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By
Charles Staley, B.Sc, MSS
Director, Staley Training Systems |
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What qualities, attributes,
or behaviors should you be focusing on in your training? Are
they the attributes that you truly prioritize, or maybe not?
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- Do you spent most of your quality
training time chasing new 1RM's when you've got chronic orthopedic
issues that threaten to sideline you in the very near future?
- Do you have impressive "gym
numbers" that you've never replicated in competition?
- Do you have a terrible time cutting
weight for meets, and yet your diet is still a mess?
- Do you have circus-level wobble-board
skills but an embarrassingly puny deadlift?
- Is your paused bench press 90
pounds less than your "touch and go" bench?
If you see yourself in one or more
of the above scenarios, my sole consolation for you is that its
only human nature- we all tend to savor what we do best, and avoid
what we do worst. The opposite of this (which few of us actually
do) is what Canadian journalist and pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell
calls "deliberate practice."
Gladwell's research indicates that
it takes 10,000 hours of this thankless toil to reach a high level
of proficiency in your chosen craft. To put that in numbers you
can more readily appreciate, if you train 4 times a week at 90 minutes
per workout, you'd have to train for over 32 years in order to attain
mastery. And that's only if you're employing deliberate practice,
which you're probably not: deliberate practice is characterized
by 3 tenets:
1. Focus on technique as opposed
to outcome.
2. Set specific goals.
3. Obtain immediate quality feedback,
and use it.
Even if you've been exposed to this
information, it's difficult to continuously perform deliberate practice,
because by definition it requires attending to your weak points,
while putting your strengths on the back burner. Which isn't all
that fun (until much later of course, when you start collecting
your medals amidst hushed rumors of your supposed good genetics
and steroid use)
This article is about a system I've
created to get you to do the right things in training- it's a way
to make deliberate practice more palatable. I call it the PR Model,
and it's based on a simple behavior modification system that's so
effective, it's prominently highlighted in nearly every major religion:
punishment and reward.
Your parents no doubt implemented
this exact system at mealtime when you were a kid: if you ate your
dinner, you got dessert. No dinner, no dessert. Anyway, that's how
it worked at my house.
The gist of it is simple: if you do
the right thing, you get a reward. And of course if you do the wrong
thing (or fail to do the right thing), you get punished.
Before I explain how the system works
in the context of your training, you'll need to determine three
things:
1. What is "the right thing"
for you right now?
2. What's an appropriate reward?
3. And lastly, what's an effective
punishment?
I'll share how I answered these questions
for myself recently, which should help you build a similarly-effective
system for yourself.
I've had a problem with my snatch
for a long time now. What happens is that everything goes great
until I reach about 85 percent of my max, and then I have a strong
tendency to over-extend the finish of the pull, which causes the
bar to loop away from me, which then causes me to miss the snatch
behind me as I settle into the full squat. It's frustrating, because
I've got plenty of horsepower to make these snatches, but I miss
them due to this technical error.
In competition, missing my 2nd and/or
3rd snatches puts me in a psychological rut for the clean and jerk.
Successful competition for me means a successful snatch. So I needed
a way to solve this problem. My solution (which is still a work
in progress) is what lead me to the PR Model:
I decided that I would plan to hit
5 singles with a weight that I typically have over-rotation problems
with- 70 kilograms (154 pounds). The goal was simple: make 5 out
of 5 singles with no misses (and more specifically, no misses behind).
If I made all 5, I'd get a reward. If I had any misses, I'd go back
to the drawing board next workout, and for as many workouts as necessary,
until I hit all 5 snatches.
I'm sure you're wondering what my
reward is. It's allowing myself to take one heavier single. To me
this is "fun." To you, the reward could be anything from
a post-workout ice cream cone to shopping for new workout clothes
to skipping your post-workout stretching routine. Ideally the reward
shouldn't be anything significantly destructive of course, but it
should be gratifying on some level.
The punishment in my case is simply
the denial of reward- I don't get to take a heavier single. For
you it might be something different. In developing the training
schedule for master's weightlifter Troy Paradiso, failure to hit
the indicated numbers in the snatch or clean and jerk resulted in
having to do clean pulls (an exercise he was relatively weak on,
and one we theorized would improve his two competitive lifts): If
he made all assigned Clean and jerks for example, he didn't have
to do any pulls. If he missed one clean & jerk, his punishment
was one set of pulls. Two misses- two sets of pulls. And so on.
The applications of this system are
virtually limitless. Additionally, the system is flexible enough
to change as your needs change.
The PR method can be applied to diet
as well. For example, if/when you reach a body composition milestone,
you get a "cheat meal."
3 Steps to Making The PR Method Work For You
The first step is to make a list of
your unproductive habits, behaviors or tendencies. This isn't about
"good versus bad," it's just a matter of identifying behaviors
that either take you further away from your goals, or that displace
more productive behaviors. Your list might include things like staying
up too late the night before workouts, eating too much simple carbohydrate,
always focusing on maximum singles when your weakness is lack of
hypertrophy, spending too much time on "fun" exercises
that don't take you closer to your goal, being too reliant on support
gear, or neglecting a mobility issue.
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The second step is determining
the "punishment." I personally like the dessert
parallel here- if you do a lot of good things, you get to
have a little bit of fun. The fun in question shouldn't
be terribly damaging as I noted earlier, but it should be
gratifying.
The third and final step is
developing parameters for your PR system. If you do this
(what?) then you get to do this (what?). Make sure you define
these parameters carefully, so there's no "wiggle room"
for cheating.
Finally, if you have a coach,
training partner, or group that you train with, alert them
to what you're up to, and ask them to help keep you honest.
Social support often makes all the difference when you're
pursuing challenging goals.
If you decide to give the
PR method a shot, please click the discussion link below
and share your plans with us!
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About
The Author
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His colleagues call him
an iconoclast, a visionary, a rule-breaker. His clients
call him “The Secret Weapon” for his ability
to see what other coaches miss. Charles calls himself
a “geek” who struggled in Phys Ed throughout
school. Whatever you call him, Charles’ methods are
ahead of their time and quickly produce serious results.
His counter-intuitive approach and self-effacing demeanor
have lead to appearances on NBC’s The TODAY Show
and The CBS Early Show.
Currently, Charles competes
in Olympic-style weightlifting on the master’s circuit,
with a 3-year goal of qualifying for the 2009 Master’s
World Championships.
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