The MONSTER GARAGE GYM/MAROSCHER COACHING LOG is a weekly Coaching Log by MGG owner, 2-Time WPC World Powerlifting Champion, Eric Maroscher, and is one of the Featured Coaching Logs at EliteFTS.
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Monster Garage Gym/Maroscher Coaching Log: IT STARTS WITH THE MIND
*NEW MGG COACHING LOG POSTED HERE EVERY WEEKEND!!!!
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GREAT minds, discuss ideas….AVERAGE minds, discuss events….SMALL minds, discuss people. Contrary to standard thinking, being successful in the world of powerlifting does not start in the gym, being successful in the world of powerlifting starts in your mind…..and here is why…..
The opening quote about great, average and small minds I have written about in an article https://www.elitefts.com/education/small-average-great-what-is-your-mindset/ but from another angle, that is what this coaching log is all about.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkjJMFtKC1I&feature=youtu.be]
To use an old expression we had back when I was a kid in Southern, Illinois, “you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting” an article about powerlifting training at EliteFTS.com. Articles about powerlifting training are what EliteFTS does best and nobody on the planet Earth does it better, or even comes close, in my opinion. Having said that, it is what goes on inside your mind that predicates your success with regard to the training programs you are learning about through EliteFTS.
As we have lifters prepping for all kinds of meets at the MONSTER GARAGE GYM, the ones I am personally working with are primarily the newer-to-the-sport lifters. Along with conversations about technique, openers, meet strategy, nutrition and the like, we talk about the mind-set. The reason we talk about this is because the mind sets the stage for the body, it always has, it always will. In my opinion, there are always positive forces and negative forces all around us and at the risk of sounding like an old hippy, opening up your mind to the positives is actually a significant factor in prepping your body for your powerlifting training cycle.
Probably now more than ever this is true. With the advent and now the pervasiveness of social media and the availability of social media through our phones, the positives are there for sure, but there are with social media, a disproportionate amount of negatives that come with it. There is something so revealing that comes with social media as well. Although some people tend to express an idea or a vision that might help someone, a large population of folks often provide you with a window to their soul and often times that window has on display an array of negativity about events, people, issues, politics and even the mundane and inconsequential. The issue becomes, once you are talking about things that are negative, you are really unintentionally focusing on those things and that is a red-carpet invitation for more negativity to follow and enter your life. In the day, we called it, Karma, today it is known as the Law of Attraction.
When working with the newer to competition powerlifters, realizing that the positive mind set is critical to setting up the best training environment. When I was training for meets with my old training partners, (Tom Carnaghi, Mario DeBenedetti, Keith Early and many others), we honestly had no distractions as there was no 24 hour news programs bombarding us with negativity nor did we have social media at our fingertips with smart phones and the like. We got to the gym, we trained to exhaustion then we left the gym, piled into a car and spent the next 90 minutes eating a meal in our favorite restaurant and having a detailed discussion about how the training session went and what we are going to do for our next session as we were training for the meet.
This particular generation of high school aged students has NEVER known the world without a smart phone and has had social media most of their lives, so they are at a huge disadvantage of never knowing a world where you could set your mind right with ease and not let the negativity that is out there, into your workouts. The troubling part is, you can’t miss what you have never had, so this obstacle will not register with them. We all see it, lifters in between sets looking at their phone and letting that negative influence come in. You see it over and over and over again at your gym. With so much technology and information overload around us, it is my humble opinion as a lifter who has been around the block for a bit to suggest, recreating that training environment that I described and that I and my team then trained in, pre-smart phones, pre-social media, pre-24 hour news cycle.
Keep your gym time sacred….why….because it should be! If there is anything true about the saying that the Old School is the Best School, then recreating that positive and distraction-free environment is a way to maintain your positivity and focus on your short-term goals during your session. Having the right mindset, a positive mindset is the impetus to staying focused on the goal of that day, the impetus to ensure that you are in the moment and mindful of how this training session, once over, will be gone and there are no so-overs, and it is the impetus to help set the stage for every training session after, leading up to your time on the platform.
If you are willing to try a new training program, if you are willing to try that new Metal squat suit, if you are willing to try training with the safety squat bar or willing to try chains or bands, and if you are still reading this coaching log then I am challenging you to try setting your mind to the positive and a simple way to start this is to commit to cutting back on your social media. I challenge you to recreate an older school way of training by simply tossing the phone in your gym bag and leaving it there until the evening. The time prior to your training, your time during training and your time after training is the time to also think and ponder and plan and assess your training. If you are reading coaching logs at EliteFTS, then you are looking for something to help you with your training. Having trained successfully in the world prior to all this negative information and having successfully trained in a world with it, I personally prefer the pure training environment where I can keep my mindset in the game. Below are a few clips with Arnold-no-last-name-needed, about keeping the negative forces away from you that you might find interesting as they are filmed some decades apart but the message is the exact same, and can be applied to your training and your mind set as the two are powerful together and are exponentially weaker when separated.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XyHlqutI8E]
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNpr-MNXhYw]
Wishing you all the best in your training and meet prep. Ever onward. Eric Maroscher: Monster Garage Gym.
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Equipment used in this coaching log training video:
• EliteFTS Rackable Texas Squat Bar
• EliteFTS Magnesium Carbonate
• EliteFTS 2x2 Power Rack
You can find ALL of the prior EliteFTS/Maroscher Coaching Logs/articles HERE:
MONSTER GARAGE GYM uses Universal Nutrition/Animal supplements and EliteFTS powerlifting equipment.
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