At a recent workshop someone asked me a good question that got me thinking about this topic and this is one of those things where the specific example is important, but not nearly as important as the bigger picture.

The question was, how do you cue someone to deadlift who is maybe afraid of bending at the hips due to a back issue.

And the answer, my friend, is not to cue them at all.

We have this obsession with cueing in physical training, as if it’s the only way to get the outcome we’re looking for. “Push your knees out, spread the floor, break the bar” and so on.

But as good and useful and double plus good that cues can be, ultimately you are still using a cognitive tool to address something that’s not very cognitive at all.

Instead of cueing, a better approach is to simply change the environment so that the only outcome you can get is the one you’re looking for.

In our example if someone is afraid to deadlift, or even more pertinent they literally CAN’T bend enough to deadlift, then we create an environment where they CAN deadift. Maybe instead of a bar we use a single kettlebell, and instead of coming from the floor we elevate it so that it’s just a few inches below their hand, and instead of breaking completely at the hips as in an ideal deadlift we bend a bit more at the knees.

Is this not a deadlift? It is by my definition.

Can we not lower the kettelbell over the weeks and months? Can we not switch from one bell to two, from two bells to a bar?

Of course we can.

No cueing involved. Just changing the environment so that you can only get one outcome. There’s also no effort involved, by the way. Cueing can take a lot of time, a lot of effort, and only be moderately effect. Making changes like this is literally an instant fix.

To change the frame a little, think about this in terms of nutrition. Getting ourselves or someone else to make nutrition changes when decisions and choices are involved can be really hard.

But if I cleaned out your cupboards of junk and provided you with a chef that would prepare anything you wanted fresh from primary ingredients, don’t you think it would be pretty easy to only eat really good food?

Of course it would be.

Quit training to brain-wrestle when you can just change the environment.

Every time I go to the gym to lift, or on the occasions that I go to my other gym to use a treadmill for run workouts I notice something.

It seems like everyone is spending time lying on the floor or rubbing themselves against the wall doing various contortions in the name of stretching or foam rolling or soft tissue work or whatever.

And in talking to people it seems like everyone is complaining about an injury of some kind or another that is persistent and never seems to go away. Almost like what they’re doing is actually aggravating it.

Now I’m not saying this stuff doesn’t have any value because certainly in some cases it can be useful. I use two particular simple drills on the days I bench press that keep my right shoulder from getting cranky. But not for nothing I spend about 30 seconds total on this.

Maybe I am just an outlier, maybe I’m just lucky. Although it would seem that if I compare my gym clients and coaching clients to what I observe in other gyms maybe that isn’t the case.

But I don’t do any of this stuff, and I don’t have any persistent complaints. Besides the fact that it saves me a bunch of time, it’s nice that I don’t have all the complaints and pain issues!

I go to the gym, I get on the treadmill, I walk for a few steps and then I begin my run workout.

I go to the gym, I head to the squat rack, I start warming up with just the bar and I proceed from there.

So I don’t do what most people do before and after their workouts. But, I do perform my actual workout pretty differently from everyone else.

I use biofeedback to make sure the movements I’m doing are good for me.

I also don’t push past elements of excessive effort like extra tension, breathing pattern changes, or alignment shift.

I also generally keep my workouts relatively “easy” even when easy is sort of objectively hard.

I also use biofeedback to modify movements to make them work even better for me – to suit me perfectly.

Like I said, maybe this is is just an observation that doesn’t really mean anything and I’m an outlier.

Or maybe not. Maybe what I do differently makes a difference.