I have been weight training for a very long time. I have had countless injuries from being stupid in the gym, and being stupid outside of the gym. I have experimented with a number of different plans for training over the years. There is one thing that has crept into my mind more often these days than any time before and I wished that I had this mindset when I first started training.
One more rep training!
Lately this mindset has been in my head and it is what I needed all along and didn't even realize it. I can give you an example from today's workout, I was training shoulders and working through my 6 sets of dumbbell shoulder press. I was working up through progressively heavier weights to my top sets. I had written down to do sets of 8 for my top sets. I pushed 8 and it was a struggle on the first set, rather than putting the weights down I told myself that I needed to do one more rep. I paused with the weights above my head and gritted out a 9th rep. I told myself that if I wanted to get stronger doing 8 reps wasn't enough, I needed to push past my perceived limits.
On the next set I struggled to get to 8 reps. I paused again after the 8th rep with the weights above my head. Three deep breaths and I went for rep 9, it was a struggle, but I finished it after what felt like an exceptionally long time. I paused again with the 9th rep above my head, I took three more breaths and went for 10. I fought the weight on the way down, but I had nothing left in the tank to raise them again.
I failed, but I failed on rep 10, on a set of 8!
So many times, we just meet the expectations that we have set for ourselves whether it is in the gym or in life. Over the years we begin to set our expectations of our abilities, our strengths, our progress, lower and lower to ensure that we don't fail. To protect our opinion of ourselves and our confidence.
A quote rings in my head a lot from Henry Ford:
"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't - you're right."
Well I have decided that I think I can, and I challenge you to think you can as well!
Stay Strong, Stay Humble and make every rep count!
Colin