The Inner Game of Powerlifting: Key to Improvement in Your Outer Game

In January every year gyms are flooded with new members who have made some sort of personal decision to get in shape.

Roughly 90% will quit before February comes around.

IMHO this is due in part to not understanding what they are getting into or the assumptions they make about working out.

 

Newbies tend to think about physical training as something similar to taking a drug. Get this pill and have this result. Run 2 miles on the treadmill and see the fat disappear, etc.

Their motivation for being in the gym is focused on achieving a specific type of result.

They describe their gym experience using terminology like accountability and goals.

Newbies see exercise as something done TO them not something they embrace and experience as a creative activity. They have no inner game

 

For those of us who have been training for many years (70 in my case), training in the gym or on the running trails is quite a different experience.

First, rather than having someone else hold us accountable for working out 3-4 times a week, it would take a major armed force to prevent us from doing our workouts.

 

This is because we relish the primary experience of lifting weights, running, hitting a ball, or running around a soccer pitch.

We are deeply connected to the wonderful life experiences of the moment when we get to do these activities. It is one what psychologist Abraham Maslow called the peak experiences we are fortunate to have in life.

It is almost impossible to explain the positive feelings I have when doing a heavy squat or pulling a big deadlift to someone who thinks of these activities as something they must do in order to get something else.

The same applies to when Im out running in different weather conditions.

Because we regulars experience our workouts in a deeply personal manner, it is also possible for us to connect with our additional mental resources to improve our game.

Mental Rehearsal

Because we already have vivid mental images of what it feels like when we do various sports, exercises, etc. we can bring these up in our mind any time we choose and do some interesting things.

Mental rehearsal is extremely useful for improving a particular athletic movement through purely mental practice.

Simply sitting in a chair with no other distractions and creating a mental picture of yourself performing a certain lift or action can have a significant impact on how well you do that movement in a live situation.

For example, think of doing a perfect squat.

Begin by mentally setting up to do the lift with an undefined heavy weight.

If you cannot create the image of performing a complete lift in your mind, it will be very difficult or impossible to do it when you are working with a real barbell.

Thus, you can begin to improve your game through creating a full mental picture of performing a big lift perfectly. Go through every stage of the lift and create a mental sensation of how if feels in your body when you do the lift perfectly.

Your initial attempts at imaging a full lift may surprise you. It could be that your mind goes blank at a certain spot. This is an indication that you may be tuning out when you do the lift with a real weight.

Linking your powers of mental concentration and your physical execution can help you correct mistakes in execution, build strength and overall improve your game.

The more you mentally rehearse how it looks and feels when you do a perfect lift, the better your muscle memory will be when you lift real weights.

 

Coda

Mental rehearsal is something that all professional sports teams work with their athletes to develop and perfect as a tool to improve performance.

Those of us who are not quite at that level can use this tactic for our own benefit.

Lift Big!

Richard