If you were (“lucky enough to be”) in one of my classes on Friday of last week, you were fortunate enough to hear my talk on three words. Three words that are a recipe for longevity, improvement and success with your training at 306.
They were “mechanics”, “consistency” and “intensity”.
I addressed them with each of my classes that day before we performed the benchmark workout “Helen”. Helen is a three rounds for time workout (400m run, 21 KBS, 12 pull up) that lended itself very nicely to the illustration I was trying to lay out with the mechanics, consistency and intensity speech. As they lended themselves to “Helen” that day, i talked about the three rounds. First round, focus on your mechanics. Move well and breathe well. Second round, repeat the same thing and focus on staying consistent with your movement patterns. Stay in check. On the third round when the world is closing in on you, its time for that intensity. Helen is designed to be a big power output workout and its certainly going to hurt.
Applying mechanics, consistency and mechanics in a broader sense every day is definitely our aim. They are listed in that order for a reason. But they can not be without one another if we want to see results. First one in the hierarchy is “mechanics”. This is first and foremost because we need to move properly, and therefore safely, if we want to continue to train. If we had no clue how to squat properly, it wouldn’t take too long to wreck yourself and now you cant train at all. There goes the improvements and we don’t need to worry about consistency or intensity because we cant move. Focusing first on mechanics means that we learn to move properly through full range of motion for our given exercise.
Next on the list is consistency. Once we have learned to move with proper mechanics, then we have to make sure we can repeat that. Over. And over. And over. Whether we are in our first rep or our last, we need to move with proper mechanics. This means consistency across the board. From foot movement on a burpee, to distance from the wall on a wall ball, to gripping the exact same width on a barbell. From the big to small, once these things are done correctly, they need to be done the same. Every time.
The last one to talk about on the list is “intensity”. Once we are moving well and we can repeat that movement pattern over and over, then we can start turning up the intensity. Intensity doesn’t need a whole lot of explanation. That’s the part we all love when at the end of a workout we are laying on the floor wondering why we just did that to ourselves and then what the workout tomorrow is going to be!
So here’s where it gets interesting. While those three keys to success are listed in priority sequence, if we are to see results, we need to have all three present. If we come in to the gym and move with 100% precision in everything we do, we will not ever get hurt and we can train forever. However, we are not going to see any results because we never broke a sweat. If we come into the gym and every rep looks different from the each other and we pay no mind to being able to duplicate our efforts, we are likely set up for injury and how are we to ever track if we are actually getting better if we don’t hold ourselves to some kind of consistent standard. Likewise, if we come in to the gym everyday and just sell our souls in the workout without mind of proper mechanics or any consistency, we aren’t going to be training for too long because our body will be trashed. While respecting the hierarchy, we need to have all three things present in our training to see results.
If you stop and think about yourself as an athlete in the gym, there shouldn’t be too much doubt in which area (or areas) you are lacking. Some of us really embrace the mechanics and consistency. There’s nothing wrong with that - in fact, its great. Some of us neglect those those things in order to just move faster or heavier loads. I respect that drive and determination a lot and love seeing the crazy effort as you go through the WOD. However, if we want to see real, sustainable results, we need to keep all three things in our training!
Mechanics. Consistency. Intensity.