Neil Deighton discusses motivation, asking us to redefine the meaning of strong and assess what we are capable of. Watch the video below:
Hi there guys this is Neil Deighton, I'm back with a new video. This time I'm gonna talk about the mental aspects of training. Right so I'm gonna jump straight in to about your gym environment, where you train is gonna define very much how strong you get, if you just limit yourself to training at 1 gym all your life, if you go into that gym and the biggest guy there is benching 140 and you're starting out, your goal is probably to get as strong as him, you want to bench 140. so you're gonna think in your head right this is gonna be a long process, this guy's a big guy, I'm starting out, 140 bench one day I'll get there. So say eventually you do get there, you're doing 140 and everyone else in the gym is coming up to you and blowing smoke up your arse “wow you're brilliant, fantastic, you're so strong, why don't you enter a competition”. So you're believing into yourself you think yeah why not I'll go enter a competition, go and enter a competition and get your arse kicked. Then you wonder what you've been doing all this time. It's because you need to redefine the paradigms of strength, you've got to redefine what strong is and what you're capable of. I see a lot of people training fairly sound, think they're pushing themselves hard but really they're limiting themselves, putting number on themselves and what they're capable of. They might throw out there “look my goal is this, my goal is that” but unless you really believe that you're gonna reach that goal, what's the point?
So if you take a guy, he's benching 100kg in a regular gym there's other guys there. There's maybe 1 or 2 stronger but yeah he feels pretty good, he's one of the biggest guys in there, he's one of the strongest guys in there. You go throw him in a group of powerlifters who train at a gym, there's guys there benching 240, 250, 260 and he's gonna think “wow, this is what's possible. If they can do it why can I do it, it's just gonna take a bit of time”. So now instead of thinking that 140 bench is the pinnacle, he's gonna think “wow damn I need to be benching over 140 now, I'm gonna get there fast, it's nothing”. You've got to respect the weight, but you've also got to respect the fact that you can be much stronger than you think you can be. So you'll see there guys, they'll go to a powerlifting gym to train, after 1-2 years they've put 60, 70kg on all their lifts. Now is this because they've got a better training system? Generally no it's not, it's because it's a mental game. They're seeing guys around them, they're lifting a lot more weight every week. Week in week out. And eventually you might be in awe at first, you might think “wow these guys, fucking hell brilliant”. Maybe they are, but you're gonna get to a point where you think “fuck this, why aren't I lifting this? I wanna be up there with these guys. Why can't I be up there with these guys? What have these guys got that I haven't?”. Or you might see a lot of guys talking about genetics, these guys have just got better genetics than me. That's a piss poor excuse, what you're saying you go to a powerlifting gym, there's 10 guys beating you in one gym, in a small country and they've all got better genetics than you? Nah, maybe the top guys, maybe one or two you've got your Ed Koehn's, guys like that they probably have got better genetics than you, but there's no reason why you can't get close. Get close to their numbers, push for their numbers.
So that's the main thing that I like to get people to believe in themselves more. Now I'll use one example of a guy I helped, he came to me I think he benched about 110kg and he sent a message, he said “I'd love to bench 140 one day, do you think I can do it?”. I thought well course you can, anyone can bench 140kg. It's a good gym lift but anyone can do it. I'm not throwing that out there saying if you're not benching 140kg you're useless. What I'm saying is if you put your mind to it you'll do it. You've just got to get out of that mindset of thinking that it's somehow an incredible thing, a lot of guys do you'll see 3 plates on a bench, wow brilliant. Anyway this guy I took him after a year and half, 2 years he benched 170 and was about the same bodyweight. He was a fairly big guy but what I'm saying is it isn't particularly the training, a lot of it is the mental aspect.
If you believe in yourself, you're capable of so much more than you think you are. If you're making little goals for yourself and limiting yourself “next year I wanna put 10kg on my deadlift, I want to put 20kg on my deadlift, I'm improving”. You might be improving and if you've got a good lift already that's good going, you're not gonna find many guys who'll do it. But if your deadlifting 160kg and you're aiming to put 20kg on in a year, aim to put 100kg on your deadlift. Get there faster, you're gonna get people saying “oh you're risking injuries, you're going out too hard”. You've got to have a smart plan, but you've got to aim high. You can limit yourself so much, I can't re-enforce the point enough that you can limit yourself so much but capping what you think you're capable of. That is what limits people in the end. I've trained with some of the top guys, look at Andy Bolton. He's deadlifted 1008lbs. If you asked Andy, he'll be aiming to do more than 1008lbs. On a good day he might have done a little bit more, even these top guys, they always feel they've got another 5lbs in them, they can put another 5lbs on the lift. So don't cap yourself, don't limit yourself to what you're capable of.
Just a little quick one, I know people who get mental blocks a lot of the time, I'll use the bench press again, just an easy example. You've got a mental block of 140kg bench, you've gone up to 135 a few times now and done it alright, you've put 3 plates on the bench, you've struggled. So how do you get past a point such as that? One way I've found which is pretty good is just steam roll past it and go up in weight. So you do your 135 and it feels alright, jump to 145. Don't even think about 140. You get that 145 and you just think at 140 you aren't gonna respect it as much, it's just 140. it's easy, you're capable of more than that, I'm gonna go 145. Beat 145 and that mental block's gone. Same with any other kind of lift like that. Another way of doing it is maybe instead of putting three 20 plates on, you'll see that and maybe kind of get a bit edgy so put a couple of 20's on a 10, a 5 and a couple of 2.5's. Something like that, just change how you put the weights on. More stuff like that can make a bit of a difference.
