Be afraid, be very afraid. It’s Halloween and that means candy time. As you gorge your otherwise healthy body on the sweet poison know as candy, remember to roll your rear off of the couch and into the gym. Candy can be a useful training tool for quick energy; however it can also be a horrible destroyer of the immune system and reduce the energy that you have. Not to mention the extra padding it will put on your normally rock hard abs. Now go put on your superman suit and squat till your eyes pop out.

Congratulations, It’s your max effort day and you just hit a new personal record. You feel pumped up, the weight was easy and you’re ready to do more. Stop and think about your next move. You could try and put even more weight on and hit a larger record but you need to look at a few things before you go to that extra rep. How many reps above 90% have you done? What has your training week been like? How has your recovery been? What are your coach or spotters saying about the rep?

A general recommendation from Prilepin’s chart (for more on that see Elite FTS) is that you should not lift more than 4 times over 90% of your 1RM. This can act as a general guideline for your workout; however they may be times when you want to cut your reps shorter than this. If you just hit a large pr at the end of a long workout and it took you 3 lifts it may be beneficial to end your workout there. You are probably on track to keep getting prs and you need to evaluate the risk of injury, particularly after an intense workout. If your training week has been very heavy the risk of injury to stressed muscles, joints and tendons is higher than during a light training week. Remember that a 10 to 20lb pr might be great, but you’ll lose much more than that if it causes and injury.

Input from spotters can be helpful in determining if you are able to complete another rep. If they tell you that your last rep looked slow and heavy then it may be best to avoid trying even more weight. If they say that you move the weight easy and the technique was perfect then the jump might be more acceptable. There are times when you feel like the weight was easy, particularly after a big pr, where the lift was actually heavy and slow. These are the times that you need outside input. If the rep felt easy to you it may have just been due to the fact that you set a record and felt good about it. The adrenaline released during that rep probably won’t be around for your next. Better to leave the gym with a new record and feeling like you have more, than to leave with and injury.

Seriously. Think about how long you want to be an athlete, think about how long you want to compete and train. The more injuries you have the more problems you have to work with. Inevitably the will happen but don’t get them for silly things. If you get hurt winning a national meet you will be much more satisfied than getting hurt just so you could lift a few extra pounds when you already have a new record. If you train hard the pr will be there on your next max effort day.

Excuse me sir, we don’t allow weights to be dropped in our facility
-Your Friendly Staff Member

In training, particularly weightlifting, weights must be dropped. Bumper plates were invented, bought, used, improved, bought, used…etc. Yet somehow you are still not allowed to drop weights. Generally speaking, patrons of commercial gyms are afraid of loud noises. More importantly, is that lawyers who work for large gyms are afraid of things that move too fast. Things that move fast are liabilities. People who move things fast are also liabilities. Everybody loves money, particularly if it comes from a lawsuit, therefore we will not move things fast to reduce this liability and retain money.

Let us take a moment to acknowledge the benefits of this approach. You probably won’t lose money from a person who drops weight on himself of others. Your patrons will not be scared, therefore they will pay you money. Gaining money and not losing it, that’s pretty sweet.

Are there downsides to this approach? Yes. You do not allow for Olympic Weightlifting training to occur at heavy loads, because all weights must be lowered. You also remove most of the assorted loud noises associated with powerlifting, not to mention bands and chains. If you read this blog, I hope you enjoy moving weights quickly, at heavy loads, while occasionally making noise.

It is not always appropriate to drop weights, move them fast, or make noise in general; however in the course of a worthy training routine it is usually necessary to do one, maybe two, but probably all, of these things. Find a gym that let’s you do this. There will be strong people there.

Most of the year I train solo. Why? It is a combination of excessive body odor and, perhaps more importantly, distance from a coach. What is the best solution to this problem? Usually the answer is to move to an area where there is a good coach or even better a good group of athletes. Unfortunately life does not always allow for a move.

There is a good temporary solution for a lack of coaching, a video camera. There are currently many small, portable, digital video cameras that are easy to use and cheap enough to afford. For people who cannot gain access to coaching of any kind it may be best to establish a relationship with a coach that you can visit every once and a while and send them videos to review when you can’t go and see them.

This process will allow for you to self critique your technique on the spot. (Make sure the camera you get can play back videos on a large enough screen). It will also allow you to send your videos to a coach for a more detailed review. You can archive the videos and go back occasionally to see if the corrects you have been meaning to make have actually been made. This keeps you accountable and can occasionally provide entertainment when you look back and realize how far you have come (or haven’t).

Make sure to check out the Internet for deals on the camera, and don’t buy something that you haven’t held in your hands. It is important to be able to try out the camera before you buy it. Remember that you will have to operate the thing while under the fatigue of a workout. You should also be able to review your lifts on the spot in the gym, if the screen is too small or nonexistent it’s not worth the purchase. You will probably need a tripod as well, unless you have friends with alot of time on their hands or a friendly enough stalker.

Imagine this scene: You walk into the gym, ready for your workout, you walk up to the platform toss your gear off to the side and then you see it. The barbell is covered in blood. More specifically, the barbell is covered in blood exactly where you are going to be grabbing it. Bummer. Epic Fail. Somebody did not respect the barbell. Because the bar is now un-tastefully repainted exactly where you intend to use it, you cannot possibly avoid the problem. You now need to track down some form of sanitizer so that you can avoid sharing a blood pact with a complete stranger.

Today’s lesson, Don’t be that guy (or girl). Thank you for being kind enough to anonymously redecorate the barbell for me; however I do not appreciate it. You could have cleaned it. You should have cleaned it. Next time you will clean it. I suppose that last bit was just wishful thinking.

Really folks, you need to clean up your mess. Sometimes that bar gets a little too close to the shins when it comes up. That is ok (well not ok from a technical standpoint, but it’s certainly not the worst mistake in the world to make). Just remember that when you make a mess it is your job to clean it up, not mine.

So you want to squat like a pro powerlifter, but your last squat 1RM was 315. And now it’s your max effort squat day and you want to blow things up! You are pumped and riding high on adrenaline… wait, take a deep breath. Before you go and put 405 on the bar you should think about your actual ability to lift. Are you stronger than last time? Probably, but it takes a long time to develop strength. Depending on your training level a 5 to 15lb jump may be much more appropriate. You can try and make the big jumps and may you’ll make one every now and then, but most of the time you will miss. Eventually the only thing you will have trained to do is miss lifts. Presumably you are training to be stronger and that takes discipline.

Real in your big dreams and instead move towards the slow and constant progress that will make you strong. Consistently making slightly heavier lifts will be much more productive than making a monstrous jump every other month. In fact if you have been training for more than 6 months you probably will never make a massive jump. A large jump is more likely to cause injury if missed (that will make you weaker) or stall progress if made (which will make you frustrated and then weaker). Be the smarter athlete and move towards consistency in all things you do, the strength will come with persistence and determination.