Motivation = Results or Results = Motivation

I saw this great post from Jordan Syatt on Instagram and had to share it here.

It’s conversation all coaches and trainers have will their clientele. Motivation doesn’t work. We want it to magically carry us to our goals, but in reality, it won’t take us very far if we don’t have a plan to take action, which, we need to be able to do without motivation. 

Jordan’s post was this:

NOT: Motivation —> Action —> Results

INSTEAD: Action —> Results —> Motivation 

There is no perfect way to start. No right day. No perfect program to follow. You need something that lets you take action. A saying I heard once about starting a business was “ready, fire, aim.” Meaning, get moving and sort the details out later. The same is true about fitness. 

In order to take action, we need to lower the bar. Set your expectations lower, make them more manageable. This way, you’ll be less likely to quit. Want to start working out three times per week for one hour? Great, start with a couple 20 minute workouts first. Prove you can do it, your actions will get your results and you’ll feel motivated. 

Quit waiting for motivation. It isn’t coming.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Training for Awareness

One of the most important, but rarely discussed, benefits of strength training is the awareness it brings. When doing an Intro Session at Gain, I tell prospective clients that we use time in the gym to create better default patterns outside of the gym. If you learn to deadlift with a kettlebell or barbell, when you go to pick up a a new shrub to transplant into your garden, you automatically use sound hip hinging mechanics. At first, it requires brain power. Eventually, you fault to the best position without any hesitation.

Developing this awareness can also help you notice bad movement habits. Hannah, now 22 weeks pregnant had this realization the other day. After her normal run, she came in with burning shins. Neither of us were sure why until later that night it hit her; her stride has changed. It’s okay that her stride is changing with her body, she’s growing a human after all. The awareness around her running will let her be more careful though, instead of just running through the pain.

I mentioned I’m an over chin-tucker on Instagram yesterday. That means when I do things like kettlebell swings, deadlifts and the olympic movements I look at the ground, not keeping my eyes on the horizon. During a run yesterday my tired legs were low-gear chugging up a big hill near my house. My head slipped forward and my shoulder followed by rounding - I was in the bad posture that shows up when I’m lifting. It’s also the posture that I fall into when I’m on the computer too long. 

The point is heavy lifting and long efforts will show your bad habits. If you’re aware, you can notice it and make the proper adjustments. When we’re fatigued, we want to find the path of least resistance, which isn’t always the best option. The more training you have under your belt, the sooner you will notice your posture on the computer and your slouching while driving. Don’t just train for the sake of training, train to learn your body, to learn yourself.

GAIN Present: Cooking Class

This Friday, May 8th at 5:30pm, we’ll be continuing our Friday Night Workshop Series. Only this time, we’re handing over the reins to our favorite Registered Dietician, Briana Bruinooge.

Sir fry is on the menu and Briana will lead us through the cooking process and demonstrate how to make a delicious Thai peanut sauce. Be sure to bring your A game, best-plate presentation wins a free 30-minute consult with Bri!

Register soon, spots will be limited and upon registration, you’ll receive a shopping list from Bri. See you there!

REGISTER HERE

Take a Break to Improve Technique

I touched a barbell this weekend. First one in some time. As you may know, my favorite thing to do with a barbell is olympic weightlifting. The high-skill, high-speed movements are engaging and frustrating. You have to focus. Be aware and concentrate on small movements, old habits and constantly be improving your technique. 

I expected to feel rusty. For my timing be a little off and to feel slow or weak. It took me a while to get warmed up, to feel the timing and movement like I normally can. What I didn’t expect though was for me to be better at picking up my bad habits. During most lifts, I have this bad habit of over-tucking my chin. I look down instead of up or forward. Having time off made this common, but bad position of mine so obvious. Normally, I can't even feel it until I watch the video reply. 

It was a nice surprise to find myself more aware of this and a couple other poor habits. It’s difficult to change the technique of something you’ve been doing for a long time - it literally becomes wired.  Taking a break, and getting a new perspective can level up your training though, no matter how counterintuitive it seems. 

It’s been a while since you’ve deadlifted, or rowed or done an inverted row. While these things will feel awkward once you get back in the gym, you’re going to pick up on something new, feel it in a different way than you did before. 

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Friday Night Workshop Series

Another Friday night and we have an opportunity for you to learn and practice some fitness skills.

Tonight at 5pm we’re talking all things kettlebell swings. If you’re a kb swing master, or if you’ve never done the movement, join us for some technique breakdown, drills and get feedback on your reps.

Things will kick off at 5pm, claim your spot using the link below.

CLICK TO REGISTER FOR KB SWING WORKSHOP

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

How Will You Remember This

After a couple weeks of feeling lost and anxious I decided to make the most out of this week. After a month of constant reminders to myself to only worry about what I can control, I finally took my own advice and was able to shift my perspective.

I realized that someday my son, who will be born during all this, is going to ask me what it was like to live through the coronavirus pandemic. Do I want to tell him I sulked around and worried all day? No! Of course not. I want to tell him that I made the most out of my time by staying connected to clients, working on improving house and enjoying all the time spent with his mom. 

While more uncertainty lies ahead of us, I’m doubling down on my focus to make the most of each day. It doesn’t mean it isn’t hard, or that it’s wrong to be sad - it’s important to have those feelings too. I hope you’ll join me with an effort to make the most out if though, so when we all look back months, years and decades down the line we know we made the most of it.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

April (Virtual) Beer Night

You know what the last Wednesday of the month means, right? It’s Beer Night, a chance to get together with the Gain Community for some physically distant socializing. Log on to join us at 6:30pm tonight, BYOB!

CLICK HERE TO JOIN APRIL BEER NIGHT

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Eggs, A Love Story

I first started training when was in high school. I was serious about change, ready to do anything to get better. I started drinking creatine every morning, along with 4 glasses of water because I was so paranoid it was going to dehydrate me. I took 11 pack multivitamins. Giant pills that tasted like they got trampled in dirt. I set an alarm in the middle of the night, just to pound back a casein protein shake. These strange habits were rites of passage in the training world. None of these habits stuck around like eggs did though. 

One day I learned that eggs were a superfood. After reading they contained all the body’s essential amino acids, loads of easily digestible protein and healthy fat, I ditched the carton of eggs whites and never looked back. I’ve cooked eggs in every way imaginable. I ate them for breakfast everyday for years. Top priority when I got to college was to befriend the egg lady so I could skip the line and get my 4 over easy eggs without waiting. Today I’m more of a breakfast for dinner person, but still enjoy eggs a few times a week.

Scrambled eggs were the first thing I learned how to cook for myself. Fresh out of college, I would get frustrated when clients claimed they had no time for breakfast. You can have eggs in 5 minutes! I would proclaim, sounding like a spokesperson for the egg industry. Still a fan of scrambling my eggs, I’ve developed the perfect system to make them, which is what I want to share with you today.

First, get the pan hot. Throw on a generous tablespoon of butter, once that starts bubbling, it’s go time. While the butter is melting, gather your eggs. Four is my minimum, and 8 is the most I’ve had in one sitting, but more often than not I go for 5 eggs, unless its for dinner, when I’ll splurge for a half dozen. Crack your eggs in a bowl, bonus point if you can crack with one hand. Whisk ferociously with a small fork. This is the key to fluffy goodness. 

Pour the eggs in the pan and don’t touch them for 20-30 seconds. Once the edges start sticking to the side of the pan, pull them into the center with a spatula. After a few more seconds, divide the eggs in two, then flip. After flipping the eggs, lift the pan away from the stovetop. Scramble and chop and push the eggs around for another 30 seconds while hovering the pan over the stove. Before they totally dry up, scrape the eggs into a bowl, the preferred egg eating vessel. 

Serve with sea salt, pepper and hot sauce of your choice (mine is Cholula). Are you an egg fan? What’s your preferred way to cook them? 

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

45's and 25's

I heard a well-known strength coach once explain that in a perfect world there would only be 45 and 25 pound plates. He was making a reference to teaching Olympic-style weightlifting to college kids. He said to get rid of all the small 5 and 10 pound plates, the awkward 15’s and those unnecessary 35’s. By eliminating the student’s options, they would need to first master a weight before deciding to make a significant jump.

For example, if you had someone that could snatch 185 pounds, they would have to get so technically good, and perform so many reps in order to feel confident enough to make the next jump to 225 pounds. Eliminating the decisions, and all the in-between weights, forces the student to learn the weight more. To get to know it’s ins and outs and to know how it feels in all aspects of the movement. 

You might be starting to wish you had another weight option these days. Maybe your kettlebell is getting light on your squats, or not really heavy enough to deadlift. If that’s the case, I urge you to learn the movement better. There isn’t going to be another kettlebell available, get to know the weight that you have. A couple extra reps or a slower tempo is all you need to make something feel more challenging. 

We have been given a chance to learn movements and learn the weights better than ever. At the gym, it’s easy to swap out weights when something is light or heavy or hard. Now, we need to make due with what we have. Eliminating the choice of all the in-between weights is a great chance to master movements and build strength. 

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Friday Thoughts

As you know, James Clear’s Thursday newsletter is my favorite email of the week. He always has a quote, or thought that really strikes me and gets my brain churning. This week was no different. Here’s an idea that stuck out for me this week.

The paradox of risk:

(1) Don't put all your eggs in one basket. If you lose the basket, you lose it all.

(2) Don't put your eggs in too many baskets. The more baskets you manage, the less energy you can put into each one. It's risky to do things halfway.

Diversified, but focused.

Have a nice weekend. Be sure to check out, relax, spend some time off screens and get ready for another week!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Low Intensity

I’ve mentioned a few times how my training drive has been diminishing. Hard running workouts, jacking my heart rate up with tough circuits or heavy weights have been unappealing. Perhaps my body’s way of telling me not to add more stress to the system. Yesterday however, I felt an urge to suffer. To test the waters, face some uncertainty and see what I could do. 

I hoped for a long run. I checked the temperature, changed and took Clementine for a warm up walk around the neighborhood. Then, I paced around for 20 minutes, laid on the couch and couldn’t get myself out the door. My head wasn’t in the game for a run, but I still wanted to do something, needed to do something. 

I decided to take on a challenge on the rower, to row further than I ever have before. Since it was new territory, I had nothing to compare it to, no standard to uphold, just a task that needed to be completed. In retrospect, this was a good idea. It allowed me to keep the intensity low, to not add stress to the system and to get a small win. 

The challenge took a little more than 60 minutes. I maintained a low heart rate the whole time, keeping it all zone 1 with nasal only breathing. I focused on my technique, my breath and finishing the challenge. When it was over, I felt great, accomplished. A perfect low intensity challenge. 

I made the mistake myself, thinking that I needed to do something excruciatingly difficult. Instead, I did something long and slow, a steady, low-key effort. A nice reminder to keep my efforts consistent, rather than heroic. 

Justin Miner 

@justinminergain

The Importance of the Gym

I’ve spent a significant amount of time over the past 36 days convincing you that you can workout at home. That all you need is your body or one kettlebell or dumbbell and you’re on your way to stellar performance while training at home. While I stand by that, and think it's an important message of encouragement, I miss the gym. 

Having a physical place, where you can test your limits, be vulnerable and spend time with people, who you’re united with in your determination to get better, is so important. It’s easy to forget how valuable a place like that is until it’s taken away. 

In my early twenties, anytime someone recommended a business book, I immediately read it. One of those books was Onward, written by the Founder/CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz. You may have seen it at the gym, I keep a selective stack of books there that had an influence on me and the way I run Gain. 

The big takeaway from that book was the concept of the Third Place. We all have two places we spend most of our time: home and work. Your Third Place is where you spend additional time, somewhere you feel at-home, that isn’t your home. 

Before opening Gain, when I took a new job, I lost my Third Place, which was the gym I used to train at. A different schedule and new apartment in a new town meant I could no longer train with my friends whom I had been lifting with for years. I was lost. And I stopped working out for almost a year. I know how important a Third Place can be.

Gain is that Third Place for many of you. The community, camaraderie and connection is equally as important as the deadlifts and push ups and coaching. We’re doing our best now to recreate that feeling, to give you that sense that you belong, but it’s true, it just isn’t the same. 

I’ve been feeling tremendous sadness that our place is closed and I know you’re feeling it too. I know it isn’t the same, but all we can do now is keep living the Gain life. We can embody the philosophy of the gym through our thoughts and actions everyday. Keep your head up, we'll get our place back.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Squat Primer

Last week, we talked about the importance of fundamentals. That it’s the way to get good, at anything. I figured it would be appropriate to do a squat breakdown. Now, before you close your browser tab, you could probably use a refresher too. 

Alright, let’s get into it.

Start with your feet slightly wider than shoulder width with toes straight ahead.

Get Organized! 

Screw your feet “into” the ground by turning you heels towards one another. You can also imagine spinning your knee caps away from each other. When you do this, we’re trying to rotate the hips into the best position for range of motion and for force production. Don’t let your toes move you.

Foot Pressure

After you get your hips organized, you might feel the weight on the outside of your feet. That means you’ve gone too far. Try to maintain a balanced foot - weight right in the middle of your heel and ball of your foot. At the gym, we say find your “mid foot.”

Back THEN down

When learning to squat, it’s helpful to imagine the lowering portion as two pieces. Start by pushing your butt to a wall behind you. Once you start moving, let your sternum fall towards the floor. Once that happens, if start bending your knees you’re heading down the the right trajectory.

On the Bottom

Maintain that foot pressure! No knees caving in, instead push them away from each other, like they’re magnets. Leaning forward is not bad, whatever is comfortable. To get up, start pushing that middle of the floor into the floor like you’re trying to break through it.

Back on the Top

Maintain that knees out pressure as you come up. Once you get to the top, be sure you squeeze your butt to finish the movement, get full range of motion and set the next rep up for success. 

Breathing

For squats we want to breath in going down, exhale as we’re coming up. We’ve talked before about a slight breath hold for added pressure and stability, but this is a basics primer. For the purpose of bodyweight squats, we want to inhale down, sharp exhale coming up. That’ll keep you in a good, smooth rhythm.

I hope one out of the many cues I just gave makes something click for you. We can always improve our fundamentals. 

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Ancient picture of the gym for your enjoyment.

Buffer Time

When you go to the gym, it’s easy to check out of the rest of your life for a while. You can leave your phone in the car, put work thoughts on hold and fully commit to yourself for an hour to so. 

You have to drive to the gym in order to start. Maybe you crank some music, which I know many of you do since we can hear you pulling into the parking lot. This buffer period gets you mentally ready to train, whether you’ve realized it or not. Just like my 30 minute drive home at night gets me ready to cook dinner, put my phone on silent and hang out with my wife. 

While we’re training at home, we don’t have these buffer times to get us ready for the next task. We can’t drop everything and train, because we’re trying to balance everything and train. Trying to go from emails to cooking dinner is equally as tough.

To combat this, I’ve been trying to build in buffer times around things. Take a walk before a workout, stretch before cooking dinner and commit to leaving my phone out of reach while training. All these things help create those buffer zones so I can try to focus on the task at hand - not everything at once.

How have you been shifting gears while trying to do everything at home? 

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Just for Fun

I ran twice this week.

I’ve only gotten out once a week for a month now. It’s weird, because, I love getting outside, being in the woods and trying to move quickly through varied terrain. I love breathing heavy, stomping through puddles and flying downhill. To put it simply, running is fun.

Since February, I've been training for some races. Racing is fun, but I do it more for the challenge. Can I adapt well enough to handle this race? While running is fun, training for a race is tough. It requires all out speed work, weekly milage goals, a lot of hill repeats and long runs that last hours. A strict training schedule keeps you going when you don’t feel like it. You have an end goal to help you make better choices with training, sleep and nutrition.

I anticipated my races being canceled, and I even anticipated my motivation dropping off afterwards. What I didn’t expect was that my desire to run would completely disappear. I had relied so much on motivation from those races that I forgot why I ran in the first place, because it’s fun.

I ditched having a plan and decided I just needed to get back to it on Monday. It was pouring rain, kind of cold and windy. I thought if I got a run in under these circumstances and had fun, it would build momentum for the week. I removed expectations and just got out there for fun, like I used to.

I got back to the trailhead and got in my truck. I was soaked, breathing hard and my shoes were filled with water. I really missed that, I thought. I wasn’t referencing running, but instead, running just to run. It was the reminder that I needed to have fun. To not stew on circumstances out of my control and to be okay with doing something just for the sake of doing it. 

If you’re feeling like you have no motivation, that’s completely understandable. We’re all dealing with the unknown. This weekend, do something just for fun, not for the sake of training or fitness or health, but just because you want to do it.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Friday Workshop Series - Foam Rolling

This Friday we’ll be continuing our weekly Workshop Series.

This week is all about foam rolling. Learn what it’s all about, how to hit those hard to reach places and have a discussion about what’s even going on when we roll.

Any type of roller you have is good. Join us at 5pm for a 30-minute roll. Loosen up all those tight spots and wind down heading into the weekend.

REGISTER HERE

(free for members and non members, spread the word!)

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Gear Shifting

Everyday I try to get outside in the afternoon for some informal training.

A simple workout with no equipment, or just a kettlebell, out in the sun, is wonderful. Even if it’s only a 5-10 minute workout. Getting out, listening to some music, a podcast or nothing at all had really helped me try and shift from work-mode to at-home-but-not-working-mode. 

The other day when I was headed into the garage, I said to Hannah, I’m going train. Didn’t you already workout, she asked. Well, I had, but she’s still thinking about working out as the big 60-minute event it used to be for all of us just a month ago.  I’ve shifted what I think training is, and instead use it as a way to create more movement throughout the day. 

I headed into the garage, then to the driveway to do whatever random thing caught my fancy. Jump rope, kettlebell swings, walking lunges down the driveway, overhead carries. No rhyme or reason to any of it, just an excuse to be outside, moving, connecting with my body.

If you are having a hard time shifting gears from homeschool teacher to employee to chef and whatever other role you’re playing now, I recommend that you get outside and move around, with or without a plan.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Fundamentals

Did you play sports growing up? Even if you only made it to tee ball, you probably remember your coach harping on fundamentals. In little league, I had a coach who would cheer from the dugout, FUN-DA-MEN-TALS, while my teammates and I were up to bat. Playing hockey, fundamentals were brought up in each and every practice from mites all the way through college.

This post was inspired by a podcast I heard, a guitar player was explaining that it’s all fundamentals. You need to practice the fundamentals for a period of time everyday in order to get good. He went on to explain if you want to play like Hendrix or Santana, that you need to first master the fundamentals so well that you know how to break the rules.

Working out is the same thing. We all need to develop, and continue to work on, the fundamentals. Squatting well, nailing a push up, stabilizing our spine, opening up our hips. These are all fundamental positions and shapes we all need to get in for us to be effective humans - to navigate the world without limitations.

Simple training works. Period. Most of the time, we get bored with something and move on too soon, before we even really understand the fundamentals of it. I have some good news for you, now more than ever, the fundamentals are what we should be working on.

Bodyweight squats, hip hinges, planks, hollow holds and push ups are the foundation to build a strong, stable and capable body. Take this chance to master these movements, learn to understand them in a new way. Right now, more than ever, we have no excuse to be bad at the fundamentals.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

That Time I Got Pinned

After I got my license, I started driving myself to the gym everyday after school.

Great Bay Athletic Club was never overcrowded at 3pm like it would be in a couple hours. Besides me, there were afternoon regulars. A couple of old-school bodybuilders with thick training logs and the trademark thin and low tank top, a pair of older kids from my high school and my lifting buddies. I had just gotten into working out. I wanted to be a better hockey player but mostly, I wanted to look good.

In the strength world, it’s a right of passage to do something with 135 pounds. The barbell itself weighs 45 pounds, and before bumper plates we common, the only large diameter plates were metal 45 pound plates.

On this afternoon I was the only person there, none of the weekday usuals were around. I went on to do my typical warm up. Shot some free throws on the basketball court, worked on striking the speed bag, and a mainstay in warm ups at the time, arm circles with 2.5 pound plates.

This meant I was going to bench press. It's what all the stronger guys in the gym did before they benched, and that was pretty much what most people here did, bench press.  I got my program from Flex magazine. A true bodybuilding split-style. Chest, shoulder, triceps twice a week, back and biceps twice a week and two lower body days. One dedicated to hamstrings and glutes, the other was quads and calves.

The program, my first introduction to progressive overload, decreased reps each week, intended to make you use heavier weights. Towards the end of the program, I was down to 4 reps for my main exercise of the day.

I continued the customary warm up, 10 reps with the bar, small 10 pound plates on each side, 10 reps there. I remember looking around, surprised none of my friends had shown up or at least the bodybuilder who always wore zebra print pants. I swapped out the 10’s for the stout 25’s. The reps there felt good enough that I put the 35 pound plates on the bar, now equalling 115 pounds. 

The reps were good, and I rested a while. Eager to become strong I loaded up the bar with status, 135 pounds. I walked around in my Nike Shocks, obligatory homemade tank top and basketball shorts. I was going to get it, for the first time. 

If you’ve been lifting for a while, you know if you can get the weight as soon as it leaves the rack. I hadn’t had nearly enough reps to know there was no chance I could get this barbell of my chest. I lowered it under control, using what I thought was good technique. 

When the bar touched down, I stopped thinking about lowering the weight and pushed with all my might. The bar started lifting, gaining a bit of speed, then dropped onto my chest. My right leg kicked out when it landed. I was pinned. No one was around. Embarrassed, I wiggled, grunted and heaved, trying anything to get out.  I couldn’t budge the bar.

Finally, some guy walked down the hallway from the locker room on the the gym floor. Immediately he noticed me on the bench. Several minutes into my predicament, I was just laying there, hoping for rescue. He ran over, lifted the bar off my chest and asked if I was okay. Instead of lecturing me, which I’m sure would have resulted in me abandoning the whole gym thing due to embarrassment, he said it happens, don’t worry about it, and went on his way to the cardio theater.

That wasn’t the last time I would get pinned, but it would be the last time I did it without a spotter. I kept working my bench press too, eventually, building to the point where 135 pounds was an acceptable warm up weight.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on how I got started working out, and how I was able to instill this important habit into myself at a young age. Looking back, I’m thankful that guy was nice, and didn’t scare me away from the gym. To whomever you were, thanks for the help.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Trigger Workouts

You may be having a hard time adjusting to your new daily routine. If you’re like me, your training schedule is a bit off. I was in the middle of training for two big races in May, ever since learning they were cancelled, my excitement to train and run has dwindled.

I was introduced to this concept of Trigger Workouts from this article on Precision Nutrition and it’s been a game changer for me. Since I’m not feeling up for big, epic, planned out training sessions, I instead aim to hit certain movements throughout the day and try for one 10 minute session with some intensity.

The idea is simple, have an object, say a yoga mat on your living room floor, every time you walk over it, do 10 push ups. Every time I go in the garage, I do 5 pull ups. Some days, I’ll leave a kettlebell on the deck and whenever I’m bored I’ll go do 20 or 30 swings. These mini sessions allow me to get some more movement in, broken up over a long day, and perhaps most importantly, lets me get a training effect in without having to try too hard.

There’s a lot of stuff going on right now, and it’s okay if you’re not up to the usual task of a 60 minute workout. That doesn’t mean your body doesn’t want to move though, feeding it movement and training in these mini session throughout the day could be a gamer changer for you.

Here’s something for you to try today:

15 bodyweight squats, every hour on the hour. Every time the clock hits an hour, press pause on what you’re doing and do 15 squats. Before you start calculating excuses - 15 squats will take less than 30 seconds, you can do it!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain