I work with a variety of people on their nutrition – mostly lifters looking to achieve a specific body composition or weight class for competition, but also others that are simply wanting to lose weight for one reason or another.
If you had asked me early on in my lifting career what I thought of deloading, or periods of lowered volume and/or intensity in order to increase recovery, I’d have groaned, rolled my eyes, and begrudgingly told you that “Yes, I use them” in the same way that I also brush my teeth every night and take my vitamins in the mornings.
You’re in the gym or on the platform, and you’re setting up for a big lift. You’ve been hunting this one for a long time, and you’ve thought about it all week. Your warm ups moved well, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to lift that bar. I mean, your warm ups felt alright.
In Part 2, I am going to elaborate on how we start to use this building confidence to give a lifter repeat exposures, develop their ability to make decisions based off of training evidence, and how this can begin to move them towards a balance between being coached & coachable, but also executing a high degree of self-actualization