This post kicks off a series of challenges of the physical culture variety that myself and Dellanavich are putting to you.

It’s one of my core beliefs that the more adaptable you are, the more useful you are. That doesn’t mean you need to be a generalist and be good at everything, but that you can adapt to the widest variety of situations. A huge part of that is physically being able to withstand the widest range of possible insults. I’m going to dig into my bag of tricks to pull out challenges that are both worthy tests of mettle as well as ways to hone your own metal.

This challenge is a classic. Two minutes, as many reps as you can with a fixed weight. The fat handle is key here, so get yourself some Fat Gripz if you don’t have a fat dumbbell.

Share your weight and your reps in the comments!

Good training partners are perhaps the most underestimated piece of the training equation. You can have all of the best possible equipment, the ultimate training plan, and all the potent gains-inducing supplements in the world and you’re still going to miss out on a host of benefits that good training partners provide. For some people the training partner is the lynchpin, because without one, they won’t show up to train at all.

Here’s how you can be a great training partner:

 1. Show Up

A training partner who cancels or doesn’t show up to train is worse than not having one at all. At least if you’re used to flying solo you’re not doing anything different than usual, but when you’re expecting a partner it is totally demotivating to have them skip their workout and have to do it on your lonesome. Being someone’s training partner is a duty you accept and you have responsibilities that go with that. Show up.

2. Know When to Encourage and When to STFU

A good training partner is not an incessant cheerleader constantly hyping you up and telling you that you can do it no matter what. Sometimes some encouragement and hype is appropriate. Sometimes it’s best to shut the fuck up and let someone focus on what they’re doing. Know when to do each and pay attention to social cues.

3. Challenge by Asking

One of the most powerful phrases you can use is “Can I do that?” This simple question has transformed the training of many people. But almost as powerful is “Can you do that?” The best training partner I ever had was someone who had such an intimate knowledge of the spectrum of difficulty in strength feats that he was always able to ask “can you do that?” of the next progression I was capable, or almost capable of. This drove my training forward in a way that I’ve never before or since experienced. Challenging your training partners to perform new feats or reach new PRs by asking the question of them is one of the very best ways a partner can improve the training environment.

4. Leave Your Partner Better

This one is a little nebulous and vague, but stay with me. Ultimately your goal needs to be that when your training partner(s) leave the gym they are better than when they came, and not just from the strength session. If they leave burdened with or annoyed by your life problems that you foisted onto them during the training session, well, you screwed up. That’s not to say you can’t hash out issues during your lift, just make sure you’re respectful about it and that they leave better because they were able to help or because you canned it before things got out of control. Another example would be when training partners have major discrepancies in strength levels. You don’t have to be at the same level of strength or ability, but you don’t get to gloat about it or be a dick – everyone has to leave better. Manners go a long way in this department, such as pick up after yourself  and not leaving it to your partner. Offer words of encouragement or praise, make them feel better.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Training partners can make or break your training. Do your part to be a great training partner and you’ll reap the benefits many times over.

Using biofeedback in training has distinct, proven advantages over other methods of training that do not incorporate auto-regulation, or adapting the stimulus to the state of the system. Biofeedback essentially allows you to get more out of your training at a lower cost in terms of stress and recovery. The long-term benefits of this should be obvious in reducing injuries and maximizing progress. Training is often like the fable of the tortoise and the hare. Slow and steady gains beat short intense bursts of progress followed by long recovery from injury.

But, it’s not as obvious how biofeedback can be used in the competition context to win.

There are two main ways to use it that I have used myself and in athletes I coach.

1. Selecting Movement Variations

Even in the sport of powerlifting, which has a fairly limited range of options for how you can legally perform a lift, there are still quite a few options. You can squat high-bar or low-bar, wide stance or narrow, ass to grass or just below parallel and so on. In the bench press you can vary your grip, foot placement, and bar path among other things. In the deadlift you’ve got two main stances to choose from, everything in between, as well as smaller variations like round-back or not.

All of these things can be tested.

In her most recent meet my wife, Jen Sinkler, made a last-minute switch to a conventional stance from a poorly-testing sumo stance. The result? A roughly 60-pound PR in her conventional stance that she hadn’t been training in years, a 2.5kg lifetime competition PR in the deadlift, a Minnesota state record, and a meet win. Oh, and a 364 pound deadlift.

Results may not always be this dramatic, but when faced with a choice you may be given an opportunity to select the best-testing movement for your body that day. Doing so, in my experience, is virtually guaranteed to result in the best possible result with the least chance of injury when you’re inherently testing the absolute limits of your body.

2. Potentiating Other Movements

Movement that tests well has a striking effect: It potentiates, or increases the output of, all other movement. To put that another way, you could take the output or quality of any given movement as your metric, do a movement that tests well, and then do the first movement again and it will be better. That’s just how it works. In fact, that’s the principle that the ROM or grip testing is based on: if you do something that tests well, you will get more from the ROM or grip.

How can you use this?

In between competitive events that may or may not test well – that part is irrelevant – you can do movements that you know test well. This can be informed from your previous training and knowing what works for your body, or it can be from movements that are components or opposites of the movement you’re competing in. Two examples:

• In grip competitions when every last tenth of a kilogram matters I would often do movements that test well for me, rows and deadlifts (no load, just the movement) primarily, in between the grip events.  In some contests this has been the difference between making the next weight jump and not making it at all.
• This last meet that Jen competed in her back was pretty tight after the bench press. She doesn’t have great extension, and the extreme arch in the bench probably didn’t test well for her. Before the deadlift, a lift where extension is required, I had her doing some one-hand reverse extensions which test exceptionally well for her. It’s impossible to quantify how much this helped in such a big lift, but it instantly made her back feel closer to normal.

In short, a quick and easy “hack” to increase your movement quality in ALL the movements you do is to do a few reps of something that tests well. You can almost think of it as a sub-micro training session that makes you instantaneously better – the same idea we’re going for in training over the long term.

Preparation Meets Opportunity

A few movements that test well aren’t going to make up for a lack of training, a lack of preparedness, or a lack of capability. It’s not magic. But when you bring a complete package of training and preparedness to the competition, biofeedback can still help you on game day to put it all together and maximize your potential.