Training Principles

•   Never miss a rep. Donnie Thompson was the first person to tell me this. He was the first person to total 3,000lbs in Powerlifting. Dave Hoff is the only person to lift more weight. He was the second person to tell me this. 

• Start Low. Master your movements and numbers will come. Chase numbers and injuries and frustration will come.
• Leave some in the tank. Always end on a positive and have something to build on for the next session. 
• Build your foundation (and never lose it). We never become too advanced to forget about the exercises that built our fundamental fitness. Always keep things like push ups, pull ups, planks, and jumps in your tool box. 
• Keep body fat in check. All of life is easier and performance will be better. Trust me.
  • Progress slow. Progressing too fast leads to stagnation and injuries. Make consistent progress forever. The longer time frame you give yourself to have success the happier you’ll be with training.                          
  • Variety is a distraction from progress. People need less variety than they think and when everything changes constantly nothing is progressed. 
  • Train Balanced. Most programs train the front side of the body well from the torso up. You can make a lot of progress and avoid injuries by training your back side every session.                                                    
  • Serve one master. Have one goal in mind and pursue it with full intent. Don’t seek max strength, weight loss, and muscle growth at the same time. Creating change in your body is hard, asking it to change several things at once is impossible.                                                                                       
  • Train your Heart. It’s easy to overlook the fact that your heart is a muscle. The more efficient your heart is, the better your endurance and recovery is. Adding 10 minutes of something each session to get your heart rate up will add major benefits to your training and life. 

This list could change as time goes on, but most of these have made up the bulk of programs I’ve created over time and the others were wise words from lifters much better than I ever was that I didn’t take to heart when I should have. The journey with iron has taught me a valuable lesson. If there are people much better than you, that have done the things you hope to accomplish and they say similar things then it’s time to put all ego aside and apply the words. When it’s our personal journey, the scope becomes too narrow and we can only see what we give attention to. Those with more experience are able to see the things that we don’t know about yet. 

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