500 Words a Week - Training Hacks

This post centres around trying to bring back some enjoyment into the training process. Strength training over many years can at times feel monotonous, especially if not working toward an intended goal. The below are some of the slight alterations I’ve added to my training or picked up from other coaches that have greatly increased my enjoyment.

Chunks of Time

Rather than the tradition “4x8, 5x5, 6x2”, we give ourselves an allotted time (10 mins, 15 mins, 20 mins), and see how many sets we can get in the time frame. We pick the reps we want to complete in the chosen exercise, and we may pick a rough weight estimate we’d like to life. We also allow ourselves some rest, between 60-90s. The following week we can see if we can squeeze an extra set in.

Each Minute on the Minute

Now it doesn’t specifically have to be every 60s, it could be 75s, 90s or 120s. It brings a sense of urgency to the work we do. It take’s us out of our normal routine.

Outsource Your Motivation

Hire a coach, do a class, or train with someone close to you/ group of friends. If you have a coach, even if they just set you the programme, you’ll feel more inclined to do it. Attending classes is a wonderful way to drive some intensity in your programme. 

Variability

For my own training, I’ve found increasing the variability of the exercise’s I do to be intensely rewarding. I’ve seen increases in some of my numbers but the level of enjoyment I’ve gotten back has been huge.

Easy Wins

This also links into the variability. When you regularly incorporate exercise or modifications of exercises into your programme where you have no preconceived idea about how good you’ll be at them, you will regularly end up surprising yourself. I especially find this beneficial in trying to pursue weightlifting. You already have a strong idea about what you can do on certain lifts, however when you start bringing in high variability with some slightly unique variations, you’ve no idea how you’ll do. Even if you had some slight guess, you’ll surpass that, bringing an intense sense of enjoyment back to the training process.

Another example of incorporating easy wins, is trying to start the session with something enjoyable. Most people love doing some form of arm training, yet it’s something we’ve always placed at the end. In times when we are feeling sluggish, when we don’t really want to train but we are in the gym, we should start with these little exercises that give us so much enjoyment. 

High Training Frequency

When things get long and monotonous, that’s when motivation dwindles. That’s when we find the excuses not to go. I’ve found keeping sessions relatively short, around 45 minutes but doing something every day has been helpful. My example session from yesterday was:

Block Clean - 1 rep every 60s x 10

Leg Curl - 2 x 12

Leg Extension - 2 x 12

Tempo Runs on Curve Treadmill - 10s on 50s off x 10

I think also trying to change our mindset out of being so restrictive in what we do. For any S&C coaches reading this we’ve constantly heard about things centring around the interference effect for most of our coaching careers. I think sometimes we just need to ignore the intensely restrictive mindset and let ourselves experiment.