehensive programs for strength and sports performance. Several times a year he leads a seminar for coaches, trainers, and athletes.
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