Practice Like a Pro: Work on the Small Details of Performance

If you have been competing in powerlifting for a long time or playing another sport that requires precision movement, you will find that it is usually the small details needed for peak performance that erode imperceptibly.

Tiny errors creep into your lifts that begin with a brief lapse in attention.

Then they stick around just under your attention threshold.

This happens to all high-level performers. There is a reason that major league baseball teams have batting coaches.

All big leaguers know how to hit.

The coach is there to find and correct the little flaws that fly in under the radar.

 

Being your own coach

Since most of us dont have a knowledgeable coach available all the time, we can do our regular workouts in a manner that reduces the number of little errors we make.

Treat your workouts as if they were practice in the same vein as a professional musician or athlete.

A key part of practice is doing things that work to prevent errors from creeping into your performance and doing drills that correct inadvertent mistakes.

 

Practice Plan

Step one would be to do a personal diagnostic scan on what you believe are the precision movement problems you must address.

A video of your lift (squat, bench press or deadlift) from a 2 or 3 different angles is valuable to see what you are actually doing versus what you believe you are doing.

On each of the lifts you video, make notes on how you feel in each part of the lift.

The key to making improvements will be your ability to relate your internal muscular sensations to making small adjustments in your movements.

Making the link between your internal control system and your ability to make small adjustments is how you can improve your technique.

You then devise a plan to use practice time to correct your small movements.

 

Work sets are practice sets

The most critical factor in producing maximum force in a powerlift is how you control your muscles under the skin.

This takes place out of sight.

However, you are the only one who knows what it feels like to you.

The video will show what you are actually doing. Your notes on how it feels will give you a clue what you must do to correct the problem.

Use a light weight (or empty bar) to adjust your movement so that you have eliminated your errors.

At this point do multiple single reps to get a sense of how the correct movement feels.

When doing your heavy work sets ensure that you also practice the feel of a perfectly executed movement.

If you ignore this practice opportunity, you will essentially practice your mistakesand perhaps perfect them.

 

Mental Rehearsal

Because of this, you must create your own personal mental checklist for how you execute a perfect lift and what you feel when doing it.

When you have done this, it is possible to do mental rehearsal of your procedure. Old time strong men used to practice the mental muscle mobilization while sitting in a chair.

At minimum, you should create a personal mental checklist that you activate any time you do one of the power lifts.

This is your script to do the best lift possible for you.

 

Data and Feedback

Linking your physical and mental training can be a major force for improvement.

Thus, I always advise keeping a detailed notebook of your workouts and how things feel as you do the work.

This is definitely not a common practice. However, I believe you will find it very useful as you progress in your lifting career.

Without a good record of your work AND how if feels internally, it is impossible to get the most out of your training.

Lift Big!

Richard