Unfucking my Brain – My Personal Paradigm Shift in My Mental Approach to Powerlifting

My first exposure to powerlifting came through the “golden era” articles on EliteFTS – stories of Chuck V, Dave Tate, Louie Simmons and the likes who would strap their failing bodies together to redline another training session or another meet through pretty much any means possible. This results-over-everything mentality resonated with me as it aligns with the way I’m wired – I am an all-in aggressive personality that has overcome most obstacles in my life through an almost violent will-power and unwillingness to give up.

Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I competed in somewhere in the neighbourhood of 12-13 different sports, often having up to 4 different practices a day; I always had a chip on my shoulder as although I was often not the most talented player, I absolutely refused to be outworked. I would work obsessively on skill development and supplemental conditioning on off days and after practices when everyone else had gone home, I’d run extra stairs after wrestling practice, and stay after practice to wrestle the coaches to have a chance to work against stronger and more experienced opponents. When it came to injuries and pain management it was always a “sweep it under the rug, suck it up, and get back out there” approach. I competed in a wrestling tournament after a 50% rupture of my Achilles tendon I sustained at wrestling practice and then made worse by jumping in a badminton tournament the same day. I refused to tell my coaches or parents about the injury or get proper rehab for fear of missing any of my upcoming lacrosse or wrestling provincial championships – a decision I still pay for to this day.

So when I first started powerlifting, I took the same work ethic and refusal to let pain or injury get in the way of applying myself 100% to every training session, and for a very long time it served me well. I tore my bicep off the bone and never missed a training session and was back in the gym the day after surgery (I considered going the same day just to really say fuck you to the injury, but we had plans with friends so instead I waited until the next afternoon to get back to training). Even as my mental approach is shifting, I am still proud of the fact that I didn’t miss a session the entire time, because I’ve seen too many people focus on what they can’t do whereas I was solely focused on what I could do and felt the need to lead by example. There’s a lot of positive that comes out of only seeing solutions and never seeing/ignoring obstacles, but it’s had its dark side, and I’ve paid for it dearly by taking this approach to the extreme.

I’ve spent the entirety of the last three years with one or more concurrent moderate to severe muscle tears, an array of various tendinopathies, joint capsule damage and separations, ligament tears and other various injuries – and they are all my fault. I set my best total of 1868 in 2019 and haven’t improved it since. Part of the reason I haven’t improved my total is because I went through massive weight cuts, got out of wraps and back into sleeves, but the reality is I had to run away from the kinds of weights that were ripping my body apart as I continually tried to smash through injury after injury. I’ve had to take a hard look in the mirror as to how the mentality that has allowed me to achieve so much with average-at-best genetics was now working against me, and how I was going to change my approach so I can get back to what matters most to me – improving my total. 

The first change I had to make was to let go of timelines, I’m aware that this flies in the face of pretty much every goal setting rule on the planet, but by mentally marrying number goals and attaching them to dates on the calendar, I would blind myself to mistake after mistake trying to will those numbers into existence at a particular meet: I would constantly overshoot RPE numbers, justify weight jumps when things were moving poorly because “I was just out of position and need to execute better”, and ignore pain and injury that were worsening with every session until they became bad enough that I could no longer train no matter how much I tried to fight through it. I know this is going to come as a shock to most of you, but if you can’t train, it’s pretty hard to get better and improve your total.

My remedy has been to actually let go of all number and timeline goals but rather to focus on getting the absolute best out of myself each and every session, and simply to make good training decisions, which means sometimes *gasp* I’ve had to skip a session. There are many ways that I’ve kept myself accountable: I’ll use a velocity tracker to help me choose my training weights (I might be able to lie to myself, but I’m not able to lie to the tracker about how fast things are moving), I’m learning to dissociate from the weights but rather focus on hitting my prescribed RPEs – I can’t make everything a RPE9.5-10, scientifically I know this, but I’ve always struggled with honesty in this arena and as a coach, I know I’m cutting my coach off at the knees by taking away significant tools away from his toolbox in load management, directed adaptation and timed progression models.

I’m making the direction of my training the priority and letting go of any type of rate of progress goals; my only goal is to be better than the last session, and to be heading in the right direction week over week and month over month. I refuse to compare where I am now to any other point in my powerlifting career, I’ve even let go of mentally tracking my PRs – I couldn’t tell you what my best training 2-5 rep maxes are, and honestly I don’t care, they don’t matter, the only thing that matters is: am I doing everything in my power today to keep moving in the right direction?

So is it working? I’d say the evidence comes in both a 694lb and a 733lb deadlift and a 585×2 squat that have come in the last month; let me explain. The 694lb deadlift was about 3 weeks ago, and previously that would have been an absolutely blasphemous weight to load – just load 700! But I actually didn’t realize it was 694 until after I had done it, I was supposed to work up to RPE7,8,9 singles and as I was working up I refused to add up the weight (I’ve been around the sport long enough to know what all the intervals of 25kg plates are, but I was intentionally not counting up any of the change) when I hit my RPE7 at 606 I made the choice to jump 20kg to 650 for RPE8, the call was perfect so I made the call to make exactly the same jump to hit my RPE9, which ended up being 694 which was definitely my upper limit for a RPE9 for that day, for me to stick to my process on heavy singles marked my true commitment to this mental shift. 

The 733lb deadlift came 2 weeks later when I was allowed to work to a true RPE10, my previous set was 705lbs and it moved better than it has in a long time. Both Cam and Cole were training with me at the time (the other two full time coaches at Blacksmith) and have seen my deadlift many times over the years and I trust their input often more than I trust my own when it comes to selecting weight jumps. Cam and Cole were giving me a 10-17.5kg range on the next jump and Cole had actually loaded a 15kg jump onto the bar, but I asked him to change it to 12.5kg. I was 100% positive I could make a 12.5kg and each 2.5kg beyond that up to 17.5kgs would have been a few percentage points less certain. I don’t know who needs to hear this but I probably needed it screamed at me weekly: you only get stronger from the lifts you complete not the ones you miss. So I loaded 332.5kg or 733lbs and pulled it for a new PR. This is especially significant because I can tell you with 100% confidence that I’ve been strong enough to pull this before, but haven’t simply because I was married to a 750lb deadlift or a 1900lb total, and nothing less than those numbers were acceptable – so instead of pulling the 740lbs I knew I was capable of pulling at the last meet, I made the reach for 750 to try and secure a 1900lb total when 1890 was as close to a sure thing as I can say without actually having done it.

The last mark of this mental shift is a 585×2 RPE9 squat, it’s a long way from my best, but it’s still significant. This meet prep started the way pretty much every prep since 2017 has started – with a significant tears to my left adductor magnus, and the inability to squat or deadlift. Previously I would rehab it until it was “good enough” and then limp my way to the platform and try to extract every last pound out of it. Once I got the ability to squat again, I refused to miss a session until the meet, for some twisted reason I felt like this was the best way to put up my highest competition squat, and perhaps for that particular meet it was, but it has hampered my long term development by losing at least a quarter to half the year where I can’t squat or am sputtering around at 50% capacity just trying to maintain the movement. This time I’ve dedicated myself to making the best training decisions I can for my long-term development, and if I can’t get my body prepared to squat by the time the next session has come around, I’ve actually skipped it twice in this prep. Instead of focusing on working harder and blocking out pain in a session I shouldn’t have been doing, I’m redirecting that focus to work harder on the things that are going to get me to the next session in a position to make forward progress. I don’t know if it will lead to even beating my last competition squat I posted while trying to battle through similar injuries, but I am fully confident that committing to this process will eventually lead to the best squat and total I’ve ever put on the platform, whenever that day comes.

This isn’t going to work for everyone, many people could do better by pushing themselves way harder than they are now, but I’m not one of those people, no one needs to tell me put my heart and soul into my training or to attack the bar with everything I have, but if you happen to be someone like me who has become their own worst enemy by smashing head first through every wall with reckless abandon, maybe it’s time to look in the mirror and see how you can get out the way of your own success.

You’re Probably Not Working Hard Enough

In the past we’ve talked about how one of the biggest progress killers is convincing yourself you’re doing everything right when in fact there are many opportunities still on the table, and this is somewhat in the same vein.

The basic premise of this article in a single sentence is that there are few if any effect sizes greater than your own effort – pretty much every other training variable or metric pales in comparison to how hard you push yourself in training.

The inspiration for this article actually came from overhearing a conversation between two gym members as they argued over one of the most hotly debated variables in the strength and conditioning world: what is the optimal frequency per week to train a muscle group? At the time two meta-analysis’ were published within short succession of each other, one showing a positive trend for over 2x per week, and the other concluding no additional benefits existed above 2x per week. The biggest difference between the two studies was their inclusion criteria, but the total effect for frequency sat between 0-7% difference, whereas studies that look to quantify the effects of effort on hypertrophic and strength outcomes show effect sizes as large as 30%. While these two were arguing the first thought that came through my head was “both of you are sitting here arguing over a potential 0-7% effect while neither of you have pushed yourself on a set in your entire training career”. Micromanaging all the quantifiable variables in your program is almost useless if you’re not going to overlay it over the backdrop of the constant of the hardest and most focused effort you can expend set over set. Every auto regulated system like RPE (rate of perceived exertion) and velocity based training assumes maximum effort in order to be accurate and effective. If I had to choose between someone pushing themselves hard on a stupid program vs somebody coasting on the most well designed program, I’ll take the hardest worker every time.

Simply put, if you want results, put your head down and go to fucking work, no other training variable within your control will make a larger difference in your success no matter what your goal is. Then, and only then will you be able to start assess which other training variables (exercise selection, variety, points of peak tension, volume frequency and intensity, distribution of load across compound and single joint exercises etc etc.) that work best for you. If you ever get caught in paralysis by analysis in your programming, simplify, and put your head down and hammer, it will work every time.

The Strongest People You Know Probably Cry

This is something I’ve been thinking about writing for awhile, but I’ll be honest, I don’t like looking weak in front of other people, ever, but the more extremely strong people I talk to – many of whom who are looked up to as heroes in the strength world – the more I realize that some one needs to start this conversation. Almost every person I’ve met that has actually achieved something in powerlifting has admitted to spending a portion of their prep or aftermath with their face buried in their hands just trying to keep it together. The other thing these people have in common is that when we finally got around to talking is that most of them felt that there was a massive pressure to maintain their image of invincibility and winning in every facet of their life and training. I’ve also promised more than one person that I would write this article, so here it is.

I don’t think I’m some sort of hero, but something I will give my credit for is simply the ability to suffer for something I’ve deemed important: it’s my competitive advantage. I’ll simply do what other’s won’t and do it for longer while more talented people simply refuse to endure. I’ve torn muscles in a training session, walked outside, booked an ultrasound appointment, and went back in to finish as much of my session as I still could without saying a word to anyone about it. I’ve manipulated my bodyweight from 170lbs up to 240lb and back to the 181lb class, used extreme water cutting methods, been to the point where I’ve needed help tying my shoes, but still gotten under a squat bar and finished the session, all while dealing with some pretty crazy nervous system and mental health issues that still linger from a head and spine injury in 2013.

I’m prefacing this this way because I’m going to admit that I spend a portion of every prep wondering if I can continue, if I can get under the bar one more time, wonder if the price I’m paying is worth it, if I can be perfect one more day with nutrition, scream at another plate of food at 3am because I can’t keep it down, drag myself into the sauna one more time as I watch the sweating process get slower and slower as my body is running out of water to cut and the vision problems, nausea and confusion get worse and worse. I feel despair, hopelessness, self doubt, anger, and the urge to quit at many points during the entire process; I don’t fight it anymore, at this point I KNOW these emotions are coming, and I won’t waste any effort trying or pretending not to feel them. Instead I focus on the actions that gave me the privilege to get to the point where I would invariably face these battles; I use all these negative emotions as a self-verification and the strength to drag myself out of the spiral and make the process the priority again. If I had taken the easy way out up to this point, I wouldn’t have put myself in the position to feel like shit – I earned that, by stacking decision on top of decision while my mind and body fought at every turn, and all I have to do is make the right decision ONE. MORE. TIME.

I realize that I’m talking to about 3-5% of the powerlifting population, but at some point, and it’s often hard to figure out exactly when, this became more than just a hobby. At some point this becomes more important to you than you can possibly describe and the only people who will remotely understand your are people who have been there before or are there with you now. At some point you decided that you were going to push yourself to the best you could possibly be and would expect no less, and at some point you will have to face the consequences, struggles, and disappointment that come along with that level of passion. Powerlifting is a sport of extremes, and inevitably it will start to take its pound of flesh, the further you push yourself, the more you demand of yourself, the more you set yourself up for breakdown. I’ve often said that you don’t know if you actually love the sport until it takes something from you, until you’ve watched a lift go backwards despite doing everything in your control to move forwards or even tread water. Sometimes the sport just keeps taking and taking and it will be a long time before it rewards you again.

If you’ve ever heard someone wax poetically about finding themselves and the lessons they learned from lifting, it’s probably someone who has pushed themselves to the extremes. It’s also why I maintain the position that you are only as truly strong as you are on the platform – when you’ve chosen to put all on the line for 9 lifts on that specific date in front of a crowd of your peers and hopefully a circle of people that are truly important to you, not just maxing out in the gym because you “feel good that day”. It’s a sport where you train for years and decades for a 1 minute highlight reel, and if something goes wrong it’ll be months to years before you get a chance to redeem yourself. The stakes are high, and so is the pressure. Everyone thinks they know how they’ll react when everything is on the line, they think they’ll step in front of the bullet if someone attacks a loved one or will keep fighting in a hopeless situation, but I always get a chuckle when someone starts spouting off like that – you have no fucking idea unless you’ve been there. If you want to find out who you are you’re going to have to walk up to those lines, cross them, and find out what you’re made of. Powerlifting, taken to the extremes can provide those moments, and I’d encourage you to chase your passion no matter what the cost – no matter what the outcome you’ll find out more about who you are when it’s really on the line. Everything you learn will transfer to every other facet of your life

You’re not in This Alone

I’ve been fortunate to have some incredible training partners with exceptionally high pain tolerances, and exceptionally high standards of success: to the point where once the goal is stated, it’s just simply expected of you to do whatever it takes to get there – no matter what it costs you. In the same breath I’ve been fortunate enough that we are open and honest enough that at any point we could admit a mental or emotional struggle and receive unconditional and non-judgemental support. I also recognize that most people don’t get to train in this kind of environment and the predominant attitude in the strength world is: “rub some salt on it, stop being such a little bitch and keep your shit to yourself”, but I’m going to go as far as to say that that advice has helped literally zero strong people get more out of themselves. If you don’t have that kind of support network, reach out, you’d be surprised how many people are willing to lend a hand even if they don’t entirely know how. I know I speak for myself and all of my coaches that client or not, we’re willing to have those conversations with you and do our best to help.

So what’s my point with all this rambling? I guess that it’s normal to breakdown every once and awhile while forcing your body and mind to do things that are definitely not normal and fly in the face of every survival instinct you have – don’t fight it. You’re not defined by how you feel, but rather the actions you take. Expect to be pushed to the edge, expect to bend and momentarily break, but expect that you will always get up and rise to the occasion, know that every storm ends, and demand it of yourself that you will make the right decision one more time. Repeat that process forever and you just might surprise yourself with what you can achieve.

How I added 44lbs to My Bench Press By Talking to Myself

Before I snapped my bicep tendon, my best bench press was 391lbs, but it was a gym lift without commands; I had done 374lbs in competition up to this point. I have always been a good deadlifter and part of that is I have relatively long arms, not crazy freakish-lockout-at-my-knees-in-conventional long, but enough to give me an advantage for sure. So when my bench press was lagging behind my squat and deadlift I always had in the back of my mind that the reason it wasn’t very good was because of my long arms – I already had my excuse ready, I didn’t even acknowledge it very often, but if I had a bad day, I already had it loaded.

A lot of credit goes to my coach Josh Bryant, who is one of the best programmers in the world, but the real turning point was when he sent me an article about mental training that he wrote for an issue of Powerlifting USA. It was a wake up call, and really opened me up to looking into the psychological side of training and performance. We’ve talked a lot about the power of the brain in articles like how mirrors affect your performance where we talk about how your brain actually lifts the weight, your muscles just do what they’re told, and we’ve explained how seemingly impossible feats of strength have happened when under life and death circumstances, also made possible by the power of the mind, but even for me it hadn’t quite hit home yet – if the brain believes the body will actualize! I have now benched pressed 418 in competition, despite tearing a pec 9 weeks out from competition.

The biggest change I made coming out of surgery once I was able to straighten my arm again was that I had decided I was no longer going to allow bench press to be my weak link. I framed everything in a positive and expected to progress

I am an extremely driven individual, and I think like many extremely driven or competitive people, I was extremely hard on myself. I would replay failures and beat myself up for not doing better both in the moment and afterwards. Almost unknowingly I allowed myself to reinforce the idea that not only had I failed that I was also a failure, and in doing so, I actually reinforced the belief that was going to keep me from achieving my goal. If you’re doing this now, STOP, ask yourself when beating yourself into the ground ever helped you accomplish anything or empowered you to believe in your abilities – I’m willing to bet it’s never.

Last meet I missed a 749 deadlift to give me a 1900lb total, I was pissed and disappointed, but now, in mind it’s already done. I know what mistake I made, I won’t make it again, and I will achieve 749, 1900, and more. I’ve changed the way I talk about myself, I’ve changed my internal narrative, I am confident in my abilities and who I am, and I’ve learned to remind myself every day.

All this sounds like self help BS, and trust me, I was right there with you, using positive self talk and changing your belief systems sound like something you hear from your therapist not your strength coach, but there are actual studies that show the belief in a program is more important than the program itself. One of my favourite studies of all time demonstrating just how powerful the mind influences physical performance is a squat study using fake steroids. The subjects were lifetime natural elite lifters who already had a squat max over 500lbs (this is an extremely rare subject group and very hard to compile). The intervention group was told they were taking new powerful designer steroid, and the control group was told they were taking a sugar pill. The “steroid” group was able to dramatically increase their strength in rapid fashion well beyond what would be expected over 8 weeks in a trained lifter, but probably most interestingly, they were unable to repeat their performances once they were told they were actually taking a placebo the entire time.

The mind is amazingly powerful, it influences everything you do, and YOU HAVE CONTROL OF IT. Whether you want a better bench press, to dominate your sport, be a better parent, rise to the top of your business, be a better partner – anything, first believe that it is possible, and second, remind yourself every day that you are the master of your fate, and never, not even in jest, talk badly about yourself. It’s the simplest thing you can do and it will have profound effects.

The F Word: The Importance of Fear

This was a Facebook post from about a year ago, but this is something that comes up time and time again.

I get a lot of questions from lifters on how to overcome their fear, as if it were something that can and should be removed from an athlete’s psyche, however this couldn’t be further from from the truth. Very few meaningful things in your life will be done from a place of comfort, and I’ve always said that the day a squat bar loaded with my max attempt doesn’t scare me is the day I’ll retire from competitive powerlifting.

Fear is Fuel

Whenever someone says “I’m scared” or some sort of synonymous phrase right before a max attempt, I will almost uniformly respond, “good! take it in, and use it to your advantage”. The problem isn’t fear, but rather it’s our relationship with it.

There’s this myth that the top lifters operate above the level of fear, in supreme confidence, but there’s two problems with this assumption:

1 – The lifter without fear has a competitive advantage
2 – Fear and confidence are opposing ends of the same spectrum

If such a lifter existed that they were truly above fear, I would argue that this is their competitive DISADVANTAGE. I don’t care how driven, motivated, determined, passionate etc the 140lb untrained female is, she’s not lifting a car. Trap her child under that same car, and there are documented cases of exactly this happening, but only in the presence of genuine fear can true strength be fully displayed. Unlike sports that require fine motor skills and pinpoint accuracy, strength sports are feats of raw emotion and power, and respond well the physical stimulus that the fight or flight system provides.

The idea that you cannot be both fearful and confident is patently false. Mark Twain is quoted as saying “Courage is not the lack of fear but acting in spite of it”. For most, fear resides in the subconscious, you don’t choose to become scared, and you cannot just decide in an instant that you will no longer feel scared so long as the perceived threat still exists; however, actions are conscious decisions, and you can most definitely display confidence, faith, and belief in oneself in the presence of fear – it is this action that truly defines you, not the existence of your fear. It is on this action that you should spend your mental and emotional effort, not on the pointless battle against fear itself. Next time you walk up to a bar and it scares you, accept the gift, act anyways, and no matter the outcome, you’ll be better for it