How to improve.

Arnold in perhaps the best arm shot ever. He was the King of improvement and proper training planning.

Being an competitive athlete for so long really spoiled me in some senses.Training was always coupled with competitions where progress, or the lack of it, was immediately apparent. One knew pretty regularly if one's training, and the plan behind it, was working or not.There really was no training without a purpose,without a goal and a deadline.This made things much easier in many ways. It's easier to get somewhere if you know where you are going and when you have to be there.

Now that I am retired from competition training is much more difficult in many ways as there is much more of an opportunity to just "float" during workouts and do what feels good that day.Of course, in my book ,this is not training but exercising, as training always has a goal in mind. No matter how small or how far off it's really not training to me if there is no real goal.Deadlines, as in competitions make it even easier as there is nothing like looming competition platforms with witnesses and spectators to get one in the gym and doing what one should be doing.

Powerlifting was by far the most direct of these sports as when one is training for such you usually start from the meet day and work backwards. You also start with what your last personal best was and plan for a small but reasonably improvement to that.

The idea that one is going to make huge gains on a regular basis is quickly quelled by the realities of heavy iron and vagaries of real competitions on someone elses time schedule. So it's shooting for small personal bests after a period of specific training for such.Adding up those small personal bests over a regular period of time and lifters realize huge gains to their totals can be had with steady and serious dedication to small improvements.

So how does one improve?

The most important concept to any and all improvement is the idea of the S.A.I.D principle or Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands.This basic principle simply says you get what you train for; what you Specifically train for.And while there might be some carryover from your squat to your deadlift or from your running to your cycling the bottom line is :specificity rules.

That's why the best cyclist in the world, Lance Armstrong, ran a very mediocre marathon despite legs of steel and an oxygen uptake that is perhaps the highest in the world.So you have to train for what you want. And while you can have it all( perhaps) you cannot have it all similtaneously.Of course ,many are happy being decent at a lot of things but not great in any and that's fine. But many need to really bust their butts just to be mediocre at ONE thing.

Which brings us to the next important concept for improving: Overload. You simply must ask the body to do more than it did the last time or it simply will not get better. Form follows function. Change what the body is capable of doing( function) and it's form will change. And conversely if you are capable of doing 'X' amount of work and regularly do 'X-10' in your workout you will NOT improve but slowly lose ability.

This is the basis of Hans Seyles General Theory of Adaptation which is where S.A.I.D comes from.

Take a ten horsepower body and give it a twelve horsepower load and, after it adapts from the stress of the load, it BECOMES a twelve horsepower body. So the training is a stress,a negative actually, which depletes certain( specific) substances signally the body to restore them, to rebuild them bigger and stronger so the same stress will not deplete the body the next time.

Of course if you give that ten HP body a twenty HP load you just break it.SO the overload has to be appropriate. Just enough stimulates, too much, annihilates or if it's not specific enough of an overload just misses the mark entirely.

So you have a specific overload which is targeting a specific quality one wants to improve.This is intensity. The training stress is a negative which depletes the body from which it must RECOVER from. Repeated overload just tears down the body,even if it's the correct target area that is hit.Too much intensity or too much intensity too often or just too much work in total can just break one down so much they can't get back up. Much less improve capacity from it.So recovery is also a key component to progress.

In fact, it is THE key component to progress because you can only get as good as the load you are capable of handling. Say you want to be a 600 pound squatter. That means you must be capable of handling 70-85% loads in the gym.70% of 600 is 420 lbs.To be able to do regular workouts with 420 to 510 lbs is no joke and puts mucho stress not just on the muscles and tendons but the CNS and the system as a whole.Trying to squat those loads in addition to other sports and activities will be too much for everyone but the most gifted athletes to recover from.

This is is why you don't see top level lifters also competing in other sports or vice versa. Specificity rules and recovery tops everything.And it doesnt matter if the goal is a 5 minute mile instead of a big squat. Or 200 snatches or whatever.The closer one gets to the bodies absolute limits the much tougher the stress is on it.A 600 pound squat is not just 300 pounds harder than 300. It's exponentially harder.Same with a 48 second 400 meters. Not in the same galaxy as 58 seconds, as hard as that may be to many. And the system can only take so much.

This is why taking your recovery seriously is CRITICAL to all who aspire to improvement at any level.The intensity changes as you go up the ladder but the rules apply across the board.

Active recovery methods range from simple rest( WAAAAAY overlooked) to massage( both professional and by yourself),nutrition, water therapy, visualization techniques, meditation,active rest( light training)vibration therapy,stretching,etc.

This is also why so many elite athletes choose to use anabolic and androgenic steroids,perhaps the most efficient recovery agent outs there. And why so many try to find and use legal versions of anabolics(supplements) to accomplish the same results but within legal parameters. You can only get better if you can handle more and heavier workloads. And you can only handle those loads that you can recover from and adapt to.

It may seem that all this only applies to hard training elites but that is not the case. The regular person training for basic improvement in strength, endurance or any other physical quality has to play by the same rules.Whether you are limited in your exercise selection( as I am) or can do it all you must use the same concepts.When I push my swing or snatch workloads up I am doing so because I know if I don't try to do more than I was capable the last time I won't get better.ANd the more I adapt the more I will have to do in the future.
Of course there are diminishing returns but that can only be decided by the trainee themselves. Having done 600 swings with the 24 kg I know I don't want to do more if it means training longer, so I will now try to overload by doing the same work in less time.Over the course of a training cycle of course. I know I am adapting because it wasnt long ago that half that workload would make my legs sore the next day. Now I can do double what I used to and have no soreness the next day. Adaptation. One critical key to progess.

But the real key is KNOWING that whatever you are doing you MUST make yourself do more in some way shape or form in order to create the next level of adaptation. To MAKE yourself what you want to be. What you choose to be.SO that means having a plan of where you are going, knowing what you did last so you can scale the increase appropriately( whether that means more sets,reps, weight or a faster workout) and developing the will to make yourself do it.
That last part is no mean feat and everybit as important as anything else you will train.Because when it all comes down to it, it's that little battle between the weak you and the you that wants to be stronger that is the first overload. Choose wrong and you will get weaker and less; choose correctly and you at least have a chance of being better.

And preparing for those workouts is vital. If you go into the gym not knowing what you did last workout, or what the plan is for this workout there is a very good chance you wont do enough to stimulate a real adaptation or you will overshoot and do too much.One must take lots of variables into consideration during the workout in order to ensure safety as well as overload but if you plan correctly most workouts can be accomplished and get you that closer to your goals.
Assuming you have some.