The TRUTH About Breathing, Bracing, and Lifting Heavy

Are you breathing like a buffoon when lifting? Don't. It's simple, so let's fix it fast.

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Click the button below to get quality coaching from a Starting Strength Coach and start getting stronger TODAY.

Save Time During Your Workouts!

(This article is a Blast from the Past article originally posted on 03/05/21.)

You like being at the gym, but you also like other things besides being at the gym, and people are often on a tight schedule, so if your workouts are taking longer than you would like (or can afford), we are going to give you two tactics to save time at the gym. These tactics both revolve around the warm-up, because the warm-up is the best place to save time when you train.

First, don’t rest between your warm-up sets. You need to change the weights as you warm-up, and the act of unloading and loading plates between warm-up sets will provide enough rest for the purpose of warming up. Remember, these are warm-up sets - they’re not terribly difficult - you don’t need a whole lot of rest. After your last warm-up set, you’ll want to rest a few minutes (perhaps 2-4 minutes) before performing your first work set, but if you’re resting 3-5 minutes between all of your warm-up sets and you’re wondering how to shorten your workout time, this is where you start.

Second, if you really need to speed things up, start warming up your next lift between the work sets of your current lift. Let’s say you’ve just done your first work set of squats, and bench press is your next lift - while you’re resting, go ahead and grab a bar and do your empty bar warm-up for the bench (if it’s the press, you don’t even need a rack - you can just pick it up off the floor and press it). Then, sit down and rest until it’s time to squat again. After your second set of squats, go ahead and do your next bench warm-up set. You might still have some warming up to do on the bench press when you’re done squatting, but this method will certainly shave some time off the length of your training session.

Most importantly, don’t let this tactic tire you out for your current work sets. The squat/bench press example we’ve given here will not tire you out for squatting because the bench press warm-ups are light and because the bench press is unrelated to squatting, but warming up your deadlift between work sets of squats may not be the greatest idea.

Try these tactics the next time you train, and you’ll save yourself some valuable time. Of course, you could probably shorten those 15-minute-between-set-conversations you have with your lifting buddies as well.

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Click the button below to get quality coaching from a Starting Strength Coach and start getting stronger TODAY.

The TRUTH About Lifting (What No One Tells You!)

Phil briefly covers why lifting weights is pretty stupid and - more importantly - why it isn't. This is why we do what we do.

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Click the button below to get quality coaching from a Starting Strength Coach and start getting stronger TODAY.

Motivation is for SUCKERS

Motivation is for fools. Motivation is for wieners. Don’t trust your motivation.

People far more eloquent and well-known than me - admittedly a rather low bar in both cases - have said some version of this sentiment, but if you’ve never seen or heard it, it’s important that you do so today: Motivation is for suckers.

We are all fools and suckers at various times in our lives - I’ve certainly been both of those on more occasions than I care to admit - but when it comes to training, you’ve got to know that you do not trust motivation.

Instead, trust habit. Trust discipline. Trust delayed gratification. These are all various ways of saying essentially the same thing. Go in and simply punch the clock on a regular basis.

99% of the time, training is exactly that - going in and punching the clock. Sure, you’ll have days where you’re jazzed up to train, but you’re going to have a ton of days where you don’t particularly want to train, and this is especially true the longer you’ve trained. PRs get harder to come by over time - after all, the stronger you get, the harder it is to get even stronger.

Punch the clock anyway. You have permission from me - for all that matters - to not want to train . . . and still go and train anyway. All those workouts where you’re excited to get in the gym and train? In the long run, those aren’t the difference makers - those aren’t the ones where you make the most progress. But the workouts where you didn’t feel like going to the gym and went anyway? Those are your moneymakers. You keep stringing those days together, and over time, that’s how you make progress. Being consistent. Punching the clock.

Are you stoked to brush your teeth? Probably not, but you do it anyway. On the days that you’re not motivated to get to the gym, treat your training the same way.

It’s ok to not be motivated and still train. Training isn’t life, but it makes the quality of the rest of your life better. Get to work. Punch that clock.

Get stronger. Live better.

If you found this helpful, you’ll love our weekly email. It’s got useful videos, articles, and training tips just like the one in this article. Sign up below, and of course, if you don’t love it, you can unsubscribe at any time.

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Would you like to get quality coaching from a Starting Strength Coach?

It Doesn't Get Easier - But Everything Else Does

(This article is a Blast from the Past article originally posted on 02/05/21.)

A while back, one of our younger lifters - we’ll call him Mike - finished a set of 5 reps at 275 lb on the deadlift. Mike thought this was a pretty tough set, and after lowering the last rep to the floor, he stood up, turned to me, and we had the following conversation:

Mike: Phil - that was awful.

Me: The funny thing is, as you get stronger, someday you’re going to pull 315 lb for that same set of 5 reps, and it will be just as “awful,” but by the time you can do that, then doing what you did today - pulling 275 for 5 reps - will no longer be terribly difficult.

Mike: So . . . it’s kind of like eating really terrible food so that other food won’t taste as bad.

Me: Sure.

While this definitely made me chuckle, Mike actually understood the point quite well: Training doesn’t get easier, but everything else does.

When a lifter is new at Testify, it’s pretty common to get some version of this question at the end of a set: “This Weight was pretty heavy - I should probably just stick with This Weight next time, right?”

While this is an understandable line of thinking, it misses out on a key concept, which is that only when you force yourself to lift The Next Weight and The Weight After That does lifting This Weight become easier. If squatting 135 lb is difficult right now, don’t worry - it will become easier after you’ve squatted 140 lb, 145 lb, and so on. Squatting 135 lb until the end of time doesn’t work.

In school, when you pass 6th grade, you move on to 7th grade, and then to 8th grade. By the time you’re in 8th grade, your 8th grade homework might be challenging, but the work you did back in 6th grade is easy by comparison. . . because you’re now in 8th grade.

Not only do previous work weights become easier to lift as you get stronger - other physical tasks in your life become easier as well. You become stronger, but the driveway doesn’t get any longer, and snow doesn’t get any heavier, so shoveling the driveway becomes easier. You become stronger, but gravity doesn’t become more powerful, so keeping your balance becomes easier.

Training will always be challenging, but the fact that you continue to step up to that challenge means you become stronger and more capable. So keep eating that terrible food. You’ll be better for it.

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Would you like to get quality coaching from a Starting Strength Coach?

Improve ALL of Your Lifts with This Cue?!

(In this article, you’ll also find a couple of videos related to today’s topic.)

Due to their technical nature, cues usually are very lift-specific. For example, “hips back, chest down” works really well for the squat, but it doesn’t work for a press or a bench press. However, there are exceptions to this rule; not too long ago, we made a video (we'll link to it below) about the idea of a positive cue versus a negative cue. I'm not going to give the whole video away right here, but that concept - it's not really a cue, but it's a type of cue - applies to all lifts, and today’s topic is very similar. 

We’re talking about the cue of “slow start” or simply “slow down.” Typically, when you use this cue (either of them), you're going to use it in your warm-ups or at least when the weight is light enough that slowing down shouldn't negatively affect the lift, i.e., it's not always going to work so well when the weight gets heavy. 

Let’s take a look at a few examples of this cue in action. On the press, some people struggle with “winding up the hips,” i.e., the hips should move forward first, but some lifters tend to move the hips backward before moving them forward. This can be a difficult habit to break, but if you simply tell yourself “slow down” or “slow start,” you can resist the urge to have your hips go back and instead slowly force your hips to go forward.

On the squat, a common error is to lead with the hips on the descent; in other words, the lifter bends or breaks at the hips first and then bend the knees, whereas we would like to see simultaneous breaking of the hips and knees. If you break at the hips first, just tell yourself “slow start,” and that will give you the time - during those first couple inches of descent - to focus on making your knees go forward and out at the same time that your hips go backward.

On the clean, you want to make sure that that bar touches your thighs at the jumping position (roughly the mid-thigh), so when we teach it - and you can always do this when you're when you're practicing this on your own - we go slow at first because we have to learn to touch that point on the thighs every single time. Eventually, it will be quick, and in fact, eventually it must be quick since a heavy clean or snatch won’t be successful if it’s slow, but the lift needs to be correct before it’s quick. As a result, if you're missing that point on the thighs, simply tell yourself to slow down, and when you get to that point on your thighs, that’s when you speed up. Again, in reality, the entire lift should be speeding up, but if you’re working to correct something, slowing down can be very useful.

Hopefully, this helps you in your training, and as always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Would you like to get quality coaching from a Starting Strength Coach?