Mark Clevenger
It took many years for me to figure out my own personal set of training philosophies. I learned through much trial and error how to set myself up for success no matter my circumstance. At the heart of my 6 training philosophies is the concept I call ‘controlling the controllables.’ When you learn to exercise control over these 6 variables you will find how much better the quality of your training becomes as well as the outcomes from it.
- Have a defined training goal… one of them… and make it realistic: The problem most people have is they want to do everything, run marathons, deadlift 600lbs, yada, yada, yada. Unfortunately the human body doesn’t work that way. The theory of specificity states the things we do most often are the things we get best at. If you never get around to something enough to elicit an adaptation because you’re too busy doing twenty different and contradictory things, you’ll never get really good at any of it. Make one goal and go get it.
- Make a plan to achieve that goal… and make it realistic: Be smart with your programming and structure it with the end in product in mind. Everything you do should be geared towards completing the objective. There are a lot of paths to get to the same destination but some are shorter and more efficient than others.
- Respect the process: If your goal and plan are both realistic then the path before you is laid out with the destination in sight. If you try to take short cuts and deviate from the path you will inevitably get lost. This just adds to the amount of time it takes you to get to your destination and more often than not leads to injuries. Respect the process and the process will respect you.
- Write everything down: Record every imaginable aspect of your training in a log so you can chart your progress. This data will also allow you monitor what’s working in your training and what isn’t, which leads to more efficient training and goal objectives that are met much sooner.
- Save your bullets: Training is not the time or place to use garbage form. Your repetitions should be pretty, all of them. Bad form I essentially define as moving weights with passive structures (connective tissues such as tendons, ligaments, and fascia) instead of active structures (muscles). These passive structures are like loaded magazines for your AK-47 of performance. If you waste all your bullets in training you’re going get to the battlefield with an empty clip. Empty clips = injury, injury = no training, no training = no goals.
- Eat, sleep, recover: If your goal has any significant meaning to you than you’re training hard for it. Give your body what it needs to recover and then some. Don’t let these little things create a big thing like failing to reach your goal.
Some of you probably already use these ideas in your training. For those of you who don’t, write these things down, commit them to memory, and apply them to your everyday training. You’ll quickly become the Superman/woman of goal achievement and have everybody asking how you did it.
Louisville Strongman 