Just Do It

Those who know us know that here at GMAAC, we *thrive* on competition.  Competition, and the success we enjoy, however, is not the 'end.'  It is the 'means' by which we keep moving ourselves forward on the journey, which is more important than the destination.  Competition, for us, is about accountability.  It provides metrics that tell you what you need to do to improve, and it is what gets you up at 0430 to train when you might otherwise sleep in. 

The philosophy portion of the lecture now over, it can't be denied that despite the fact competition is a training tool for us, we like to do our fair share of winning.  The reason that this seems to inspire comment from others is that we win in a wide variety of sports, many of which don't have a lot of overlap when it comes to skills or necessary attributes.  We have had a GMAAC coach medal in his LWC meet and place top-10 in a 900+ participant duathlon in the same season.  This year we had a GMAAC coach win gold at tournaments/meets in boxing, kettlebell sport, and armwrestling.

How do we do it?  We 'just do it,' that's how...  You have heard us say before that SPECIFICITY is KING.  This applies on all levels.  That is, when there is a boxing tournament coming up you need to do more boxing.  When you are skewing your training for boxing, you need to do more actual boxing.  Huh?  This is only to say that you need to spar as much as possible, and when you can't do that you should at least hit a double-end bag or do some quality mitt work.  Standing in one place hitting a heavy bag, or jogging, just don't cut the mustard.  Make your training specific, and therefore efficient. 

Similarly, when it comes to armwrestling we try to get to the table.  When you are NOT on the table, however, don't follow the madding crown and sit on the end of the bench to do wrist curls, or use hammer preacher curls as the base of your routine; set up some bands and simulate pulling, and do some heavy ISOs using your body weight where you are hanging from a suspension system with your arm in an AW pulling position.  Check out some Devon Larratt videos on YouTube and do an ISO "curl-hook" leaning over an incline bench...

The point here is that when training for sports, even our strength and conditioning work is sports-specific, and is programmed based on the actual sport needs, and not some ex-bodybuilder's (or even worse, physical therapist's) 'strength and conditioning template.'

John Brzenk said it best in a response to a guy assailing him about how Brzenk could possibly be such a dominant armwrestler when he doesn't train that heavy, doesn't deadlift at all, and didn't even know what the farmer's walk was.  Brzenk replied to this line of criticism as follows: "If you want to be great at basketball, play basketball; if you want to be great at tennis, go play a lot of tennis; if you want to be a great armwrestler you need to get to the table, a lot.  So, I don't know how much I can or could bench, because I take the majority of my 'max lifts' at the armwrestling table."

Seems self-evident, but, when you get down to brass tacks, there are few coaches and athletes who couldn't use at least a little more specific, *targeted*, training.  If you *have* a sport, *focus* on that sport.  Until next time...