Reaching our goals in strength does not happen by accident. It is a combination of many actions and traits we must acquire. A very big one of these traits is vigilance, and it happens to have been on my mind a lot lately. For some reason I like the word itself — it just sounds tough to me. It conjures up images of the old code knights and warriors that fought for what they believed in so long ago. More important is what the word means and stands for. You can look up the exact definition, but to me, it is a state of being aware and taking action when needed.
A vigilant person learns and understands as much as possible about what they are doing and they stay on that task. They are continually watching and ready to take action when needed to make sure everything is going as planned. This is especially important in lifting, because of all the different variables involved and because this is a sport of attrition in some ways. It takes years to gain strength and there are so many pitfalls or obstacles that can send us off-course. We need to stay vigilant to all these things so we spend more time on the most efficient course.
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I don’t think that vigilance is a trait we are born with or one that comes naturally to all of us. I instead think it is one that is learned through hard work. We must be vigilant about vigilance. Being human means we will make mistakes and get sidetracked. It happens. Even the best of people screw up from time to time. Vigilance is about keeping the focus on the task at hand to not make mistakes, but it is also about realizing when we do make mistakes and correcting them right away. I believe the later is even more important, because it is so easy for us to create bad habits, and the longer we do those habits the harder they become to fix. The longer we are on the wrong path the harder it is to get back on the right one.
As with most of my articles, they are spurred by things I actually deal with or experience in my life. A lot of times it is because I realize I need to be better at these things, maybe because I never really realized I did them or because I happen to realize I have been slacking in that area. Vigilance is one that I recently realized I had been slacking in. There are a few areas of my life I need to be more vigilant, but for the sake of this article, I am going to keep it to lifting. Last week during a max effort training session I decided to do full range raw benching to see where I was. I decided to do some videoing, which I admit I had been slacking on. As I started working up to heavier weight, everything felt like shit and I was struggling when I should not have been. I began looking at the video I was shooting and was completely disgusted, just shaking my head wondering what the hell I was thinking. Before I even took the bar out of the rack I was seeing things I was doing wrong. I was screwing up things I think of as being very basic. I ended up spending most of that session just trying to fix my horrible technique. By the time I got heavy, I was already exhausted. Some of my last reps were not bad in terms of technique but I was still disappointed in myself.
I have always been very picky of my technique and to see a video of myself benching like that sucked, to say the least. The most ironic thing about that session is that most of the things I needed to fix were things I had thought about every time I trained bench. I was being vigilant in terms of remembering how important technique is. I was being vigilant in telling myself to keep doing those things. Still, there was a disconnect between my body and my mind. I was telling myself to do these things and I thought my body was doing them. I was focusing on them and concentrating on them. I was most definitely not executing them, though. I felt like I was and so my body began to associate how that felt with what I was supposed to be doing. The most ironic thing about that session is that most of the things I needed to fix were things I had thought about every time I trained bench. I was being vigilant in terms of remembering how important technique is. I was being vigilant in telling myself to keep doing those things. Still, there was a disconnect between my body and my mind. I was telling myself to do these things and I thought my body was doing them. I was focusing on them and concentrating on them. I was most definitely not executing them, though. I felt like I was and so my body began to associate how that felt with what I was supposed to be doing. This is the sort of thing that needs to be corrected as soon as it occurs because otherwise, it can be a snowball effect. Before you know it your lift feels right in your head but in reality is shit. Once I saw what my bench really looked like, I felt like I wasted months of training. Of course, I did not waste them because I had gained strength, but it did not show in my bench because I had let my technique slide. The most irritating thing for me was that I did not use those months as efficiently as I should have.
Plus, I know how easily things slide and I should have been paying better attention. The human body adapts; it is in our DNA. It is a survival instinct: adapt or die. This is a great trait and is what allows the body to continue to get stronger and stronger. With every positive comes a negative, though. We can adapt to things that actually hurt us if we do not stay vigilant to them. Take injuries, for example. Our body will adapt to lifting with that injury. It will make other muscles work more and shut other muscles down. This can put more stress on certain tendons and ligaments. It can also throw the joint out of whack. Yes, it lets us get through that immediate training session or that meet, but in the long run, if we do not fix this it will have very bad consequences.
You may also have to adapt your technique because of injury and your body will become accustomed to it. Before long it feels right to you. The longer you train with this tweaked technique, the harder it becomes to change. Even training one time while you're exhausted, sore, or mentally fatigued can cause bad habits. I have noticed in my case that it usually starts with the smallest things. Looking back, my bench technique got bad because I was taking my own handoffs a lot. I am sure I was letting my shoulders up a bit to get the bar off the rack, and it did not take long at all for that to feel normal. Sure, I was still squeezing them together and down, but once they got loose to get the bar out of the rack, they never got back to where they should have been. It became normal and I felt as though they were in the right position when they were not.
Then it was one more small thing, followed by another, and another, until the whole thing was wrong. It is important to stay up on all the little things because they add up to big things. It takes vigilance to stay up on those things and to know when it is time to quit for the day. It takes vigilance even to realize that last training session this or that part of the session did not go so well, so we really need to focus on it this session to make sure it gets back on track.
Vigilance goes way beyond technique and injuries because the body adapts to everything. We can over-train horribly but still get used to it and even make gains. They are not the gains we could be making, though. Our bodies can adapt to not enough calories or not enough of the right calories. We may still make some gains, but not the ones we could be making. The human body and mind can be pushed to crazy limits and bounce back. There are endless stories of survival that seem impossible. The amount of torture people have endured is absolutely incredible.
Vigilance isn’t just about survival, though. Vigilance is about staying the course. It is about sticking to a plan and watching every detail. It is about knowing things will happen but being prepared to catch and fix them immediately. It is about never forgetting the goal and making sure to take the most efficient path to reach it.
The vigilant lifter is always looking for ways to improve and taking advantage of them. In my case, I was not being very vigilant about this. We all have the ability to shoot videos nowadays. It is an easy thing to shoot and watch our training. There are no excuses like when I started. Today you can get instant feedback and help make that mind-body connection that much stronger. The problem here is actually knowing what good technique is and filming it from the angles you can see, and not just the ones that look good on social media.
So, the vigilant lifter wants to be a student of strength. They do not just want to be told what to do to get stronger. They want to learn and understand how to get stronger.
I think sometimes, as humans, we need to step outside of ourselves and see things from a different perspective. It is too easy for us to fall into patterns and get stuck in our ways. It is easy for us to get stuck in our own single-minded thinking and close our minds off to new ideas. I find this to be especially true in hardheaded people such as myself. That stubbornness is a trait I share with a lot of lifters. It takes a certain level of stubbornness to be successful in lifting, but it can also be a drawback.
In my life and lifting, I have always learned the most when I step outside myself and take a deep look with a completely open mind. I only wish I had learned this sooner and done it more often, because then maybe I could have caught myself before making many of the mistakes I did. It seems the mistakes lead me to take these trips, though. In this case, my bench feeling like shit made me step outside myself. It led me to analyze what I had been doing, which led me to think about vigilance and asking if I had been vigilant. Was I paying attention and doing everything I should have been? I was not videoing enough, but I also did not go very long with my technique this bad. In one session I got it together and there was a world of difference the next session. I could have caught it a little sooner, but I did catch it and fixed it right then.
Vigilance is one of those traits I believe lifting helps build, and it is one that will spill into the rest of your life. It is a trait I would like lifters to strive to have and to be conscientious of. It doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes or get off track; it just means we will recognize it as fast as we can and go about fixing as soon as we can. It means not just toughing it out or ignoring it. Even the best of the best make mistakes and get off track. I have been in this sport a long time and still, sometimes I let bad habits creep in. The vigilant never give up!
