Preparing Your Mindset for Training
How do you prepare your mindset for training?
While this might seem like a trivial question to ponder, there’s actually a lot in it. Before we dive into that, let’s create context around what I mean by “training” and “preparing.”
Training: a routinely performed activity aimed at a distant goal
Preparing: self-organization to maximize the utility of a given task
*My definitions for the context of this post
With those definitions in mind, we can now identify what preparing for your training means - self-organized consistent work with a distant goal in mind. And knowing this, let’s unravel how we can better prepare for training and maximize our time in the gym. Below are the four points I will be discussing:
● Understand your purpose/intent behind training
● Have a clear objective within your training session (highlight a specific “win” for the day)
● Consistent presence throughout your entire training session
● Review and reflect on your work
PREPARE YOUR MINDSET FOR TRAINING
1st - Understand your purpose/intent behind training
This is the first, for a reason. We need to have a clear understanding behind why we are doing what we are doing. If we aren’t clear on this, we will be aimlessly working. There always needs to be a clear objective behind our training. Why do you need to back squat? Why do you need to do muscle ups? Why do you need to run? The goal always dictates the training. And this is where a coach comes in. Being able to have someone in your corner to dialogue with you on your goals, discussing what that timeline looks like, what areas will need more attention than others, and how that plan will unfold over the next 1 to 5-years. By having a clear purpose behind your training, you create clear goals behind each training session. When our purpose is clear we are able to maximize presence and execution.
2nd – Have a clear objective within your training session (Highlight a specific “win” for the day)
Feeding off of the first point, a clear purpose behind our training allows us to a create clear objective for each training session. If we look at any Olympic athlete’s training program building up to the Olympic Trials, and pull out one specific session on a Tuesday afternoon, there will be a clear objective for that specific session. And from that clear objective, we can identify a specific “win” for the session. With a clear objective comes the ability to specify a clear “win.” Human beings are driven by progress. We need to know we are moving forward. It is an innate drive. By identifying a “win” for the session, we create an aim, which allows us to tap into our dopaminergic pathways which are rooted in reward-motivation. Having a clear objective within each training session allows us to specify a win, which creates an aim, cultivating greater presence and execution.
3rd – Consistent presence throughout your entire training session
If there’s one thing we can all improve upon within our training it’s consistent presence. This has become more challenging over the last decade due to social media, technology, and too much “noise.” However, we can combat that with the 4 points discussed in this post. Now that we have a clear goal and a clear objective for each session, it’s time to create consistent presence. A #MAJORKEY to this is turning your phone off. Take a moment. I know, that’s hard. A step before that could be putting your phone in airplane mode. This will prevent any incoming messages from popping up taking your mind off the task at hand. This will allow you to narrow your focus onto the key objective for the session. Clear intent and focus fosters maximal presence allowing the athlete to fully immerse themselves in the task at hand. In psychology, this is called “flow,” complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one’s sense of space and time (1). Greater flow = greater execution.
4th – Review and Reflect
One of the most forgotten pieces of training is reflection. Our systems are wired for unconscious actions, also known as recurring behaviors. We will do things without thinking about them every day. Simple examples: brushing your teeth, putting your seatbelt on, locking your car, etc. This idea of being unconscious can extend into our training where we start to “go through the motions.” While the points above will help prevent that from happening, the cementing step is to review and reflect upon our results once we finish. In addition to bringing the training out of the unconscious and into the conscious mind, it allows us to compare and contrast our results to past sessions, or pieces of work, that resembled what we just completed. Taking it one step further, filming pieces of our training will allow us to review positions, technique, body language, etc. with the intent of refinement for future sessions. I personally have logged all my training sessions since 2018, in handwritten notebooks, over 10 years (I know people who have 20+ years’ worth of logs so don’t think I’m high and mighty, just giving a personal example). When I began training, I needed to keep track of my weights, reps, sets, etc. so I could review for future sessions. This became part of my routine. Daily recording of my training sessions with review of what I did to see growth along with areas that will need improvement for the future. Take time after each session to sit down, review, and reflect on your training. This will help keep you honest and aligned with the goal.
Training preparation extends far beyond just getting your wrist wraps, belt, knee sleeves, and favorite pre-workout ready. It begins with your goal, the why behind your training. The more deliberate we can be with all of our actions, the greater the quality and presence we will cultivate in our work. In review,
1st - Understand your purpose/intent behind training
2nd - Have a clear objective within your training session (highlight a specific “win” for the day)
3rd - Consistent presence throughout your entire training session
4th - Review and reflect on your work
Onward.
#chefsam
Sources:
1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1847979018812323
Fasted Aerobic Work
Fasted aerobic work (FAW), a term that I would categorize as a “hot topic.” A tool the social media world sees as the holy grail for the body of their dreams. Let’s not forget FAW is just a tool. And with any tool, we need to ask what’s its utility. In this blog, we are going to discuss FAW and how it applies to the fitness athlete. The three questions I want to answer are:
● What’s the intent behind FAW?
● What’s the benefit of FAW?
● How do I integrate it into my training?
Let’s dive in.
What’s the intent of FAW?
Nearly everyone who’s been around fitness or bodybuilding over the last 2-3+ decades has heard of this concept. The general prescription, which I believe originated in the bodybuilding world, was first thing upon waking 30-60 minutes of easy fasted aerobic work (i.e. incline treadmill walk, elliptical, spin bike, etc.). The general premise was to increase your daily caloric expenditure to promote a deficit needed to further stimulate fat loss, ideally.
Over time, as researchers have investigated FAW further we’ve seen more health benefits associated with FAW along with more clarity around the age old idea of FAW helping promote fat loss. This paper can give you a bit more insight and clarity. The short of it is, fat loss will always come back to energy balance despite doing aerobic work in a fasted state. If you are taking in less than you are burning you will slowly lose body weight which, despite your best efforts, might not be solely fat. The mechanisms behind that are outside the scope of this blog.
Now, before we go any further, it’s important that we make a clear distinction with FAW. I’m going to be discussing FAW from the context of a fitness athlete who is NOT utilizing it for “fat loss” or any other aesthetically driven goal. The intent of FAW for the fitness athlete is solely performance related. FAW is a tool to help promote recovery, improve skill acquisition, and build the aerobic system. We will discuss in further detail the benefits of FAW from a performance perspective in the following sections. As with anything, proper intent is vital to the success of a prescription. If the athlete doesn’t have great intent and purpose behind why they are doing what they are doing, their lack of alignment will eventually lead them to a canyon with no bridge to cross over. So, just to clarify one last time:
The intent of FAW for fitness athletes is to promote recovery, performance, improve skill acquisition, and build the aerobic system.
What’s the benefit of FAW?
In this section, we are going to break down the benefits of FAW for the fitness athlete. I’ve condensed it down to four categories. Each category acts as an overarching idea that includes a host of benefits for the fitness athlete. Those four categories are:
Polarity
Improved Recovery
Improved Physiology
Improved Skill Acquisition
Polarity
The first thing we want to think about is polarity. This idea of polarity transcends time, culture, and sport: fire/water, sun/moon, winter/summer, calm/stress, etc. If we look more closely at this concept through a training lens, we see this idea being integrated in weekly training splits, for example:
Monday
AM – Tough Cyclical Work
PM- Strength Speed + Absolute Strength + Accessory Work
Tuesday
Aerobic work w/ Gymnastic practice and skill development
Wednesday
AM- Mixed Cyclical Work
PM- Strength Speed Based Aerobic Intervals
Thursday
Active Recovery
Friday
AM – Tough Cyclical Work
PM- Strength Speed + Absolute Strength + Accessory Work
Saturday
Upper Gymnastic Based Grinder Session
Monday has 2 sessions, both intense, Tuesday has 1 session, longer but less speed/intensity within the work, Wednesday has 2 sessions, similar to Monday, and Thursday is an Active Rest day. This describes what some might call a “High Low” training split. Which is another way of saying polarity. Why this is important and beneficial to fitness athletes? The answer lies within the inherent nature of the sport. At its true expression, the Sport of Fitness is an extremely metabolically and psychologically demanding sport. To keep with the binary choices listed above, we could place the sport in the “fire, sun, summer, stress” category. When preparing and competing we are constantly challenging one side of the continuum. The more we do that, the quicker we can burn out over time. Just as the sun sets allowing darkness to cool the earth, so does the body need to calm itself to cool the internal flame. This is where FAW comes in. If we were to build a pyramid for sustained aerobic contractions, think of FAW as the base, the very bottom level. And think of the elite in the Sport of Fitness performing work at the highest level at the very top of the pyramid. FAW is the foundational piece from which all things can be built. Slow, sustainable contractions that can be performed for hours if needed. Where things can go awry is when athletes “push” the tempo of FAW too much shifting the perceived effort of the work on the body. Instead of FAW being restorative and polar, you’ve now added more “middle zone” work which is negatively impacting recovery and growth. I will discuss more below on proper prescription and execution of FAW. One of the key pieces we get from this polar method of training is contraction volume. Elite athletes don’t “solely” reach the pinnacle of their sport by being born with the genetic makeup for it. They put in more time with great intent and alignment than anyone else. For further reading, look into Michael Phelps training/time in the pool he spent from when he first started swimming until the 2012 Olympics. It’s nearly a third of his lifetime to that point spent in the pool acquiring contraction volume. For anyone to reach their own physical potential they will need to acquire a robust amount of contraction volume with the tools that reside within their sport. The beautiful thing about competitive fitness is nearly all things reside within it. Thus, we can be creative with how we integrate various elements into FAW. More details on that in the next section.
Improved Recovery
This benefit ties into the point above where periods of intensity need to be met with periods of sustained effort to promote recovery and growth. When performing FAW, the intensity of the work is low and sustainable. Thus, the body can focus on moving blood and lymph to promote recovery and tissue regeneration. When it comes to recovering, blood needs to be re-circulated and lymph needs to be drained. Both of these processes are dependent upon movement. And movement is enabled by muscles. When we move our muscles we promote blood flow and lymph drainage which helps the body clear waste and repair tissue. A prime example of this is how stiff and slow people can feel come Monday’s training session. Why do you think that is? If you laid on your couch all day Sunday or only did minor movement you could be succumbing to stagnate blood and metabolites left over from Saturday’s training. One of the best things anyone can do on a Sunday (assuming that’s a rest day for you) is to get outside, go hike, walk, bike ride, all variations of aerobic work.
Improved Physiology
Another great benefit of FAW is improved physiology better supporting performance. Some of the internal shifts we see include:
● Increased aerobic enzymes
● Increased capillary density
● Increased mitochondrial biogenesis
● Improved utilization of free fatty acids as fuel via increased beta oxidation
● Improved circulation of blood and lymph helping heal tissues quicker
What’s important to note is the intensity of these FAW pieces to elicit the aforementioned physiologic changes (that doesn’t mean more intensive work can’t also elicit similar adaptations physiologically, but that’s another conversation for another time). These efforts must be “sustainable.” Let’s look at some examples of work that would fall into the FAW category
Good examples of FAW:
30-45 min @ EZ pace out of bed:
1 min AB
1 min Bear Crawl
1 min Row
1 min Single Unders
1 min Plank on Elbows
20 min @ EZ pace out of bed:
500m Row @ damper 1
30m FW @ 32kg/hand
20 sec Wall Facing HS Hold
-into-
20 min @ EZ pace
1000m AB
50m Sled Push -empty – constant tempo
2/arm TGU @ 24kg -slow
Bad Examples of FAW:
30 min AMRAP:
400m Run
12 Bar Facing Burpees
6 PC to OH @ 155
36 DU’s
20 min AMRAP:
1 LLRC to 15’
10 S2O @ 135
10 BJO @ 24”
200m Run
*It’s worth noting that for elite level athletes these two “bad” pieces above could be performed and executed at the proper intent to elicit the dose response we want from FAW. But, the focus of this blog’s program design portion is orientated more towards those who would fall in the intermediate/advanced realm of physical development, more on this below.
Notice the difference? While the intent needs to be clear when prescribing FAW, the correct movements must also be utilize to ensure the athlete “can’t go too fast” and the contraction rate is slower. Always remember, we are using FAW to build aerobic volume while promoting recover. Keeping that purpose in mind will help guide you in choosing the right implements to use in the prescription.
Skill Acquisition
The final benefit of FAW I want to discuss is Skill Acquisition. When it comes time to learn a new skill, we must place it in a controlled setting. If you want to learn how to do muscle ups, you don’t throw them into a 10 minute mixed piece of work and hope they get better. You need to go completely polar, which would be in a controlled setting with little to no chaos. FAW can be used as a tool in which to implement “certain” skill work to help develop it and accumulate more touches on it throughout the week. For example:
5 rounds @ EZ pace:
15 Cal AB
4 Alt TGU -slow
20 sec Wall Facing HS Hold
15 cal Row
6 Strict K2E @ 2020 – straight arms
20 sec Top of Ring Dip Hold – externally rotated
In this example we are working on various holds around the shoulder girdle in a controlled setting. As you can tell, they are derivatives of actual movements (HSPU and RMU) but allow us to build volume and tension that is required to express those movements at their fullest potential.
Another example of utilizing FAW for skill acquisition could be as follows:
30 min AMRAP @ EZ pace:
1000m AB
8 Alternating Rolling Pistols
500m Row @ damper 1
8 Alternating Single Arm DB OHS -light load
25 sec Star Plank / Side
In this example, we are targeting more advanced squatting variations. The difficulty of the movements will slow down the athlete keeping the tempo of the session slow and methodical. To reiterate, the above example would be applicable to a more advanced athlete, someone who needs to refine and improve advanced variations of squatting. A derivative of this for a more intermediate athlete who also needs improvement in squatting patterns could be as follows:
30 min AMRAP @ EZ pace:
1000m AB
8 Alt High Box Step Ups w/ controlled lowering
500m Row @ damper 1
8 Single Arm DB OH Walking Lunges (All 8 on weaker arm first; light load; perfect mechanics)
25 sec Star Plank / Side
Similar concept with less demanding movement patterns that are still working similar areas: Single leg knee and hip flexion and single arm overhead stability with perturbations.
Integrating FAW
Now that we more clearly understand the benefits and application of FAW, let’s discuss how to implement it into a training design. As I mentioned earlier, the idea of a “High-Low” training split can be a useful tool for more intermediate to advanced athletes where intensity needs to be waved more frequently. When utilizing this idea, your “Low” days could be FAW sessions with some skill work. Some examples:
Monday
AM- MAP 4 Cyclical Intervals
PM- Sn Complex + Back Squat Waves + Hinge Based Battery Work + Core (dynamic)
Tuesday
AM-
45 min fasted:
1000m AB
10m Bear Crawl
30 sec Top of Ring Dip Hold w/ knee tuck
40 Single Unders
30 sec Wall Sit @ 90 degrees
10m Reverse Bear Crawl
PM- Upper Adv Gymnastic CP + Upper ME Sets
Wednesday
AM- MAP 4 Mixed Intervals (low eccentrics)
PM- TnG Snatch / Clean Work (Light Loads) + Bending w/ Knee Flexion + Lower Grinder
Thursday
AM-
40 min fasted:
Hike w/ 20# vest on
-into-
20 min of:
Press to HS hold Practice for 1 min
200m Jog
L Sit hold work in varied positions 30 sec
400m Row @ damper 1
2/arm TGU @ 24-32kg
600m AB
In this example,
2 tough sessions (Monday AM and PM)
1 FAW session (recovery) (Tuesday AM)
3 tough sessions (Tuesday PM, Wednesday AM and PM)
1 FAW session (recovery) (Thursday AM)
This is a prime example of the polarity in training.
Let’s look at another example for a less advanced athlete who might be only doing single sessions per day throughout the week.
Monday
Back Squat Mod % + Sn Complex (Vol) + SL Work + Core/Aer (Sustained)
Tuesday
60 min FAW w/ skills
30 min AMRAP EZ:
1 min AB
1 min Bear Crawl
1 min Row
1 min Alt TGU @ 24kg
1 min Single Unders
1 min Ring FLR
-rest-
30 min AMRAP @ skill based effort:
3 RMU Negatives – controlled
10 Cal Row @ damper 1
3 Parallette HSPU Negatives w/ SLOW lowering
10 Cal AB @ 50-55 RPM
3 Dead Hang to Inverted on Rings w/ SLOW lowering
200m Jog
In this example, we see a tough session on Monday followed by a FAW session Tuesday with skills integrated around the shoulder girdle. A great time to implement this concept within the design could be during an off season accumulation phase where building skill and aerobic contraction volume is a priority.
Wrapping it up
In closing, before we ever contemplate the efficacy of a tool, we first need to ask what is the intent of the tool. How is its usage moving you closer to the goal? To reiterate, the intention of FAW for a fitness athlete is to improve recovery and performance through aerobic contraction volume whereby improved circulation of blood and lymph allows the body to heal quicker leading to greater adaptation in the gym. Additionally, the inclusion of polarity in the training, intensive training complemented with FAW type work, allows the athlete to recover and grow at a more consistent rate over time. Lastly, by slowing down the pace and intensity of work we can cultivate an atmosphere for skill acquisition where the athlete can refine and build exposure to positions necessary for skill development. As you begin to integrate FAW into your weekly training, I offer some parting words of wisdom:
○ Keep it easy
○ Focus on holds and carries
○ Less eccentrics at first
○ Keep it LONG and SUSTAINABLE
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21051570
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15705646
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030504919800025X
http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/52/8/1888.short
https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00007256-200131010-00001
https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-014-0054-7
