My Top 3 Training Mistakes

Which one of you aliens took my brain?

Ok, I admit it. I am an idiot at times. Some days I feel like my brain got sucked out by some alien.

As you know, the Tactical Strength Challenge (TSC) was set for today (Saturday) here in Minnesota at Kinetic Edge with Brad “No Relation” Nelson making sure it all goes down well. Ok, so Brad left Kurt in charge since he had to go kill some trees at this place, so the inmates were truly running the asylum.

I’ve been planning to do the TSC since last year and it is even on my goals list for this year. The one snafu that I did not account for was that they can move the TSC to the weekend before or after the offical date of April 10. I assumed (you know what happens when you assume) that it would be April 10 and then found out 2 weeks ago that Brad was hosting it on April 3. Uh oh.

Normally this would not be any issue, but as you know I just got married recently and go to spend the following week with my wonderful wife in Puerto Vallarta Mexico. We had a blast and while I did get in a few training sessions, I was not bringing a kettlebell on the plane with me to Mexico! That would be a whole suitcase and probably like $35 each way with the way airlines wap you for extra bags now.

What is the TSC

The TSC is a max deadlift, max pullups (elite is max pullups + 22 lbs) and max kettlebell snatches in 5 minutes (men 24 kg and elite is 32 kg).

I had it all planned out that I would work the crap out of my deadlift, take 9 days off and just do some light work and coast into the TSC on April 10. Pullups are always hit and miss for me and I figured I would have 10+ days to work some kettlebell snatches and as long as my cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF aka cardio / “wind”) was kept up before the time off I would be ok. Not ideal, but I was still planning to hit 85 reps with the 32 kg in 5 minutes.

The Honeymoon is Over

The honeymoon was a blast and I realized that I only had a few days before the TSC now once the plane landed! Crap. I tested my deadlift on Wed and it was pretty close to where I wanted it to be. I hit 365 lbs easily and missed 405, but I was only going to pull it if it was very easy and it started to slow at about 3 inches off the ground and I called it there.

Ideally I would like to smoke 405 and coast in, but that is life. I’ve missed 405 in training before and hit 15 lbs more on conest day. My last deadlift was about 16 days before and my max pulls have come about 7-9 days “off” from heavy deadlifts. Not ideal for prep, but that is life!

Thursday night I wanted to get in another session after doing a shorter session at lunch. I wanted to get in some 32 kg KB snatches yet as I was really sucking on these.

I was very tired from a what seemed like a long week, travel, and I had not been sleeping well the last few nights. No worries, I just need to make it to the gym and I will lift the weights.

I have the luxury of a gym just outside my door in my garage; so off I went. I tested all sorts of things and nothing was testing very well (biofeedback testing). Finally settled on double overhand thick bar deadlifts at a light load and KB snatches.

I tested them and they were good, but not great. Good enough I thought and proceeded to alternate back and forth.

Everything seemed much harder than it should be. My mind started to wander a bit during the sets.

Snap to it! This is the last session before the TSC!

My second set of KB Snatches were slow, so I cut the reps way down. Axle pulls were ok, but not great.

I ended up calling the set early and left feeling like crap. Normally I feel awesome after training. Not quite up to Adam T Glass standards yet of “wanted to mouth rape an alligator” once training was done, but normally very good.

Fast forward to Friday AM where I have pain in my right lower back. Now I have done it!

What Went Wrong

If I could design a session where I violated almost every rule I have for training myself and my athletes, Thursday night was just about perfect. A big adventure in failure. The only things missing where lifting in pain with epileptic form with a “I just sucked on a lemon face” (ok, there was a bit of that even).

Hindsight is 20/20 and it seems so painfully obvious to me now

Top 3 Things NOT To Do During Training

1) Don’t try to make up for “lost time” in the last few days
The only thing you can do it make yourself worse if you hose it up! You will not gain a huge amount of strength 3 days before the event.

2) State Before Skills
I learned this one from Frankie Faires. Your state is more important than your skills. If you are a feeling off, you need to change that state BEFORE you lift.

In my case, I was on a time crunch and skipped this part and just went right into the training. The other times I will do more micro movements (mobility work), and slowly work up to the exercises. I will do snatches with the 16kg and if good then the 24, 28 32, 40 (on a good day) etc. I skipped that and just went right to the 32 kg in a bad state.

3) Testing
I stopped testing once I found my exercises. I test (biofeedback using ROM as show in the Grip n Rip DVDs) after EACH set to make sure the exercise is still good. Most of the time it is, but without testing you don’t know for sure.
I did not test between exercises this time.

Grip n Rip Biofeedback Video -learn how to test your exercises!

Summary

Why am I telling you all this? I want you to learn from MY mistakes. I know I have made a ton of mistakes over the course of my training lifetime.

If I could wave my magic wand and start over, I would pick up a copy of the Grip N Rip DVDs and use that as my starting point. I spent WAY too much time listening to other tell me what they THOUGHT was a good idea.

To be completely honest, I spent years telling other athletes the same thing. I was guessing what I thought was correct.  I now know better and you can learn how to decide for yourself now too!

Rock on

Mike T Nelson
PS
The Grip N Rip DVDs will be on sale this coming Monday, so watch from an email from me as soon as they are live! In the meantime, click on this link to find out how to test exercise for yourself for FREE  !

Grip n Rip Biofeedback Video

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