Today I did a 20 rep back squat.
Yes I know I’m a nerd and was thinking about this blog while I was doing the 20 rep back squat. Honestly, anything to get my mind off of the task at hand, but I digress…
If you don’t know what a 20 rep back squat is, it’s where you put a weight on your back and squat it 20 times. Ideally, it’s a weight that you can not do 21 times, so the last one takes everything you got to get it up.
When you start it’s easy. The weight you use is much much lighter than what you’re used to squatting with for heavy sets of 5 reps, so you bang out the first couple. This is alot like anything worth while in life, even training…
When you start it’s easy because it’s fun. Seth Godin in his book, The Dip, calls this the downhill or downward slope. It’s fun, it’s engaging and it’s new, so it’s easy to keep going. This is true with a 20 rep back squat and it’s true with anything worthwhile in life, especially a new endeavor.
But, as you get going the weight begins to bear down on you. You see, the cumulative effect compounds on itself and it starts to become difficult. The same thing happens in life, we start going down hill, we gain momentum, and then we hit the dip.
This for me usually happens around rep 8. That means I have 12 more to go. Everything in my brain starts saying, ‘Just quit, you’re not even halfway there yet. It’ll be easy, just put the bar down. This hurts, you don’t want to do this anymore.’ When we hit the dip in life, things get hard, we lose a bit of momentum and we have to make a choice.
In squats and in life, you have to choose….. quit, or dig in, grit it out and keep going.
In squats, I usually gut it out and have some sort of mental talk like, ‘3 more and your in single digits. You’ve got this.’ In life, I try to remember why I started it in the first place. I try to evaluate whether it’s worth it to keep going.
For life, Seth Godin describes it as a choice between whether this is a cul-de-sac for you, or just a dip where you need to go back up hill. If it’s a cul-de-sac or dead end, it may be worth it to quit. If it’s a dip followed by a hill anything worth while will be worth it to dig in and keep going.
So the next time you have a 20 rep back squat, or something hard in life, make a decision on what you’re going to do. If you decide to gut it out, it may suck while you’re doing it….. you may want to puke…. you may want to cuss….. you may want to give up…. you may have to give yourself some awesome pep talks…. and you may even have to sit down when it’s over,
But for sure WHEN you gut it out, it’ll be worth the effort.
June 16th, 2015 WOD
Strength:
Tall Cleans
Clean Pull
Met Con:
1K row
800m run
2 rounds for time
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