Strength Is a Skill

Strength is a skill.  If you want to be strong, you have to practice being strong.  Your body will only do what you prepare it to do.  Here is a story to illustrate my point.

This past spring, I came back to school after winter break having established a foundation of strength over winter break, and began to get back into weightlifting.  Weightlifting is a sport in itself, and consists of the snatch and clean and jerk.  I had trained the lifts before, with very limited success, (my previous best numbers were 85 kg snatch and 110 kg clean and jerk) but I was once again bitten by the bug.  There was something that drew me to the challenge of weightlifting, and I immediately fell in love with throwing heavy weights overhead again. 

My clean started rocketing up, but my snatch remained mediocre.  I began programming workouts directed entirely at improving my snatch and clean and jerk outside of normal football workouts.  Soon my snatch was up to 90 kg, and I had my sights set on the FDU offensive line snatch record of 98 kg.  So, I kept training.  Over, and over. 

One Saturday morning, I was training with a buddy after morning football practice.  I was feeling good so I kept pushing, and made 95 kg.  I was about to move on to the clean and jerk when my buddy said, "C'mon go for the record!"  After some prodding, I threw on 4 kg and faced down 99kg.  

Unfortunately, the weight smoked me.  I mean I had no chance.  Each try got worse and worse.  I tried once and almost got under it.  I tried twice and left it out in front.  I tried a third time and the damn bar felt so heavy I barely even pulled it.  

I told myself that I would give it one more try, then give it up for the day.  I stepped to the bar, stopped thinking, and just pulled the goddamn bar.  I made that 99 kg snatch that day.  Unofficially breaking the Oline snatch record and putting myself one kilo away from becoming a man in Russia.  

Three weeks later I made a 107.5 kg snatch, and broke the my own Oline school snatch record for the 3rd time.  I never really stopped to consider how I had improved my snatch that much in that short an amount of time.  Now, looking back, the reason I broke through and hit these PRs was simple.  I snatched.

I didn't get significantly stronger in those three weeks.  Between spring football practice, being beat up through a combination of my own lifting and football lifting, and being on my feet all day as a strength and conditioning intern at Seton Hall University, I was not doing anything special.  I was simply getting in the gym, week in and week out, and snatching.

What many people don't realize is that strength is as much a product of the central nervous system as it is muscle.  The brain is an incredibly powerful tool.  The brain controls all the functions of the human body.  This includes muscle contraction and movement.  Through training and repetition, you can teach your mind to order your body in a way that will improve technique, handle more weight, and move in a way that will achieve your goals without spending time worrying about programming or building muscle.  

I say it all the time when people ask me how to improve their pull ups.  There's an old saying, if you want to be good at something, do it every day.  If you want to be strong, you need to practice strength.  Don't stress about your programming, don't worry that you're going to be "overtrained," and don't lose your mind if you're missing maximal effort lifts.  Sometimes you just need to keep pounding at a heavy weight to teach your body how to handle it.

I heard an incredible quote from legendary American weightlifter Donny Shankle that illustrates this point.  "Learn the feeling of what heavy is and display the courage of a champion to deal with it."    

If you want to be good at the clean, you need to go to the gym and practice the clean.  If you want to improve your pull up numbers, you need to teach your central nervous system to handle your own bodyweight.  If you want to even improve something like the depth of your squat, you need to get in the gym and squat deep!  

Too many people spend too much time on the Internet looking at the hundreds of programs for the magic bullet that will take them to the promised land.  If you want to be strong, practice being strong. If you want to handle heavy weight, you need to handle that weight.  

In sports, athletes practice their craft everyday.  In football we don't worry about how sore we are or how beat up we are.  We still go out to the field every single day and beat the shit out of each other because we need to hammer in, through repetition, the techniques and strategies that will allow us to be successful.  It is no different in lifting.  Get in the gym, put in the time, and move some heavy weight!  Stop worrying about how to build your lifts through all sorts of bullshit programming and assistance movements.  Your body can only handle what you prepare it to handle.  If you want to go do something, go do it.