What is our obsession with doing things hard or complex?
The lost art of simple
I remember when I was a kid all I had to have fun was my bike. I would drive to pretend that I was Knight Speaking on my bike as if they were a kitten.
“Turbo Boost Kitt.”
And then I will fly faster.
“Oh Snap, we are under heavy fire and we have to perform opposite measures.”
And then I would drive back and forth between the trees avoiding any rocket looking for heat that it sent in my direction.
“Kitt, Eject, Eject.”
This is when I would give my bike in the direction of a sweet leap I would have built and, well, this would happen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1FVVRLFOE
Today you are asking a child to go out and play and look at you like you have three heads and wonder how this is still possible without an iPhone in hand. It is almost as if there is some form of technology or gadgetry.
A Frisbee? Is excluded.
A ball and the bat? Pfffft, anything else.
A tree? Hahahahaha.
The simple days of simple games have passed a long time. I mean, I know they exist, and I know there are kids out there who still play hide-n -sek, kickball and pick-up basketball.
But they are few and far away. Pokemon goApparently, it has replaced the playground.
I can only observe the same parallel to the gym industry. People (on both sides of the fence: gymnastics professionals and non-lipas professionals) seem to have the impression that the fancy or complex is a bit better than the simple. And perhaps even more tragic: many believe that the best results are always the result of adopting complex methodologies in relation to simple.
Sometimes this is true. Many times they are BS.
I had my fair share of other coaches who come to the shade and observe for a few hours at a time. It’s always honor and I’m more than willing to host. They could definitely spend their time reading Mike Boyle or watching any gymnasts on Instagram, but no, some choose to come on a Saturday to watch people deadlift and listen to the 90th hip hop.
One issue I am best known is how surprised some coaches are about how “simple” my planning is.
There are very few glitz and glam or shiny bright objects to rotate by the fact that All I really want is for my customers/athletes to become unexpectedly bright in the basics.
People end up, hip people and people perform these things called series, push-ups and the farmer carries.
You may have heard of them.
Antique to some, I know.
In addition, it is the evaluation process.
The idea of simple starts there. Unless one comes with a long history of injury or is it a training for something super specific as, let’s say, I don’t know, the Mime Bombsniffing Olympics, what advantage is there in assessing the evaluation more complicated than it should be?
Taking a more global approach is a fantastic starting point for most people. You do not need to place them under a microscope. After all, for most people most of the time, their “evaluation” is nothing more than an opportunity to eliminate “red flags”, taking a quick look at the IR/ER hip, hip flexion/extension and other things such as shoulder mobility.
In a sense I try to see what their passive rom is, there are restrictions, and if so, 1) matches the active rom and 2) there are test/review strategies Can I apply to see an improvement?
To a greater extent (and stealing a quote from my friend, Luke Worthington):
“Can you do the thing you want to do? Yes. Good. No. Let’s fix it.”
Here’s the thing: 80% of my evaluations are on the floor of the gym. There is only so many houses and promotion that I can do on the table before a) shit begins to get strange and b) the customer begins to feel like a patient.
In fact, the evaluation should be a training session.
- I want to see them.
- I want to see them hide hinge.
- I want to see them get up from the floor.
- I want to see them Sparta kick the wall.
I can collect more information that is watching people moving. And they also get a taste of what will be a typical workout with me.
It is a very simple process that, when some coaches notice, is encountered as a super-duper minimum, and throws them away, as if they said, “Really? Is that?”
Yes, that’s it.
People want to train.
They could give two flying ups and downs for their big ring. Believe me.
Funny Side Story: I was once given a “bad” revision at a conference I spoke to because on my subject, “shoulder evaluation”, I showed nothing “new and innovative”. In what I was like, “So, when should the shoulders evaluate be new and innovative?” Why not get the mentality to make the “boring” screens well?
Note for yourself: Bring a flame that throws into the next commitment. This will add some innovation.
Returning to programming.
This is another element where I feel that simplicity has its benefits.
The endless game of OnePmanship in social media, many pros pros are exhaustive. This is a conversation for another day, but the appearance-in-me, performative vibe that many get is absurd. I watch some of the videos that people are placed and all I want to do is say “Riiiiiiggghhhhht. ”
I also want to throw an ax on my face, but that is besides the point.
By comparison speaking my Instagram food is probably a boring batshit to some people.
I can hear the “BFD” comments now. “Wow, cool tony. You have your customers to end up. What is the next: a set of chin-ups?
No, wait, Pallof Presses!?!?!! ”
In fact, yes. Probably.
Call me crazy, but I would prefer to train and give a rationale to place some videos/images (cute cat images at the edge) rather than worry about whether I earn some fleeting reliability of social media.
What more, do you want to talk about boring and vanilla? Grab two back-to-back programs each of my clients and it’s a safe bet you’ll see more than a linear magazine approach, which is about as vanilla as things get. Get my client Sara for example (the woman in the video above).
In the days she trains with me at the core we tend to focus more on coaching tension exercises such as occupations and deadlifts. We will first hit one of the two hard (generally, lower repetitions/middle to higher intensity) and follow his example with “anything else”.
Here’s how we approached its occupations and their deadlock in the last two months.
October
| Sumo Deadlift (weeks 1.3), rear squat (weeks 2.4) | |||||
| Week | Scenery | Repetition | Load | ||
| 1 | 5 | 2 | 85% | ||
| 2 | Hit 135 × 1 | then | 3 × 5 | 115 pounds | |
| 3 | 3 × 1 @90% | then | 3 × 5 | 75% | |
| 4 | Hit 140 × 1 | then | 3 × 5 | 120 pounds | |
November
| Sumo Deadlift (weeks 1.3), rear squat (weeks 2.4) | |||||
| Week | Scenery | Repetition | Load | ||
| 1 | 4 | 5 | 75% | ||
| 2 | 135 x (2 × 1) | then | 3 × 3 @ | 125 pounds | |
| 3 | 5 | 5 | 75% | ||
| 4 | 145 × 1 | then | 3 × 2 @ | 130 pounds | |
If you pay close attention to the evolution of the occupation, it is more or less, ensuring that he did more work each week.
Nothing magical or advanced at all.
And it worked.
Smoking a PR from 145 pounds last Monday. While listening to Lil Kim. Because that’s how we roll.
The design of the program does not need to be complicated.
All that really comes is to ensure that you train your customers well (< - a lost art in itself) using positions and handles and bars that fit their goals and anatomy ...
… and that they place an premium to do more work during several weeks/months.
Simple and boring. Works
I am willing to bet that your customers will prefer a simpler approach (if they do not thrive on it) once you give it a fair shot.
- People tend not to need as much innovation as they think. Muscle confusion is a stupid idea. People need consistency to dominate movement.
- You don’t always You must increase the load. People need to gain the right to increase weight in the bar. Staying in a particular range for several weeks and tumor accumulation is often a underestimated way to progress.
- Try not to evaluate a large part. Administration, if one has a history of injury, you may need to get off a rabbit hole to understand what worsens their symptoms. And then try to deal with it. But more often than people will appreciate that you do not put them under a microscope. If you treat evaluation as more than a workout and not a sick game to highlight any tiny dysfunction and how much a walk fails, they will be less likely to believe that you are a douche.
