Training Standards

I did a table talk with Jim Wendler, and the first video that was put out, Jim spoke a little bit about standards with his training, and he expands later on throughout the videos, which we'll post, in regards to the standards for business and life as well. The one thing I wanted to touch on in this blog post is standards for training. Over the years, I've learned a lot from Jim in regards to training philosophy. Over a period of time, when he was still working in the elitefts offices ( I refuse to say or write HQ), I got to see the training philosophy of 531 developed by Jim - what it really was the back end of the training philosophy developed because this training philosophy that he has developed when he first started training for football in high school, when I was fortunate to be able see all of it come together. It's been great to see what it turned into and has become.

Thinking about standards 

The training is all based around standards that he holds for a training program. After we did the video I thought a little bit about standards in regards to training and how a lot of people and coaches will push an athlete, or a lifter, to raise their standards.

"Coaches will push an athlete, or a lifter, to raise their standards"

I don't think people really realize the context of what this really means and what standards of training really mean. I do think that it's one thing that gets taken for granted or isn't really even thought about, and I'll note a couple examples to demonstrate what I'm writing about. For 30 some years I was a competitive powerlifter, so my life basically revolved around one meet, to the next meet, to the next meet, to the next meat and everything else in my life was taking second, third, forth priority where training was the first priority. The standards I had for training and for competing were very different than what the standards would be for somebody going into the gym just to train to get stronger.

My standards were at a completely different level, and because of that ... There's going to be a higher level of discipline, there's going to be a higher level of pain tolerance, there's going to be a higher level of not wanting to back down, there's going to a higher level of a whole lot of different things. A higher level of commitment, and to the sport. Now, what happens when you're dealing with standards like this is the day that you decide that you're no longer competing how many lifters actually change their standards to fit the new life and the new style of training that they're going to do? In my experience, with both myself and watching many other people, most never really do. Most just wing it, they haven't really defined what their standards are going to be, what their training is going to stand for, what direction it's going to head, what rules they're going to live by, what goals they're really going to have, how they're going to get there, and so on.

A couple examples

Where when you're an athlete training for a sport, a lot of those things are already predefined by the nature of the sport that you're competing in, and the level of commitment you have for that sport. On the flip-side, if you take somebody who's been a recreational lifter for 10, 15 years and then they decide that they want to beginning competing and competing seriously many times than not they don't increase their standards to accommodate that, so they're going to be in and out of the sport within a year maybe 2 because they're not taking into account that there still is a learning curve. There's going to be technical changes, there's going to be a lot of things thrown at them the they're really not expecting. Even if it comes relatively easy over the first 2, 3 years somethings going to happen, it's just the nature of sport.

They're going to get injured, they're going to get sidetracked. Sometimes they'll get sidetracked for a few months and then they're going quit, where the reality is I know more lifters than I know lifters of not that have been sidelined for well over a year because of major injuries, and even little injuries, so it happens more frequently than it doesn't. If the standards are still of that of a recreational lifter they're not going to last and they're not going to become the best they can be. That's 2 examples on how standards need to change based upon the core direction that your training is going. You can't train by the same standards as a competitive athlete if you're no longer a competitive athlete, and vice versa. I can give many more examples to go along with that to illustrate the point, but those 2 should drive the point home really concretely because they're vastly on 2 different ends of the spectrum.

What are your standards?

When it comes to standards how do you know what your standards are?

The first thing that I would propose is ask yourself what are your standards?

What do you think you need to hold yourself accountable for?

What do you think that you need to do to become better?

What do you think has to be part of your program to become better?

What factors, not just from training but from a holistic standpoint, need to become part of your training?

Then once you have those defined you want to write them down and be able to stick to them, that way when you look back and you're not where you need to be you can look back and say, "Oh. It's because I haven't been doing number 3, or I haven't been doing number 4." Whatever that standard is on the list. I can't tell you what those standards are, those are going to be for you to define, or if you're working with a coach who knows you and knows your training very well they could help define that for you.

Standards are not something for a complete stranger to impose upon somebody else, they need to be self-imposed or imposed in part with a group of people who really believe in what you can do and want to help you move into the direction that you want to go to, and have been there themselves, and can help define that from an educational and experienced standpoint, while also encompassing what your own basic individual needs are.

The next thing you need to ask is why?

A deep rooted why, not just why because you like to be strong. If it's moving into being a competitive lifter, or moving out of being a competitive lifter and into recreation, what exactly do you want out of if it? If you're just going to train recreation-ally, do you want it to be for health benefits, which in my experience most of the time the answer to that is no. Everybody will say yes, but the deep rooted answer why is usually no.

They still want to be strong, they want to look good, there's always some other factor involved with that. They don't want to be in pain, they want to lose weight, they want to feel better. You got to define why, and once you define that why it's going to be a little easier to break it down into standards on how to get there. If you don't know why or what you're actually training for then it's irrelevant. The one thing that I would caution, from my own experience, is if you are an ex-competitive athlete that has decades of competing under their belt the last thing I think that you want to do is to set standards based upon some type of competition or some type or deadline or some type of concrete goal, because the one thing as an ex-power lifter I became very good at doing was setting goals, achieving those goals, and then taking a break the same way that I did when I was power lifting. Then once that breaks over everything's all fucked up and then I got to go back and basically start all over again to be able to get back into the type of shape that I wanted to achieve, and did achieve, and then threw it all out of the water.

All my goals for many years after I stopped competing were timeline date set goals, and this is actually one of the reasons why I'm not a proponent of taking somebody who's not yet learned the fundamentals of train or how training can make them feel better and how it can make their life better and how it can impact all these other factors of their life and pushing them into some type of competition. Like you're going to train for a powerlifting, bodybuilding or  you're going to train for a 5K, or something like that. I like to keep that competitive aspect out of the training with the clients when I used to work with them many years ago, because I want them to understand training is for more than just training for a specific event, it's to enhance your life. Yes, training for a specific event will make them more dedicated, it will make them more committed, it will make them enjoy the training a little bit more, but you know what? When it comes to training sometimes it sucks, sometimes you don't want to do it, sometimes you're not committed to it, but you still have to fucking do it.

I don't like to have that aspect in there until those things are drilled into their mind first, and then after that yeah. We can look towards that to try to enhance and to bring up their strength, skill, dedication, whatever. Not until then, there's too many other factors that need to come into play that need to be addressed with physical conditioning before just whipping them into some competition that they're really not ready for and haven't learned the basic fundamental of what training can do for them first.

Do what you suck at

The next aspect is you have to understand when you're establishing these standards for your training you have to build in the things that you suck at. This is true with strength training in general, but it's true with all training. If you constantly avoid the things that you suck at, those are weak points. They just going to become bigger and bigger and bigger. Usually those weak points will always get you in the end, always. You have to build in the things you suck at.

There's always ways to bring up weak points by doing things that you suck at, but you still will kind of enjoy to do. Just because you suck at something doesn't mean that you have to do the worst possible thing to bring it up. From a nutritional standpoint, let's say you suck at eating vegetables. You absolutely hate vegetables. You can't stand Brussels sprouts. Well, don't eat the fucking Brussels sprouts. Eat broccoli, eat whatever ... Eat celery, eat whatever is palatable for you. At least it's a start and it's moving into the direction that you need to move in. You don't have to eat the worst tasting vegetable to you, that's not the point of doing what you suck at. The point in doing what you suck at is to bring up the weak points. There's always something you're going to find that you suck at bu you can still manage to do or tolerate to do without digging all the way in and going at the things that you absolutely can't stand, because that's not going to be something you're going to be able to continue to do for any extended period of time.

Negative people suck

Avoid negative people, and as far as that goes avoid negative everything. Avoid any negative news feed, Facebook post, Reddit, anything that you can control. Block, hide, un-follow from the social media standpoint, because it's not enhancing your life in any way. Unless you're to the point that you find humor in it, and when you find that humor in it it doesn't impact you and you don't get pissed off about it, or you don't get upset about it in any way whatsoever. Then, fine, embrace the shit out of it. I know several people that find huge humor in a lot of the negative shit that they see. That's great, that enhances their life actually, but if you're one of those that don't find humor in it, avoid it. It's simple to un-follow, just un-follow it, and then it doesn't impact you. If you're training with negative people you're training with people that are bringing you down, don't train with them.

Either be completely direct and say, "I'm not going to train with you because you're a dick." Or just train at a different time. With any situation that's trying to either avoid or get away from negative people there's tactful ways to do this, and if you like, there's very untactful ways to do it. Either way you have to do it because they will hold you back and they will tear you down.

Time management

When you start to look at what these standards are and these things that you want to build into the training you have to ask yourself is it manageable? Is it doable? Is it effective? There's a lot of factors that go into training, which is another blog post all in itself. anything that you put into a program has to have a a reason to be there. If you can't define what that reason is for it to be there than it probably really shouldn't be there and you can't just stack and stack and stack more things on your training.

That just increased the overall time and the overall work that you're putting into the training without any necessary purpose. You have to recover from everything, so as Jim said in the Table Talk. When he was discussing training he uses a push and pull out, I think is what he caller it. Anything that gets pushed into the training, something needs to get pulled out. I completely agree with that. You just can't start dumping shit into the training without pulling something out. If you're not doing cardio and you want to throw cardio in but your weight training work you wanted a half hour, then I would probably pull a couple exercises out of the weight training work, throw the cardio in, and slowly increase the exercises back in again over a period of time instead of just dumping shit on top of that, that way you can manage the time more effectively and manage the training more effectively.

You can't raise standards if they haven't been defined yet!

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