Erosion

Technique really is everything.

Technically proficient progress in any exercise may seem like a slower route for most when wading through the mist of human movement and performance – but the reality is that disciplined adherence to technique is the best way to push back the inevitable wall of plateau looming over the horizon. Adaptive decay is the progressive lessening of benefits any given exercise or training stimulus may confer to the trainee given a sufficient length of exposure. A plateau is a stagnation or regression of progress due to a number of factors which may affect either a trainee’s recovery or their ability to generate a sufficient stimulus to trigger positive change in their body. These two concepts should not be conflated as much as they are.

While the end result is similar and the trainee must change something within their program in order to see positive progress, true adaptive decay is frequently masked by rushed “progression” due to butchered or naïve training techniques. Slapping more weight onto an exercise to generate faster progress, allowing gross deviations in technique from repetition to repetition or set to set, and/or impatience with recovery between sets, exercises, or training sessions all have a negative impact on our actual ability to improve. While seemingly paradoxical in the sense that training should be “challenging”, “challenging training” is not necessarily productive. Attachment to a feeling of fatigue or sensations like the ‘burn’ may be misdirection in the grand scheme of things – especially when repetition quality begins to breakdown in an effort to chase these sensations.

The true challenge then becomes discipline to the monotonous. Painstaking re-education of our concept of effectiveness. Challenge through strictness of technique and proper weight selection. Just enough to physically stress the perfectly executed technique, but not enough to break the weakest component. Concession of technique immediately begins to accelerate the pace with which the ceiling of progress collapses in around our ears. Until such a time where one can hit a complete point of exhaustion within a set, without significant decline in technique, the goal of technical improvement and reinforcing weak links should take priority.

When there is form breakdown during a completed repetition, we are unwittingly ditching the most effective long-term technique in deference for where our body is strongest, right now. But we are never training for right now. We’re training for the enormity of our goal. Erode the task, not your technique. Delay gratification. Resist the urge to “feel” like you’re working hard through raw effort alone, and actually do the (disciplined) hard work. Methodical forward progress under slow but measurable differences in day-to-day training will slice away the enormity of your goal until finally delivering you to the promised land; and at that stage, you’re ready to seek sensation again, with a technique so engrained it can withstand the challenge of burning muscles or burning lungs.

Best,

Eric