Practice CAN improve performance

Among the many clichs that we are exposed to as we go through life, one that stands out for its misleading qualities is: practice makes perfect.

Anyone who is even a casual visitor to a gym, tennis court or golf course will observe that many people seem to perfect their mistakes through regular practice.

If someone wants to improve their performance, they must practice the right things the right way, or they will simply cement their blunders and mistakes.

 

Weightlifting as precision movement

I have often said that powerlifting is a deceptively difficult sport.

The reason is that the three powerlifts appear to be easy in that they are relatively simple movements that are regularly done by most people who train with weights.

What the typical observer fails to recognize is that many of the most critical skills in lifting heavy weights happen under the skin out of sight.

No one can directly observe muscle recruitment or whole-body tension.

It is possible to observe the correct performance of a lift, but most people appear content with doing a crude approximation of what they think they saw on YouTube.

 

Perfecting what you practice

Consistently practicing something using sub-optimal technique will lock in poor performance.

Changing this requires intense focus on what you are trying to do and then taking the time and making the effort to master the technique.

While the barbell squat may appear simple to the novice. Mastering the technique that will produce a high-quality maximum single requires a lot of intense practice.

In my book Powerlifting Over 50 I devote more than a dozen pages to describing the precision movement needed to do a decent competition squat.

A competition squat is not a simple deep knee bend.

 

Improving performance or perfecting errors

The first step needed to improve performance is to recognize that there may be parts of your game that need work.

Step two is isolating those elements and then devising a strategy to work on them with focus and consistency.

Errors in performance of a power lift will often show up as weak points in the lift.

An example is the dreaded sticking point of the bench press a few inches off the chest.

Another example of a routine error in a powerlift is rounding the back during a deadlift.

In both cases, a lifter confronted with these deficits in their performance must devise a strategy that will enable them to correct these flaws.

The novice will ignore the flaws and try to improve by simply adding more sets, reps or weight.

The astute lifter will devise several different feedback mechanisms to help improve their deficient technique.

These would include such things as assessment by a knowledgeable coach (not just some gym bro bozo) or by taking videos of your own lifting.

Any technique that will give useful feedback is worthwhile.

 

Practice for Improvement

Once you know what to practice, then devise a plan to practice those things that need correcting.

Each of us will tend to have different problems.

Each of our practice plans will have to emphasize regular practice designed to correct the problem(s) we have. This plan must include how we can get accurate feedback on how we are performing in practice.

No feedback.not much chance of improving the problem.

 

If it were easy, everyone would bench 400!

Making corrections to technique is difficult. Made more difficult because it takes time (weeks or months) to ingrain the changes in our routine execution.

Even then, the changes we work so hard to make may not stay in place without constant vigilance.

Being the best lifter you can be, or to be your best at anything, requires constant attention to the small details of performance.

Life is never a cakewalkand the weights never seem to get any lighter.

Lift Big!

Richard