The Things Needed to Succeed in Strength Athletics: Legs, Butts, Back, and a Boatload of Faith

       Success is defined as "the accomplishment of an aim or purpose." Let's be honest the definition is pretty basic, and many of us understand what it means to be successful. But the real question I have always had, is what does it take to be successful? The obvious answers could be listed; hard work, time, patience, grit, maybe even a little luck. Now, let's take the same question and apply it to strength athletics. So, I pose a question to you, what does it take to be successful in strength athletics? Heck, what does it take to be successful in athletics as a whole? Now I know many of you will be thinking, "Strength, Speed, and skill." I'm not going to say you're wrong; technically, you are correct. I want to take a deeper look at this, or as I tell my class when I teach, "Let's break this down to the basic nuts and bolts." For this entire essay, I will be referring to the sport of weightlifting.

          So, other than a high skill level, what else does a person need? First off, strong legs and hips (butts). In this sport, you just can't have strong legs OR strong hips. You must have BOTH. It's an odd relationship when discussing how legs and hips work in tandem during a snatch or clean & jerk. First and foremost, a weightlifter won't be able to lift the bar from the floor, let alone propel the bar high enough to get underneath it for a clean or snatch, if the proper leg and hip strength isn't developed. Not only does the lifter have to have the leg and hip strength to be able to lift the bar high enough to get under it, but the lifter also needs adequate leg strength to recover out of the catch. Whether it is a snatch, a clean, or a jerk, catch recovery strength is paramount for success.

         Backs, more specifically lower backs, are critical when it comes to weightlifting. We could consider the back or "core" to be the most important aspect of the entire body during any athletic event because it links the upper body (chest, arms, and shoulders) to the lower body (legs, hips, and calves). If the "bridge" is weak, then power transfer from the lower body to the upper body will not be as efficient as it could. Also, due to the continued stress placed upon the lower lumber and upper hips, sufficient stability and strength in the lower back is a must to decrease the occurrence of an injury.

        Now for the final aspect, the boatload of faith. This aspect can be interpreted in many different ways. First, it could be faith in your coach. Second, faith in the training program that has been designed. The third point, faith in yourself and, above all else, faith in God. I have never been one to openly speak of faith or believe. I have always lived under the premise "as long as it doesn't directly affect me in any way, what a person's spiritual believes are, isn't any of my business." However, over the last handful of years of my life, my viewpoint on my own personal faith has changed.

         I attribute the slow progressive change to my wife, Amanda. She has possibly one of the strongest senses of faith I have ever met in a person. She has been the person to push me to be a man of God and, most importantly, the father who teaches his children about faith and belief.

        To be rather frank, I have never had a strong sense of faith or belief. I always had doubts about what was true and what wasn't. I was never sure if scripture was more or less fabled stories a collective group of people happened to create on their own or if the different stories of the bible truly happened. I guess you could say I was always skeptical of faith, which caused me to never dive in like many of the other things that caught my interest. It could be because I took scripture stories literally and never saw the deeper meaning to them. It could have been I because I never truly identified as a Catholic, let alone a Christian, due to fear of being mocked by my peers. It could be due it was never really a topic of conversation growing up. It is a multifaceted topic as to the reasons how I got to where I was. 

        Of course, growing up, I participated in the church with the youth groups, Sunday schools, and different fundraisers, first with the Methodist church during my grade school years and then the Catholic during my junior/high school career. But even during the times of participation, I looked at it as more of a chance to socialize with my peers than I did to learn a deeper lesson. In the end, it just never clicked with me, it was never a true priority to me. This continued during my undergrad career. I would attend mass when I went home, but that was really it. I never attended regularly on my own. 

        So how did I get to the point where I am now? As I mentioned earlier, my wife has played a major role in my "faith journey." She accepted me for my ignorance of faith and has supported me the entire time. She has subtly pushed me to express my concerns, fears, and troubles in prayer and always believe we will be okay as long as we have faith. Needless to say, as a person who has relied on himself and one to never really express my personal concerns to anyone, I can say prayer has been an interesting thing to learn how to do. Yes, I said, learn. At the age of 31, when a lot of this started, I had to learn how to pray and, at the same time, listen. You'd be amazed at the things you can hear when you calm your mind.

       So, you're probably wondering, "what does this have to exercise, or sports, or strength?" Well, to quote Rush Limbaugh, "Talent on loan from God." I heard that phrase about 2 years ago, and it always stuck in the back of my mind. A lot of people might disagree with what I am about to say, and that is fine. I thought for a long time about what it meant, and I concluded that it kind of sums everything up. Everything we are, know, and can do, is on loan from God. That's every talent, every skill, every ability, and every bit of knowledge we can absorb and apply is not something that is not actually our own, but something that is given or "loaned" to us. 

        Faith is best described as "a feeling, conviction, or belief that something is true or real without any evidence." Coming from personal experience, faith can be a difficult thing to fully understand and wrap your mind around. But if I can hold faith in my coach and his skills, my athletes and their abilities, or even my personal skills and abilities, why can't I have faith in the Being that granted all of this to us? Why can't I have faith that all of us were loaned these different skills and abilities for a reason? Then again, instead of having it all figured out, why don't I just allow myself to believe and do what I feel I was placed on this earth to do. I've got the legs, the butt, and the back strength I need. I like to believe God gave me great strength to hold up a world if needed. And, like my body, I need to continue to strengthen my faith. Because just like increasing my physical strength, my ability to lift and compete at a high level increases. The stronger my faith becomes, the stronger my trust in God becomes.

Take Care,

Coach A

Like Writing A Symphony: How Rest Days Are Just As Important As Training Days

        So an interesting thing that many don't know about me is, before I got into the field of kinesiology, I was actually a music major. Yep, a music major. For 3 years, I was a double bassist for the Iowa State University symphony. I had been playing music for a little over 10 years. Played all through high school for a matter of face. Anyway, during that time, I learned a lot about music. Aural theory (the ability to figure music out by listening to it), written theory (the ability to look at music and figure it out in terms of its actual structure), piano (considered the be the universal instrument), private lessons, and obviously symphony.

            It was about a year into my music education, I discovered kinesiology. In the fall of 2009, I switched 100% to kinesiology and never looked back. It's odd how life works. The more I continued to learn about exercise science, primarily strength and conditioning, the more parallels I found between the two fields. Even today, I continue to find parallels between the fields of study. The one parallel that I find the most fascinating is the idea of rest.

            During one of my aural theory classes, that's where I learned how to "decode" music by listening to it; Dr. Jeffery Prator once said, "A rest is just as important as any note." For some reason, even to this day, that quote has stuck with me. Then during one of my written theory classes, we began to learn how to construct music itself. It wasn't until I started creating my first training cards, 2 years later, did I see the first of many, many parallels between the 2 fields. Speaking from personal experience, a training program/card is no different than a piece of sheet music. If you're not experienced with either one, at first glance, a training card or sheet music appears like it needs a key to decipher what's written on it. However, to an experienced eye, either one is easily read.

            Now you're probably wondering, this is all nice and good, but what does this have to do with anything? In the words of Yoda, "Everything!" because if there is one parallel, there have to be others. And you're right! I started, as Steve Jobs once said, to connect the dots between these two fields. Over more time, and astonishingly enough, I began to find more and more. I remember one day thinking, "Holy crap, this is just like this from my music theory class or my piano class." There are many specific ways the two relate to one another, that I could go into a few others, but I'll skip them and get to my point. The most important parallel between the two fields is, just like resting (silence) is written into a symphony, coaches program rest days (recovery). This brings me to the point of this all and the title of this essay, the rest days are just as important as the training days. Now here's the reason why. 

            The human body is the most fantastic machine in the world. Yes, I said it, machine. If you break it down to its most basic components, the human body is a bunch of interconnected levers. Now here's the other thing, just like a machine, the human body will break down if it runs too hard for too long. Regardless of the physical activity, the stress incurred by the body will eventually break it down. The fantastic thing about the body and how it differs from any other machine in the world is that it will adapt to the stressor placed upon it (Hans Selye's General Adaptation Theory). However, there is an important fact to remember to all of this. The body can only take so much stress before it starts to deteriorate. And this is where rest comes in. During the scheduled rest periods during training, the body is allowed to recover and, most importantly, rebuild (muscle) and reregulate (hormones) itself. Yes, you read that right. It is not the training sessions that make us stronger. It's actually the scheduled rest periods we take that make us stronger.

            But why don't we think about rest days with the same importance as the actual training days? To be completely transparent about this, this is my professional belief, American society has been ruined by companies like Gatorade and Nike. American society has been inundated with the idea of "1-more" when it comes to sports practice. 1 more jump shot, 1 more swing of the bat, 1 more throw of the football, 1 more practice spike of the ball. So on and so forth. The same idea can be said about training, but this time, it primarily comes in the concept of 1 more rep or 1 more exercise, 1 more day. Where does rest fit into their equation? That's the thing, it doesn't. 

            As a coach, I have heard many different reasons for pushing so hard. And the one line that I hear some form or fashion of the most is, "If I don't train today, I'll lose it." Yes, this is true, to an extent. However, in this case, the magnitude as to how fast the body will lose said adaptations is a little off. It takes the body a reasonable amount of time to lose the gains it has achieved (7-20 days, depending on specific adaptation). I could get into the exact science, but I'll save you the lesson and just ask that you take my word for it. So here we are, pushing and pushing and pushing to the point of exhaustion, and more than likely not gaining a single thing out of it. 

            Now there are 2 scenarios that I see playing out in the end. One is incredibly likely, the other takes a lot of luck not to occur, and that is injury. I can say with almost certainty that an injury will occur if a rest period is not taken. Now to stay fair in this discussion, I'm not saying an injury will occur. All I am stating is, with every passing day, week, or month that goes by without a scheduled rest period, the likelihood of injury occurring increases. Just to clarify, when I state "injury," I'm not talking about a torn ACL or broken leg, which can happen. When I say injury, I am primarily speaking of pulled muscled, strained ligaments/tendons, the little things that, if not addressed, can really hinder adaptation and gains.

            There is also the other side of the coin. Even after five months of exercising hard, and injury never occurs. All I can say to that is congratulations, you rolled the dice, and it didn't come up snake-eyes.

            Let's face it injuries aren't any fun. So if you don't like injuries, allow the body to rest. Take a day, a week, or even a month (in some cases, a month of rest is needed) follow the rest day like you would any training day. Allow the silence to occur and bask in it for a while. Here's a thought, give even more effort during the rest day than you would a training day.

            As I mentioned earlier, every beat, every note, and moment of silence, in the greatest of symphonies, was planned and put there for a specific reason. The same is said for training. Every exercise, set, rep, and rest day has been strategically designed to help ensure the greatest adaptations possible. So next time you have a rest day take it seriously and sit back and enjoy the time off. Why not listen to a symphony. Personally, I recommend New World Symphony or the Planets... they are my favorites. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this.

Take Care,

Coach A