I don’t have a smart and allegorical or snarky and funny introduction for this piece, and I’m certainly not going to win a Pulitzer prize for it, but this topic has come up enough times to address it.

Every so often someone emails me or comments on the blog that I’m using the term “biofeedback” incorrectly. According to their experience, biofeedback is where you use a device (amusingly, some people have also asked how much the device costs to do the kind of training I advocate) that monitors some combination of heart rate, skin conductance, brain waves, or other physiological markers, and then make a continuous effort to manipulate those markers. What I recommend as a biofeedback-testing approach to training doesn’t use any of this hardware.

An example application of the traditional approach is the emwave system and protocol, which involves monitoring heart rate and attempting to bring conscious control over your heart rate to lower it and “smooth” it out or bring it into “coherence,” in their terminology.

I’m not going to discuss the efficacy or specific applications of these forms of biofeedback because it’s not my area of expertise.

Let’s instead unpack my version of the definition and the structure of the underlying approach to understand what it means.

The Wikipedia definition of biofeedback describes it as “is the process of gaining greater awareness of many physiological functions primarily using instruments that provide information on the activity of those same systems, with a goal of being able to manipulate them at will.” So, you’ve got a stimulus and a concomitant response, some way to gain awareness and quantify the response, and an attempt to manipulate it. Visually, it’s like this:

Can we fit biofeedback training (as I use the term) into that model?

Lo and behold, biofeedback training fits perfectly into the existing biofeedback training. You’re using range of motion (ROM) to gain insight into the physiological response to a specific movement and using that information to inform your next decision.

Besides just being a bit blinkered by their previous experience, I think folks who are confused by the use of the term biofeedback are missing an important point.

For example, when biofeedback is used clinically as a stress relief or relaxation technique the explicit goal may be to consciously manipulate and lower the heart rate. But you’re not using biofeedback to the end of lowering heart rate, you’re using it as a proxy to relax or, if you want to get technical (which I don’t), effect a change in the autonomic nervous system to push it more parasympathetic.

Similarly, in biofeedback training the apparent goal is to get a positive change in range of motion, but ultimately that is only a proxy for the broader goal, which is to influence the body in such a way that it exhibits a positive physiological response (as determined by the increase in ROM) that over the long term seems to produce the best training results.

Let me be crystal clear on this point:

Doing things in the short term that result in a positive changes in range of motion seems to translate to positive results in the long term.

Biotrainforcerize™

I don’t doubt that it may be better from a marketing standpoint to have a proprietary term exclusive to me and the ideas and protocol I espouse. Sadly, that would violate the simple and pragmatic approach I prefer to use in general.

So for now I’m going to keep calling it biofeedback.

If I could wave my magic wand and change one thing about how people approach strength training, or training in general for that matter, it would be their perspective on and application of effort.

That’s right, biofeedback testing wouldn’t be the first place I would start. (Don’t get me wrong, I think you should test, too, since this hypothetical mutually exclusive scenario doesn’t exist—but testing wouldn’t be The One Weird Trick™ I’d lead with.)

In general, if you ask someone how much effort they apply in their training they’ll give you the answer they think you want to hear which is: ALL OF IT. But I think there’s a problem in the way most people define “effort.”

Effort as it applies to training is strenuous physical or mental exertion. Effort implies straining or probing the limits.

And yet, you can get better, more consistent results without straining.

The Elements of Effort

The very first topic I teach in my workshops is the concept of excessive effort to clarify exactly how we should navigate this term. Excessive effort is anything more than the minimal effective amount of effort, or anything that involves the elements of effort. All credit goes to my mentor Frankie Faires for outlining this spectrum of effort:

1. Speed: When reps slow down
2. Tension: When “poop face” occurs
3. Breathing: When respiration gets ragged
4. Alignment: When your form changes
5. Failure: Missing a rep
6. Pain: Shit starts to hurt
7. Damage: Shit breaks

Can we agree that when things go south on a lift, you generally exhibit changes in these characteristics? Whether or not it happens in this exact order, you usually have a change (loss) of bar speed, which coincides with an increase in tension (usually not directly related to moving the weight, such as gritting your teeth or grimacing), that changes your breathing (i.e., going from not holding your breath to holding it), and results in a shift in your alignment (which hopefully doesn’t cause injury) as you struggle to complete the lift or ultimately fail it.

These elements of effort consistently show up when shit gets ugly.

Now, there’s a bit of a divide between trained and untrained individuals. Usually people with no training background find it perfectly reasonable to stop before excessive effort is applied. Trained individuals, on the other hand, have typically been indoctrinated with this special brand of “beast-mode thinking” that doesn’t benefit them and often leaves them with a laundry list of pains and injuries to show for it. They’re the ones who stand to benefit the most by stopping before effort shows up.

Say you don’t believe me and you remain utterly convinced that grinding to the limit is a prerequisite for improvement. Let me ask a few questions:

Have you ever watched the Olympics? How often do they exhibit the elements of excessive effort when they’re competing at the absolute top of their game?

Watch this video of IPF world-record holder and one of the strongest raw powerlifters alive Mike Tuchscherer pulling 755×4. With the order of the reps shuffled would you even be able to tell which rep is first and last?

Have you ever heard someone exclaim with admiration, “Wow, nice job! You really made that look hard!”?

Mastery is when you can make hard things look easy. If we believe that the SAID principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) governs our training, then doesn’t it make more sense to specifically train the way we want it to eventually look: easy?

Embrace Effortless 

At first it may seem that this approach is either exceedingly simple and can’t make much difference, or you may think it’s just flat-out wrong. As with anything I write or speak about, the ultimate test is up to you to perform, but it requires action, not thinking, on your part. I believe you will find that this makes a profound difference in your training experience and will be transformative in your practice.