Tag Archives: training

Light but right

Leave a reply

I just joined a gym and they had a great promotion on 5 sessions with a personal trainer, so I took advantage of the deal. Today I met my trainer, but not until after I’d already done the Coquitlam Crunch (3x up, once down – 9 kilometres with 3/4 of the time going up hill).

So I wasn’t exactly fresh and ready, but I was excited to get started.

My trainer asked what I wanted to work on. I definitely didn’t want to do legs after the crunch, and my buddy and I did a hard chest and back workout yesterday, so I chose shoulders. He had me doing some exercises with 2.5lb weights, and some face pulls that I’d normally do with 60 or 80lbs, but he had me working with 20lbs doing a technique I’d never tried before.

Here’s the thing, I definitely got a good shoulder workout in. I don’t need to go heavy, I just needed to focus on technique and to work my muscles in a way that I’m really not used to. It was hard to get a full set in with these light weights and both my form and technique definitely faltered as I progressed.

It’s a nice, humbling reminder that it’s better to go light, and do it right, than it is to slap more weight on and have crappy technique. I’d say, ‘lesson learned’, but I know that’s actually just an observation rather than a shift in practice. It’s going to take a few more sessions for me to really understand how to push my body properly with lighter weight rather than muscling through workouts sloppily, with heavier weights.

Mind muscle connection

Leave a reply

I’m a poster boy ‘non-example’ of why you should put kids into sports early. I grew up on a tropical island with no organized sports. When I moved to Toronto my parents didn’t know that kids were put into things like soccer, baseball, and hockey. The extent of my learning sports came from playing kid-organized baseball and street hockey with friends that lived on my street. No coaches, no lessons, just stick a glove on my (wrong) hand (having only played cricket before moving to Canada) or lend me a hockey stick and I’ll do my best.

I didn’t do any organized sports beyond physical education classes until I joined the school water polo team in Grade 11. And then I was deservedly last off the bench for the whole first year because I sucked. The worst part of it was that I had a crappy swim stroke, so not only was I uncoordinated with the ball, I was the slowest person on the team.

But I loved the sport, I trained really hard, and I got to play at a fairly high level, but always as defensive player who learned to watch the play and anticipate what was happening to compensate for my slowness and lack of talent. A few quotes from different coaches:

“If air were denser than water, you would swim backwards.”

“If the pool was on a 45° angle, you’d be the fastest to the top.”

And my personal favourite:

“Dave, there are two kinds of people in this world, the talented and the hard workers… You are a hard worker!”

Yes, I was the slowest person on the team, but I trained with faster people and was forced to do swim sets where I had half or a third of the rest that everybody else would get. That just made me have incredible cardio, and allowed me to push myself and keep going when others couldn’t.

No, I didn’t have a lot of talent, but I compensated by really understanding the game. And while some hotheads would try to do more than they were capable of, I understood I had a role to play and coaches learned that they could count on me to play that role.

But it’s only the last few years that I realized that my limits and talent didn’t come from being talentless, but rather from not really having a good mind-body connection. What it comes down to is: I know what my body is supposed to do, I just don’t communicate it well to my body. A great example of this is that when I weight train, rather than really focussing on the muscle that I’m working on, I tend to compensate with my whole body. For example, if I’m trying to do a bicep curl, and I’m struggling on the final set, rather than making a good connection with my bicep what I do is I start to use my body position and shoulder muscles. I compensate with other muscles rather than connect with the muscle I’m supposed to use.

Essentially, when other kids were getting coaching and learning drills that helped them connect their body to their actions, I was at home watching tv, or playing sports without any drills or coaching to help me make that connection. Even living in Barbados, where I swam all the time, I never once had a swim lesson, never got coached, and learned to swim to survive, not to move efficiently or effectively.

I don’t regret any of my childhood, I think I had it pretty good when I compare what I had to some of the stories of my friends, but if there is one lesson I can take from this it’s to help kids find a physical activity they love and foster their physical growth through that sport or physical activity. It doesn’t matter if it’s a team sport, dance, gymnastics, martial arts, or swimming. What matters is that at a young age they have an opportunity to be coached about how to make a good connection between their minds and their physical bodies. This simple opportunity, early in life, will pay dividends for a lifetime.

Show me don’t tell me

Leave a reply

I can’t imagine that resumes and cover letters are going to look the same in the next few years. Basically, with everyone using AI to enhance or even completely write these documents, they aren’t going to stand out all that easily. And furthermore, the jobs people will be applying for will not be the same either. And so I think two things are going to become far more used to hire, both of which go far beyond a resume and cover letter.

Both of these hiring approaches involve ‘Showing me’ what you can do. First, show me that you have credentials pertaining to the skills we want to see in our employee. Secondly, show us what this looks like on a temporary contract, so that we know hiring you is going to work out.

What credentials do you have? What specific training can you show us in a job interview test? And now let’s have you try the job out for a few months and then do a hiring assessment. So no more resumes and cover letters, just fill out this smart form with hierarchy tree’d questions that dig deeper when you show credentials that we are looking for, and skips those questions when you don’t have evidence of certifications or experience. Some questions require skills in a particular field that need to be answered, and the questions get progressively harder.

Bye-bye resumes and cover letters, hello to showing me what you can do in an interview. The resume is replaced by a form. Credentials get you an interview. The cover letter changes to uncovering your skills in an interview. If you don’t have experience, you better have credentials or micro credentials. While a university degree will still be an asset, it’s just one of many credentials that will matter. And even with all this, you will still need to show, to demonstrate, that you are right for the job before a long term agreement to hire will be made.

Leg day

Unlike many memes regarding physical fitness and bodybuilding, I don’t usually skip leg day. In fact, most days I start my workout walking on my treadmill at a fast pace, on an incline, in a 40lb weighted vest, for 20 or more minutes. So, I do work my legs… but they are still chicken legs that make me look like I skip leg day.

I have seen some gains in the past year, but these gains have come at a cost. The cost is that when I work my legs with weights, they always hurt 2 and 3 days later. I worked my legs pretty hard yesterday and my quads and glutes are aching today. I know I’m going to wake up feeling them again tomorrow.

It’s weird, since I started taking creatine a few years ago, that two-day later ache has been drastically reduced. My buddy and I did back and chest workout today that would normally have me aching for days with after workout soreness, yet I can tell it won’t be that bad. Thank you creatine. However, creatine or not, when I work my legs they ache for longer than I find comfortable.

And the reality is that while I work my legs, I don’t work them as hard as I did yesterday all that often. Why? Because it’s not fun feeling like I need to hold the railing going up and down the stairs because my legs feel like jelly. So while I don’t skip leg day, I do skip hard leg days, and really don’t push them as hard as other parts of my body.

Until I join a gym and start using equipment designed specifically for legs, I don’t think I’m going to see too much in the way of gains… I’m just not willing to do the real work it would take. That said, I’m still never going to skip leg day.

Team Sport Roots

Some days in the gym can feel really strong. My buddy and I were both having one of those workouts yesterday. We both lifted a little heavier than we usually do, and felt strong throughout our sets.

We were discussing how working out with someone is a real motivator compared to working out on our own. It was at this point that I realized we had something in common, and that’s playing competitive team sports.

For both of us, working out with someone and doing more than we would on our own is not about showing off, it has much more to do with giving our best for the team. He’s relying on me to perform well, and I’m wanting to do the same for him.

When you’ve played team sports, you understand that the team relies on you and there is a kind of pressure to be better than if you were just doing the practice, workout, or even game for yourself. There is a mutual understanding that ‘we rely on each other’, and that not giving full effort is letting down everyone, not just yourself.

I wonder if this is something felt greater in people who have been on a competitive team compared to someone else? I wonder if people who choose solo sports rather than team sports get that same boost from some else? Or if they just innately feel that extra push and don’t need an outside influence?

I for one thrive on it. Most of my workouts happen alone, at home, in my basement. There are days I push, and days I kind of just go through the motions. But when I’ve got a workout buddy, that’s the motivation I need to thrive and have a really good workout every time!

The very best and the second best

I haven’t watched a lot of the Olympics, but I’ve enjoyed everything I have seen. I love watching athletes give everything they have, and finding extra reserves or incredible composure in the face of exceptional competition.

For some athletes who dream of gold, the only acceptable place to come in is first. For others, the silver medal is an incredible achievement, that seemed almost impossible before the competition.

To one person second best is amazing and to another it is the first loser. It’s the same medal, but it means so much more or less, depending on what they believed they could achieve. It’s a good reminder of what our expectations do to our experience.

To decide or to deny

I love this Seth Godin quote:

“You don’t need more time, you just need to decide.”

I have goals that I set, and that I hit. I have other goals, call them lofty, call them challenging, or call them unrealistic, that I don’t tend to hit. Two examples of lofty goals include doing pistol squats, and doing 30 consecutive pull-ups. These are really difficult goals to achieve, they involve considerable effort, and diligent practice… and the practice is hard, it hurts. And yes, they take time.

But time isn’t the issue. I can find the time. I can do less of some activities and put more dedicated effort into these goals. So why don’t I? I haven’t decided that these goals are important enough. I haven’t decided that the pain and effort necessary to accomplish these goals is worth doing.

These aren’t real goals (yet?), they are wishes. I will be denied success because I haven’t decided that I’m ready to put in the time and effort required. I haven’t decided, and so I will not achieve.

I did a set of 15 pull-ups yesterday, followed by two sets of ten. Every set ended with my will power quitting before my body. I am not ready to put my body through the pain required to reach 30. I’m not mentally ready for the pain. Ultimately I’m not ready to push to 18, then 20, then 22, and so on. I simply haven’t yet decided. Of course even if I decided, 30 might be unrealistic, but I won’t know until I decide to try… first I just need to decide.

Embarrassment is the cost of entry

I love this quote,

“Embarrassment is the cost of entry. If you aren’t willing to look like a foolish beginner, you’ll never become a graceful master.” ~ Ed Latimore

How many times have I not tried because in trying I might look bad? How many times have I hesitated to learn, because I would look foolish in my attempt? How many times have I let the fear of embarrassment get in the way of beginning something new?

Probably more often than I’d like to admit.

This was especially true as a kid. This is especially true of many kids today.

How about you?

Martec’s Law in education

In “Martec’s Law: the greatest management challenge of the 21st century” author Scott Brinker states:

“Three years ago, I described a conundrum that I dubbed Martec’s Law:

Technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically.

As shown in the graph [below], we know that technology changes at an exponential rate. This is the phenomenon of Moore’s Law— and, more broadly, Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns. But we also know that human organizations don’t change that quickly. Changes in behavior and culture take time. There are only so many changes in people, processes, and technology that an organization can productively absorb at once — at least without a major disruption.

So approximately speaking, organizations change at a logarithmic rate — much slower than exponential technological change.

In my opinion, Martec’s Law encapsulates the greatest management challenge of the 21st century: how do we manage relatively slow-changing organizations in a rapidly changing technological environment? It is a hard problem.”

I think this is something significant to consider in education. Schools tend to change quite slowly. It takes a very long time to change curriculum. Textbooks are a sunk cost on a fixed learning tool. Technology costs money and there are limited funds. And access to technology needs to be safe, and keep student information private.

Training is also a challenge. When a new technology is added to an organization, many employees get on-the-job training to learn how to use the technology appropriately. Often between 25-40% of the cost of a new tool could be put into training. That doesn’t happen in education. Teachers are in front of students daily; The technology itself tends to be 90%+ of the funding cost; and teachers get limited training and professional development.

Martec’s Law: “Technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically,” is exaggerated in education making adaptation to technology much slower. To appropriately integrate new technology requires systems thinking about how to scale.

I used to think that fearless ‘techie’ teachers, the innovators and early adopters, were the ones who really move education forward. I still see how they play an important role, but they transform classrooms not schools, much less districts. Now I see the value of district-wide initiatives where every teacher is given a minimal amount of access and training… in the same tools. Because tech support can’t be sustained when every teacher wants full access (cost and support) to the newest shiny technologies.

Large organizations with rich budgets only advance logarithmically while technology advances exponentially, so to expect schools to do the same on more limited, government funds is hardly realistic. Yes we need the outliers who will try new tools and share their knowledge, but we also need system wide support and training, on tools that are safe and educationally sound.

This is getting harder because technology today is less about purchasing tools and more about subscriptions. A single overhead projector can last a decade with a bulb change or two. A laptop can last 4 years. But a subscription to a tool that teachers become dependent on will have a yearly cost to it. And if that tool isn’t supported at the district level, then that leads to frustrations for educational leaders, teachers, and students alike.

Schools are not about kids having access to all the newest tech tools, they are places where kids learn to think critically and creatively, and to effectively use the tools available to them. Providing access to technology equitably requires sunk costs in tools, and subscriptions, with some training and support. Recognizing that the newest tech will almost always be out of reach for schools doesn’t mean they are falling behind, when even large high-budget organizations have difficulty keeping up. Rather, it’s districts and schools with vision about how to move forward as an entire organization that will keep up as technology exponentially changes.

Incrementally better

I’ve had a cough for 18 days now. The first week was really rough, then I started to feel a bit better. Each day has been slightly better than the day before. Each night has been a slightly better night, with less coughing and waking up… but it has been really slow progress.

This is a challenge with ‘getting better’ in general, not just from recovering from this nasty flu. When we are trying to work out and get stronger, when we are looking for gains in our fitness, we often see them pretty quick in the beginning, but then we get on a slow path of small gains that are hard to notice.

We want to see great gains. We want to be instantly rewarded for our hard work. But the gains are incremental and sometimes unnoticeable for long periods of time. The personal best achievements don’t come every day. And we don’t always notice the gains when we want to. We quickly notice the setbacks, but not always the gains.

Recovering so slowly has made me see improvements I usually ignore… because I’m looking for them, and I’m appreciative of any improvement. But working out I don’t pay attention to tiny gains in pursuit of bigger ones.

I’m going to be a bit more appreciative of the tiny gains in my fitness from now on. I’ll look for them, and know that I’m getting incrementally better. Who knows, these small moments of appreciation might even make me incrementally happier. 😁