There’s always something crazy going on in this industry. At any moment, there’s a maniac in a weight room taking a dangerous lift and a shady businessman in an office finding a way to turn dirty profits. The posts you find here in my log are the musings of a mashed-up meathead — the reactions I have as I spend my whole life watching this industry. I will share my thoughts with you here, unedited, uncensored, unfiltered, and Under The Bar. If you are offended by profanity - do not read this. 

An Early Lesson

As I've noticed previously, I started power lifting at a very young age. I did my first competition when I was 13 years old. I was fortunate enough to have a group of guys help me out, teach me how to train. Teach me the lessons of training. Teach me good technique, pretty right much from the beginning of the first day that I walked into the weight room. One of the lessons that I was taught very early on and I think this originally goes back to Ernie Frantz  (I believe but  I'm not 100 percent certain, but do you think it maybe in his book or written about decades ago). This  is...

  "Treat heavy lights like they're light and lightweights like they're heavy".

This is one of those training mantras or rules of training that I don't think that you're really going to get unless you spent some significant time under the bar.

You're not going to really "get this"  this in a book. Even though Ernie  Frantz's book is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. This is not  something you will find studies or research about. This is straight up under the bar shit right here.

I can say without a doubt that the majority of the muscle pulls, tears and strains that I accumulated over 30 years in the sport have been due to violating this one rule of training.

Now what is this mean? What it means is when you're warming up, even if you're just starting with the bar and all of your warm up sets, every one of those warm up set you need to treat that bar like it's your maximum set. You need to make sure your body is in the right position that you're tight that you're in the right position that your technique is in the right position. You are tight and treating the bar with respect.

That everything is perfect exactly the same way it would be if you are to take a max. This is going to reinforce your technique over every single rep  that you do as you work up to whatever your work or training weights will be for the day.

On the other side, treat maximum weights like they're light. What that means is to stay in your head. Everybody is going to have a certain amount of arousal. Being over psyched is something you do not want to bring to maximum attempts, but you have to still understand that technique is essential with the maximum weights. You have to approach that maximum weight in your mind like it's not really a maximum weight, that it's still a lightweight. It's still a toy that you're playing with then you still need to make sure everything is right that you don't rush. You will not, can not and should never be scared of your BIG WEIGHTS.  The fear isn't the issue, it's what you do with the fear that is. You can't let in change your technique as it can lead to missing the weight or worse, injury.

Take your time, you make sure your feet are right. You make sure your hands are right. You make sure everything is exactly where it supposed to be.

This rule also applies to every exercise you will do with weights in the weight room. It doesn't matter what it is, if it's just a simple as the push down or a triceps extension it's the same thing.

Treat the lightweights like they're heavy and the heavy weights like they're light.