In today's episode, I'm talking to you about variability in your training. I'll give something you can apply immediately to increase your performance, build more muscle, and help you avoid injury.
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
gym, days, double overhand, flex, sets, home, today, feel, easy, opted, walk, training, kettlebell, bar, variability, deadlift, axle, diet, planned, waitlist
SPEAKERS
Michael Nelson
Michael Nelson 00:00
What's going on? It's Dr. Mike T. Nelson here with another edition of the flex diet podcast. And today, it's just me talking about variability in your training. And something you can apply immediately to increase your performance in the gym, which is going to translate to more muscle better movement. And hopefully you can do this without injuring yourself too. And that'll be a key part for today. As always brought to you by the flex and diet certification, go to flex, diet.com FLEXD, et calm, you'll be able to get on the waitlist there and be notified. Once the flex diet cert opens again. So depending on when you're listening to this right now, I'm recording this around March 5, it'll come out a little bit a few days after that. Next round opens the mid April and usually runs quarterly. So go to flex diet.com hit the button for join the waitlist, that'll put you on the daily newsletter, which I have all sorts of great stuff for you there too. And you'll be able to enroll in the flex diet certain next time it opens up. So eight different interventions, looking at nutrition and recovery, and a complete system using the concepts of metabolic flexibility and flexible dieting. So today, we're talking a little bit more about exercise and a big lesson that I was reminded of again recently. So if you're on the newsletter, you heard me talk about this as it happened. So for reference, this was Tuesday, February 23. And I wasn't super excited about going to the gym. Most days, I do enjoy it. Although like a lot of people, you know, some days are easier than other days and takes a little bit more effort to just get to the gym. And I'm pretty fortunate that I only have to walk out into my garage. So I don't even have to really go anywhere, which is done on purpose because it makes getting stuff done a lot easier. In the amount of sessions, especially this last year and the year before, that I would not have been able to do if I did not have something at home or facility at home, I would have missed a lot of sessions. So one of the sub lessons here today is even if you just have a set of kettlebells at home, up to racks, a set of rings, a barbell without a rack and some you know use the weight, whatever. Having something at home or just being really good at bodyweight training, I think is incredibly useful, especially in the current climate, with gyms opening and closing and different restrictions. Having something to do at home, I think is essential. And again, that may be even just doing your cardiovascular training at home, I took my old mountain bike put road tires on it several years ago, and just stuck it on a trainer like a fluid Kurt kinetic fluid trainer, I bought a Garmin device to measure speed, which was like 25 bucks, that syncs to my watch. So now I know how fast I'm writing heart rate and other parameters. just basic parameters I also no distance. And again, the distance on it may not be over accurate, but it's a comparison, right? So I know if I'm writing longer or harder or faster concept to rower is awesome too. There's also many different things you can get. And if you're good at running your biomechanics or sound, you know running can be great. Also, a few years ago, I had to kind of go back and make sure I could actually run especially when I was traveling a lot. Doing lighter cardiovascular stuff running is a very easy option. So have something at home kind of lesson sub lesson number one. So I went to the gym which literally just walking out into the garage, I had planned out to do what I call the death by front squat, which I started in December. So a lot of Mike m three private clients are doing this right now. Briefly, it's five sets of 10. And then you work up to a couple more sets with a five RM so what I was planning to do that day, intent didn't happen. It just started off with your warm up sets of 10. So the bar for was 45 pounds for 10 and then 65 for 1085 for 10 105 for 10. Man, that would be 1234 sets and then I was going to Go to 115 for 10. And then I track the total time it takes me to complete all 50 of those reps and the volume. So I have a marker for volume and density. And then from there, I was gonna do 135 by five 155 by five, and then 175 by five. And as you can tell by my language, none of it happened, I made it to the gym, and I started warming up doing front squats, and the bar itself felt horrible. My knees started to hurt, and just did not feel good. So at the time, I'm like, Well, I'm just going to add a little bit more weight, because that always solves all of your issues, do some more warm ups, do some more movement, change the music, try to fix my head, fix my state did 65 knees still hurt. So at this point in the past, I would have just sucked it up and said, okay, just push through it, this will be fine. This is what you had planned to do. But I opted not to do that, which I think was a wise choice. So worked on some thumbless chin ups for just a few reps which felt Okay, I decided to switch and do some actual deadlift tested a bunch of different grips. Mixed grip with thumbless felt pretty good. And warmed up with that to 15 for six felt fine. 255 for four, just didn't feel that good. It wasn't that it was that hard, it just still didn't feel good. Yeah. didn't test all that great. By testing, I just use a simple biofeedback method of range of motion with a toe touch to give me some idea of where I'm at, especially on days where I just have a harder time feeling what's going on, went up to 305. And that just didn't feel good at all. Keep in mind that the previous week, I did 255 for five, five sets, and then did 305 for an easy five after that. So by all by all rationale, this would be very sub max work. still didn't feel very good. So okay, let's try some other exercises, let's go to something completely different. Did a flat seated kettlebell press with one arm, I'm figuring I'll go move to upper body. And then I'll move to some unilateral type movements, right. So getting away from symmetric kind of full body stuff. And did some metals rose also, in both of those just felt crappy. Even the metals row with lightweight just felt
07:35
hard.
Michael Nelson 07:36
So at this point, I just said, this kind of sucks. I was really looking forward to training today. And I just walked out of the gym, I didn't even try anything else. just figured nothing was really feeling good. I couldn't get my state to even pay attention during a friggin metals row, which is, you know, relatively easy to execute just because the path is already pretty fixed. Didn't feel good at all. Didn't really test good. So I decided to take the wise road and just left. And at the time, I was kind of pissed off about it, to be honest. I was hoping to, you know, do well and it didn't happen. But the good part is I've done this long enough now for several decades that those days happened. And you still give yourself quote unquote, the win even though it doesn't feel like a win, that you went to the gym, you test the things out, it wasn't there, you took the wise route of not forcing it, man, it wasn't clearly going to happen. You tried different things and it's not there to just walk out there's no no harm, no foul, no injuries, you know, live to lift another day. So the next day, Wednesday, I just opted to do some cardio stuff. My HRV was still pretty crappy, didn't feel super rested, but I got into pretty good rounds with some high intensity interval work and did some light biking did some cold water immersion, called it a day and felt pretty good about it. So fast forward to Thursday, which is only two days after the horrible quote unquote, day I had in the gym was really an Okay, um, didn't feel amazing per se. But I started doing warm ups opted to do an axle double overhand deadlift. So one of my main goals is to hit 300 pounds for a double overhand axle. So if you're not familiar with an axle, there's no rotation on the end of the bar. It's literally as it says like modified car axle. And the bar I have is a swagger strength. So it's a legit to two inches diameter. There's no knurling on it, so it's just all smooth, and then you're doing it with both palms down. So double overhand, which is a very common lift for grip training. athletes. So my goal was eventual goal is 300 for a single. And I've been kind of stuck on it lately. It started coming up a couple days ago, which was great. But tested well, and warmed up and ended up getting to 55 on my second set. So I was like, Oh, that's great. So that was a single, which is kind of which was at the time a PR tie. And did some more work and ended up getting another single with an easy isometric hold at the top. So I got two singles 255, which is that's a big PR for me. 255 by one was my current PR training on this particular bar. As of the previous week, there's some other accessory stuff, which felt good, did some play curls, a 35 pound played some presses, then everything felt pretty good. And when I left, I realized that Oh, wow, that's interesting. Literally 48 hours after one of the worst sessions I've had this year, definitely considered the worst session this year is the only session I've walked out of this year, I probably only walked out of two entire sessions all of last year. 48 hours later, my head PR Hmm. And then I realized that I was talking to my good buddy, Brad, no relation Nelson the other day who stopped by and we got to talking about variability and training, and how it seems like the longer we've been training, and I've noticed this to my clients, too, the more variability there can be from day to day. And this is, you know, we're lifestyle is relatively controlled, right? I know, when I was traveling, I would have a lot more variability. Because you're on a plane, you're showing up somewhere else, you're teaching for one to three days in a row. And so all that can get a little bit crazy. But at home, definitely much more controlled. So we were both just remarking of how, if this had happened this this hard day, you know, a few decades ago, we probably would not have gone well, we probably would have forced it and probably would have been injured. But walking out going back another day, and just showing up day after day, to see what you are capable of doing. Even on the days where prediction wise, you may not think it's going to be that amazing, turns out to be pretty darn good. Which kind of reminds me I believe it was from Coach Dan john, that 80% of your training is just kind of walk in and punch the clock, right and do the highest quality work you can do and get the work done. That may not feel amazing, may not feel really horrible, but you just kind of get the work in, and you've got a few of those kind of 5% of your days that are going to be amazing, and 5% that are just gonna totally suck. And you're probably better off just leaving the gym, I guess that's 80%. So we'll say 10% and 10%. Because I, despite having a minor mathematics, I appear to not be able to do math whatsoever. So I think showing up each day, being as violently consistent as you possibly can be, is really the key. Within that you're going to have a higher amount of variability, the longer and longer you're lifting, meaning I just see some days are higher than other days, some days are lower than other days. But if you average everything out, the average is still going to be pretty good. And you're still making progress. If you start missing days, and you're not able to get to the gym, that happens, that's part of life. But the more days you can show up, see what you can do, listen to your body, do the best you can and then leave. To me that is going to be a hallmark of the process. Because we can't necessarily control the output all the time. We can however 100% control the process of showing up doing the work and getting it done. And it's still fascinating to me and other more even more advanced lifters I've talked to that. And after doing it four to five days, six days, seven days a week for several couple decades now I'm 46 started lifting when I was 18. Even now without much practice. I'm still not super good at predicting ahead of time. What may be an amazing day what may be a horrible day. And I think prediction is probably very much overrated. So just show up, go to the gym, warm up, get your head right get your state mood, right. Do what you can keep the quality of work as high as possible. If you're working with a coach, you know, follow the plan. Know how to deviate sort of the commander's intent when needed. And then go forth from that. Because you can control how many times you show up at the gym and give it a go so that you can control, the more times you can do that and make progress each day, those days will add up to progress over a month, they'll add up to progress over a year adds up to progress over decades and multiple decades. So the moral of today's little story, control what you can control, which is going to be the process. Put your time and effort into arranging it so that you can show up at the gym when you need to do the best that you can, and then alter as necessary. So there you go. Any feedback, let me know I greatly appreciate it. You can hit subscribe on your favorite podcast, listening area, iTunes, Spotify, whatever you're using. Any comments and feedback there is always greatly appreciated. We will have some more interviews coming up again. As always, this is brought to you by the flex diet certification, go to flex diet. com, get on the waitlist there and you'll be notified the next time the flextight cert opens. We'll also have lots of daily information for you that's completely free. So flex diet calm. Thank you so much. Talk to you all very soon.