by Sean St. Onge
In our recent “new world” of being socially distant, I thought of how hard it has been for some of us that are used to seeing many people in person to gauge their physical exercise and fitness progress on a day to day basis. Now we are relegated to more screen time via Zoom, Click Meeting, Zoho, Ring Central and more type apps to get our face to face time together.
Exercise is hard enough. To add another barrier of not having physical accountability could make things worse. Or, it could be a no excuse situation as work hours may have diminished leaving most with a lot of time on their hands. So a large “why not?” is in the cards. MOST people (“Normal humans” as they like to be called) dislike exercise. It is not even fully loved by those whom teach it. Some people usually enjoy being challenged or they are coaches that love the coaching aspect of exercise and excel at it. And let’s squash something real quick, despite popular belief, trainers and coaches are not some kind of odd hybrid of masochistic, crazy person for loving exercise. And the notion that we lay awake at night thinking of terrible exercises to have clients do with a maniacal laughter and twist of a mustache is extremely overblown. Coach Martin Rooney once said, “ANYONE CAN MAKE SOMEONE TIRED, not everyone can make someone better.”
When a coach or someone asks you to “give it your all” are you really? Or do you think that you are and you probably could have emptied the tank a little more? More often than not, giving everything you got may not be what is necessary but training to a specific level will provide a larger long term goal to pay off bigger results in the end. Not every session should leave you bleeding, crying, sweating, in the fetal position. Over training actually is a thing, you may not know many people that do this, but they are out there and they do it plenty.
Sorry folks there are people out there that actually DO enjoy exercise. Maybe they are the types that practice what they are good at. In some, not all cases there are people that train really hard and often, These people can push themselves and their bodies past what may be actually needed based on what their own personal goals are.
Then there are others that need that cattle prod into their sides to force them to get moving and keep going as they lack the whatever you want to list, desire, focus, etc., the means to get the desired effect and results.
Auto regulation is a major physiological regulatory process, whereby an increase in blood flow to an organ or tissue engenders vasoconstriction and a sustained increased vascular resistance [484,485]. From: Microcirculation, 2008
In layman’s terms, auto regulation is a means to individually determine what is really hard for you to accomplish and knowing when to stop or push further on. There are many determining factors to this and they can be found on a daily basis. To be clear though this is not “just going on feel” type of tool. For one to just go on feel allows the opportunity to just quit or stop when “not feeling up to it” and this can be an easy cop out not just physically, but mentally as well.
Reps in Reserve (RIR) is a way to help create stimulus to attain growth and provide a great training effect while not destroying the exerciser. It also allows a better idea of what is actually “hard” to accomplish, yet not unattainable.
Learning the concept of “auto regulation” in which you decree to yourself what is truly hard for you personally to accomplish is a basic way of your body telling you that before your mind creeps in. Your mindset can be strong like your body, but depending on how well you auto regulate yourself to your body, as the song goes “my mind be telling me no, but my body says yes…” is switched in this particular instance.
They are obviously often linked, your brain maybe quitting early on a specific drill it knows your body dislikes because of the learned pattern. Something like a large set of lunges leads to a lot of sore muscles the next day and day after. Because of that learned pattern of knowing the outcome, your brain will tell you to stop earlier due to the result when, in fact, your body could actually do more. But at what cost? Could you do more? Should you do more?
Over training isn’t, sadly, as big an issue to many exercisers and gyms yet it definitely happens. People that excel at certain things tend to gravitate back to those successes and tend to not practice what is needed. The difficult things are what we tend to lay off of. I, myself, know I need and should practice more long term cardiovascular drills yet I practice what I tend to be better at. This is where the concept of providing that auto regulation comes in handy to provide a better training stimulus.
My strength coach is Greg Robins. He and I connect remotely via the internet on a weekly basis and we connect with videos and emails traded back and forth so he can monitor from a far my progress (or lack there of). I was immediately finding myself impressed by him as we had met briefly at coaching seminars and passings at the gym. It was at our mutual friends’ wedding we were pitted at the same table. It was there in such a setting we thought it be best to not “talk shop” on such an occasion, but the one big detail we did speak on was “why we pay others to do our coaching.”
What stuck with me was his reply…”I have other people coach me so I can just climb into their minds for a while and reach a different point of view.” I too have loved the idea of getting inside the mind of another coach and see what it was they saw and how they pushed the verbal buttons to illicit the desired responses.
It was from this point of view to change my vantage point for seeing what I lacked in my training to have someone else point out and challenge me. I have been getting coaching from Greg for the better part of 3.5 years. But, when I cannot see him in person, there has to be a large amount of honesty, and effort on both our parts. If I am not being honest with how difficult or simple something is, this would hinder my progress going forward. He constantly adjusts for me and always provides a great feedback. Relearning auto regulation for myself has been very challenging and also humbling. But most of all, it has helped me carve out better tools for clients I get to work with and provide better feedback as to what is truly hard for each individual.
Every training session, everyday, and every week is going to be different in and out of the gym. This is why Reps in Reserve can be a better tool to assess your own auto regulation. It can be utilized to decree your strength, hypertrophy, power and stamina all based on how you and your coach set your goals. For example, if you are trying to build strength in your squat motions, you would want to be leaving anywhere from 2 to 3 Reps in Reserve.
Performing as many reps as possible (AMRAP) is a great way to really find your 0 Reps in Reserve. It can be a lot of fun in the sense that you, on certain days, will feel able to blast out 15-20 reps.
Auto regulation is different to every person, every day, every session. The key piece is how the individual handles it. Sore muscles can be milled out with soft tissue release and massage. Bruised egos can be mended after creating successes, be it large or small, after a perceived failure. Mental blocks can be hurdled by doing something despite lack of length, weight, duration, or distance as long as the individual can “muster the rohirrim” to do something to better themselves. There is art on the other side of that spectrum too. Doing or “planning” a day of rest and recovery with maybe a quality stretching session, a yin yoga class, long meditation, long walk or a massage therapy session can provide a large benefit.
The biggest question we face when we ask ourselves “Am I doing enough?” the bigger answer is usually the first one from your body. Sadly, our mind tends to provide roadblocks. So, continue to listen to your body and make the appropriate individualized choices, but make sure when you have that inner voice resting on your shoulder telling you otherwise, check beside you for a coach that will provide a better answer.
SOAP BOX OUT…