A bit long but a great article from Dan John on making progress.
Rolling Averages
One of the most difficult things to deal with as a coach is this nearly universal perception of linear progression. Today, I do one, tomorrow two, and by the end of the year, I do 365. In ten years, well, I do a lot. It’s progress like a stairway to heaven (that could be a song). Every day, in every way, we take one more glorious step up. If you bench one hundred pounds today and merely add ten pounds a week, in a year I will be spotting your 465-pound effort.
It’s the Loch Ness Monster of training. Nessie, like all flirts, has lots of sightings and not a lot of proof. Part of the reason that I struggle with this as a coach is that I am NOT immune to this disease.
In the middle of my Easy Strength for Fat Loss experiment, I weighed in just under 230 pounds. I had broken another barrier, another wall. I was looking down the road about six weeks to being ripped, shredded, and wasp-waisted. I then went to a wedding. I flew out, stayed in hotels, went to the rehearsal party, celebrated, ate everything, and came home in First Class.
On my daily weigh in, the sky fell down upon me. Devasted, I noted that the scale had gone in the wrong direction.
Gosh, I wonder what happened?
Now, logically, we all know that weddings, hotels, and travel magically add weight on the scale. It couldn’t be the extra calories, lousy nights of sleep, nor all the salt on most travel foods. No, sorry: magic.
There is a wonderful end to this story. In just a few days, I was not just under 230 pounds but well under it.
Most strength programs tend to ignore this truth: life is rarely linear. True, there are places on the planet where the climate never changes and good luck buying a place there on the cheap. San Diego and the North Pole are both oddly expensive places to buy a home.
The fitness forums were abuzz a few years ago with the Engineer’s Diet. Simply, an engineer (what a clever title for a diet), made a spreadsheet and decided to have a linear weight loss. The genius behind this particular linear approach is that the author decided that if he lost weight too quickly, like a massive drop on the scale in a week, he would ease up on the diet and exercise and get back to the line on the chart.
The missing secret here is that the engineer allowed himself a lot of time to bring that weight down. If you choose, wisely I would argue, to lose a pound a month for four years, those daily weigh ins will be very uninformative. Still, a 48 pound drop in bodyweight is not only impressive but it will probably stay with you.
My fat loss mentor, Clarence Bass, argues the same basic idea: lose weight slowly and KEEP it off. I will discuss Bass in depth throughout this work as I enjoy his insights on body compositions. He once dialed himself into contest condition by eliminating ONE piece of bread each day.
So, what’s my point?
It’s simply this: linear periodization has the same issues in strength improvement as with fat loss. Things happen. Not every day will inspire poets to describe your training. Life kicks me in the pants sometimes and the last thing I want to do is whip a personal record over my head.
I know this. Of course, I don’t accept it. On my bad days in the gym, I tell my community that “Obviously, I don’t know who I am.” You see, I, the great ME, should never retreat.
My throwers have the same issue. I coached one young lady to improve all the way up to conference champion in basically a year. We added fifty percent to her throw in a year (we are talking about an amazing improvement here) and the entire coaching staff and university applauded her efforts.
The following week, in a training session after a rainstorm with slick conditions, she was struggling. She complained about how she is just not getting better.
A fifty percent improvement in one year and “I’m just not getting better.”
Seriously, I need to convince YOU that we all have this issue. Time is an odd thing. There is a cliché that goes something like this: we exaggerate what we can do in one day and underestimate what we can do in a year. I always tell people that there is no one more vigilant and dedicated than a dieter on the first day of the diet.
Day two is the last day for most people.
Strength improvement, like bodyweight or bodyfat decrease, tends to wave in odd little patterns. There is a wonderful scene in The Jerk that explains time better than my ramblings.
I know we’ve only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days. And the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day, and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half. I have it written down, but I can show it to you tomorrow if you want to see it.
Steve Martin’s character, Navin R. Johnson, is telling this to his sleeping girlfriend. I found out later that the actor, Bernadette Peters, didn’t know that Martin was going off on this riff and had to pretend to be asleep. How she didn’t laugh is truly fine acting.
Certainly, I might have just included Navin’s soliloquy because I just simply enjoy it. For those of training, there is another truth here:
Sometimes, 100 (kilograms or pounds, it doesn’t matter) feels like 110. Other times, it feels like 90…or 80…or whatever. In 1976, Dick Notmeyer, my lifting coach, went up to the Montreal Olympics. My dad took me to the Sports Palace on Saturday to get my workout so I could stay on track.
My personal record in the Clean and Jerk when I arrived was 270. Since the bars at the SP were kilograms, I started lifting. Dad said I looked good and easily cleaned 271 for a new P.R. Dad said: “Go up.” I took 282. I nailed it. I took 292. Boom. Dan Curiel walked over and looked at the bar and asked if I was deadlifting.
No. Clean and jerks!
I cleaned 303, stood up and made the jerk. I improved 33 pounds, or 15 kilos, in one day, one workout.
So, guess what I thought?
Absolutely. You know what I thought. You know.
I was convinced I would jerk over 400 in just a few more workouts. I was wrong. True, I had broken through the physical and mental barriers that one needs to overcome at eighteen years of age, and this set me on the path to becoming a Division One thrower. If the lifting standards for throwers are true, I was strong enough for international marks.
Years later, as a coach, I charted out with my journals and diaries, my Olympic lifts and discus throw. If you stand way back, using a year-to-year approach, it IS linear. I got better in the discus and put more plates on the bar.
But, if you slide closer to the month to month, or the infuriating slow progress of week to week, I can show you the ups and downs of the realities of improvement.
I keep joking that weight loss is easy, I will just cut off your leg. I can improve your bench press max instantly by deadlifting the weight off your chest as you flail. Others have taken all varieties of pills and potions for temporary improvements but, long-term, many of these options stall and fail. We have two points: one is a solution and the other offers some insights.
There is a concept called Rolling Averages, often it is referred to as “Moving Averages,” that allows us to see fluctuations and variations. The easiest way, of course, is simply to step back and look at the changes with more time. You might see no improvement in a day, for example, but massive improvements in a decade.
Think about what you read at age five versus fifteen. I enjoy rereading books for the sheer pleasure of seeing the fluctuations in my life and learning impacting my appreciation of the book. The book didn’t change, I did.
My most common reaction is “how did I miss that?” David Denby’s wonderful book, Great Books, discusses how different a college frosh reads a text vis-à-vis one’s older self. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is radically different after one has a child.
Here is the solution: step back and look at your progress from a wider perspective, a higher altitude. I have actually learned to embrace the bad training days and awful morning weigh ins as an indicator that I’m still on the right track. Certainly, cut back on the cardboard carbs for a day and maybe add an additional walk, but don’t lose one’s mind.
With Easy Strength, I want you to trend upward. Now, please, be careful. Let’s look at the second point.
There is an additional issue. The issue comes back to the great question we always pose in Economics class:
“There is a sale going on for ten pounds for a dollar. How much should I buy?”
Some will answer: “Wow! As much as you can!” I wouldn’t take financial advice from this person. The correct response is:
“What is it that they are selling?” What’s the “what?”
When I first work with some clients, they lose up to five to ten pounds literally within the first few days. It’s truly inspiring.
You need more information. These are the clients that weigh more than 300-350 pounds. Increasing water intake, going for a daily walk, and seeing a doctor, a dentist, and an eye doctor have immediate impact.
I don’t walk up to a contest ready physique athlete and tell them the secret for going from five percent bodyfat to four percent is by having a glass of water.
Hey! You KNOW that! That’s not how things work. We all know that.
We all do.
This is the reason I ignore most studies on lifting. Honestly, if you take untrained people and have them lift weights, they improve. If this same protocol adds kilos or pounds to an elite lifter, someone clean and jerking 550 and this idea gets them to 600 in six weeks, I’m going to pay attention.
I tell my athletes at the university that when they do well, I get a raise. They double my pay. When they realize I am a volunteer (in case you miss the point: I coach for free), they laugh.
If your business doubles, good for you. If your lemonade stand made one-dollar last year and two dollars this year, that’s great. I won’t buy your business book or subscribe to your weekly business insights newsletter, but that’s great.
If your multi-billion dollar business doubles because of whatever, I’m going to be the King of Whatever!!!
So, good for you with doubling your lifts. When you go online or look for books on training, remember this simple truth about “what” they are selling.
The best and the brightest take years, decades, to become the best and the brightest.
Follow that truth.
Rolling Averages
One of the most difficult things to deal with as a coach is this nearly universal perception of linear progression. Today, I do one, tomorrow two, and by the end of the year, I do 365. In ten years, well, I do a lot. It’s progress like a stairway to heaven (that could be a song). Every day, in every way, we take one more glorious step up. If you bench one hundred pounds today and merely add ten pounds a week, in a year I will be spotting your 465-pound effort.
It’s the Loch Ness Monster of training. Nessie, like all flirts, has lots of sightings and not a lot of proof. Part of the reason that I struggle with this as a coach is that I am NOT immune to this disease.
In the middle of my Easy Strength for Fat Loss experiment, I weighed in just under 230 pounds. I had broken another barrier, another wall. I was looking down the road about six weeks to being ripped, shredded, and wasp-waisted. I then went to a wedding. I flew out, stayed in hotels, went to the rehearsal party, celebrated, ate everything, and came home in First Class.
On my daily weigh in, the sky fell down upon me. Devasted, I noted that the scale had gone in the wrong direction.
Gosh, I wonder what happened?
Now, logically, we all know that weddings, hotels, and travel magically add weight on the scale. It couldn’t be the extra calories, lousy nights of sleep, nor all the salt on most travel foods. No, sorry: magic.
There is a wonderful end to this story. In just a few days, I was not just under 230 pounds but well under it.
Most strength programs tend to ignore this truth: life is rarely linear. True, there are places on the planet where the climate never changes and good luck buying a place there on the cheap. San Diego and the North Pole are both oddly expensive places to buy a home.
The fitness forums were abuzz a few years ago with the Engineer’s Diet. Simply, an engineer (what a clever title for a diet), made a spreadsheet and decided to have a linear weight loss. The genius behind this particular linear approach is that the author decided that if he lost weight too quickly, like a massive drop on the scale in a week, he would ease up on the diet and exercise and get back to the line on the chart.
The missing secret here is that the engineer allowed himself a lot of time to bring that weight down. If you choose, wisely I would argue, to lose a pound a month for four years, those daily weigh ins will be very uninformative. Still, a 48 pound drop in bodyweight is not only impressive but it will probably stay with you.
My fat loss mentor, Clarence Bass, argues the same basic idea: lose weight slowly and KEEP it off. I will discuss Bass in depth throughout this work as I enjoy his insights on body compositions. He once dialed himself into contest condition by eliminating ONE piece of bread each day.
So, what’s my point?
It’s simply this: linear periodization has the same issues in strength improvement as with fat loss. Things happen. Not every day will inspire poets to describe your training. Life kicks me in the pants sometimes and the last thing I want to do is whip a personal record over my head.
I know this. Of course, I don’t accept it. On my bad days in the gym, I tell my community that “Obviously, I don’t know who I am.” You see, I, the great ME, should never retreat.
My throwers have the same issue. I coached one young lady to improve all the way up to conference champion in basically a year. We added fifty percent to her throw in a year (we are talking about an amazing improvement here) and the entire coaching staff and university applauded her efforts.
The following week, in a training session after a rainstorm with slick conditions, she was struggling. She complained about how she is just not getting better.
A fifty percent improvement in one year and “I’m just not getting better.”
Seriously, I need to convince YOU that we all have this issue. Time is an odd thing. There is a cliché that goes something like this: we exaggerate what we can do in one day and underestimate what we can do in a year. I always tell people that there is no one more vigilant and dedicated than a dieter on the first day of the diet.
Day two is the last day for most people.
Strength improvement, like bodyweight or bodyfat decrease, tends to wave in odd little patterns. There is a wonderful scene in The Jerk that explains time better than my ramblings.
I know we’ve only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days. And the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day, and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half. I have it written down, but I can show it to you tomorrow if you want to see it.
Steve Martin’s character, Navin R. Johnson, is telling this to his sleeping girlfriend. I found out later that the actor, Bernadette Peters, didn’t know that Martin was going off on this riff and had to pretend to be asleep. How she didn’t laugh is truly fine acting.
Certainly, I might have just included Navin’s soliloquy because I just simply enjoy it. For those of training, there is another truth here:
Sometimes, 100 (kilograms or pounds, it doesn’t matter) feels like 110. Other times, it feels like 90…or 80…or whatever. In 1976, Dick Notmeyer, my lifting coach, went up to the Montreal Olympics. My dad took me to the Sports Palace on Saturday to get my workout so I could stay on track.
My personal record in the Clean and Jerk when I arrived was 270. Since the bars at the SP were kilograms, I started lifting. Dad said I looked good and easily cleaned 271 for a new P.R. Dad said: “Go up.” I took 282. I nailed it. I took 292. Boom. Dan Curiel walked over and looked at the bar and asked if I was deadlifting.
No. Clean and jerks!
I cleaned 303, stood up and made the jerk. I improved 33 pounds, or 15 kilos, in one day, one workout.
So, guess what I thought?
Absolutely. You know what I thought. You know.
I was convinced I would jerk over 400 in just a few more workouts. I was wrong. True, I had broken through the physical and mental barriers that one needs to overcome at eighteen years of age, and this set me on the path to becoming a Division One thrower. If the lifting standards for throwers are true, I was strong enough for international marks.
Years later, as a coach, I charted out with my journals and diaries, my Olympic lifts and discus throw. If you stand way back, using a year-to-year approach, it IS linear. I got better in the discus and put more plates on the bar.
But, if you slide closer to the month to month, or the infuriating slow progress of week to week, I can show you the ups and downs of the realities of improvement.
I keep joking that weight loss is easy, I will just cut off your leg. I can improve your bench press max instantly by deadlifting the weight off your chest as you flail. Others have taken all varieties of pills and potions for temporary improvements but, long-term, many of these options stall and fail. We have two points: one is a solution and the other offers some insights.
There is a concept called Rolling Averages, often it is referred to as “Moving Averages,” that allows us to see fluctuations and variations. The easiest way, of course, is simply to step back and look at the changes with more time. You might see no improvement in a day, for example, but massive improvements in a decade.
Think about what you read at age five versus fifteen. I enjoy rereading books for the sheer pleasure of seeing the fluctuations in my life and learning impacting my appreciation of the book. The book didn’t change, I did.
My most common reaction is “how did I miss that?” David Denby’s wonderful book, Great Books, discusses how different a college frosh reads a text vis-à-vis one’s older self. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is radically different after one has a child.
Here is the solution: step back and look at your progress from a wider perspective, a higher altitude. I have actually learned to embrace the bad training days and awful morning weigh ins as an indicator that I’m still on the right track. Certainly, cut back on the cardboard carbs for a day and maybe add an additional walk, but don’t lose one’s mind.
With Easy Strength, I want you to trend upward. Now, please, be careful. Let’s look at the second point.
There is an additional issue. The issue comes back to the great question we always pose in Economics class:
“There is a sale going on for ten pounds for a dollar. How much should I buy?”
Some will answer: “Wow! As much as you can!” I wouldn’t take financial advice from this person. The correct response is:
“What is it that they are selling?” What’s the “what?”
When I first work with some clients, they lose up to five to ten pounds literally within the first few days. It’s truly inspiring.
You need more information. These are the clients that weigh more than 300-350 pounds. Increasing water intake, going for a daily walk, and seeing a doctor, a dentist, and an eye doctor have immediate impact.
I don’t walk up to a contest ready physique athlete and tell them the secret for going from five percent bodyfat to four percent is by having a glass of water.
Hey! You KNOW that! That’s not how things work. We all know that.
We all do.
This is the reason I ignore most studies on lifting. Honestly, if you take untrained people and have them lift weights, they improve. If this same protocol adds kilos or pounds to an elite lifter, someone clean and jerking 550 and this idea gets them to 600 in six weeks, I’m going to pay attention.
I tell my athletes at the university that when they do well, I get a raise. They double my pay. When they realize I am a volunteer (in case you miss the point: I coach for free), they laugh.
If your business doubles, good for you. If your lemonade stand made one-dollar last year and two dollars this year, that’s great. I won’t buy your business book or subscribe to your weekly business insights newsletter, but that’s great.
If your multi-billion dollar business doubles because of whatever, I’m going to be the King of Whatever!!!
So, good for you with doubling your lifts. When you go online or look for books on training, remember this simple truth about “what” they are selling.
The best and the brightest take years, decades, to become the best and the brightest.
Follow that truth.
