Great post by /u/The_Fatalist

leeza

New member
/@binnguyen84 wrote a great post on changing your mindset on PRs and progress.

Lifting offers diminishing returns, that's just the sad fact of it. Progress will always become progressively slower the better you get. Weekly increases in SBD 1RM become monthly increases, become yearly increases, become multi-year increases. A lifter will rapidly reach a point where the positive feedback of getting a new PR or meeting a goal becomes less and less frequent. This kills motivation. There is boatloads of research on the importance of regular positive feedback, small victories, and the like in the preservation of motivation and productivity. If you cut off the stream of achievement and results you slowly erode your motivation and damage your mindset. Beyond that even the most disciplined lifter who cares fuck all about motivation and will go to the gym and bust ass like some kind of forklift robot will still see reduced progress and results from continuously pounding their head against a wall when plateaued in an effort to reach a new level on the same lifts. Trying again and again with the same approach when it has not worked before is not determination, it's insanity.

Broadening Your Horizons:

The solution to this fixation and inevitable stagnation is change, and one way to create that change is to expand the scope of what is a PR and what goals you set.

This right here is a great snippet, but it is definitely worth reading the whole thing. As older lifters, many of us will find it harder to smash down those walls, and it is definitely worthwhile to consider how we evaluate progress and personal records.
 
@leeza A PR for me these days is not getting injured. Age is a factor with niggly things but ego and stubbornness is also a bad mix. Especially when you feel you are not getting those gains. Just being cool and making sure I’m ready for the next session has made a big difference to me.
 
@dawn16 I feel like I have a better understanding of my limits, day to day; some days, I feel like I can smash it, and will push it harder than I have scheduled, and others, I stay right in my lane for the day.
 
@leeza For me, life and the occasional non training related injury (am 53) interrupts my fitness often enough I'm always on the road to topping out. Haven't had a chance to stall in a long time.

But yeah, get some variety!
 
@leeza You could use a cheap set of elbow sleeves on your shins. Great way to protect your shins . Long socks or compression socks work too.
 
@leeza This is very true. I’ve experienced this myself.

One thing I’ve found that helps is to know that if you’ve got a solid base built, you don’t have to chase PRs most of the year. Training for trainings sake is the goal, and if I feel like “touching the curtain” as Bert Sorin says, I know that 9-12 weeks focused on pushing harder results in modest PRs.

Finding alternative lifts you can train hard, that complement the ones you care about, is massively helpful for shifting the focus and keeping motivation up.
 
@leeza Most of us involved long term have seen and experienced this in whatever chosen fitness endeavour we are into. It’s what keeps me motivated to constantly strive for a new PR of some sort . It’s why 5/3/1 works so well for ppl because you are trying for rep PRs that can be measured against different weights. Personally for me, training for the sake of training is pointless. Maybe not pointless but boring and I will quit after. I have a short attention span so constantly trying to break “records” is what keeps me going. Lol. I need that light at the end of accomplishing something or testing my progress and currently that’s competition. Pick a competition, train for those events and do the thing. It keeps training different and somewhat fresh.
 
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