My powerlifting journey started about 3 months ago (something I never thought I’d be saying). I’ve pretty much trained like a body builder ever since I seriously got into weightlifting about 4 years ago. It wasn’t until this year, 4 months ago, that I wasn’t finding joy in my workouts, and I decided something had to change. I decided to start training full body and focus a little more heavily on gaining strength through my main lifts: squat, bench, deadlift (but mainly bench and deadlift because I hate squatting lol). 

As I was writing up a new program for myself, I asked Curtis for his input. As we all know he’s full of knowledge when it comes to powerlifting, technique, and so much more. From there, I asked if he could watch and critique my bench because at the time, I felt like I was having trouble making progress. During this session, he told me to correct one thing and IT LITERALLY CHANGED EVERYTHING. This is what he said, “as you press the bar off your chest, push backward into the bench and act like you’re trying to push your toes out of your socks.” At first I was a little bit confused and as I tried to replicate that in the next couple reps it was a little weird. Then it clicked for me. 

The next couple weeks of training were mind blowing! I remember the week after I was benching and hit 100lbs for 8 reps (something I’ve never come close to). I ran into the office and said, “CURTIS THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!” It’s crazy that all I had to do was use my legs to drive myself back into the bench in the concentric portion of my bench. Like why didn’t I think of that??

For the next month, I focused on that leg drive, worked on pin presses, and really pushed myself to add more weight on the bar during my workouts. I tested my 1 rep max last week and successfully benched 125lbs!! After, I really started to think about how far I’ve come over the past year. A year ago, my one rep max was 75lbs, I never would’ve thought I’d be pressing 50 more pounds a year later. 

Another big win I had last week when testing my maxes was my deadlift. For the most part, I’ve always enjoyed deadlifting, but I also felt like I hit a wall with making progress on them a couple months ago. When I started my new training program, I shortly realized I couldn’t keep doing what I used to if I wanted to add numbers to my deadlift. When I made the switch from body building doing 10,12,15 reps of exercises to powerlifting doing 3,4,5 reps of an exercise it was a lot harder for me to wrap my head around. I saw it as “oh well now I’m not putting in as much work as I was before because I’m doing less reps” and I would completely forget that fact that I was now lifting way heavier and therefore still putting in a substantial amount of effort and work. As soon as I was able to eliminate that voice telling me I wasn’t working hard enough is when I started working harder and pushed myself to lift heavier. I successfully deadlifted 235lbs last week when a year ago my max was probably around 170/180lbs.

Moral of the story is the littlest things can really change your life, and the sooner you can quiet those discouraging voices in your head is when you can push yourself to do things you never thought possible. Apply this to your life or to your training and just watch how far you can get.

April

Today, I want to take a moment to discuss the difference between discipline and motivation when it comes to our training routine and lifestyle. Which one will be the most beneficial for your long term goals. This seems to be an area that is sometimes misunderstood. By definition, the term motivation means “the general desire or willingness of someone to do something.” On the other hand, the definition of discipline is “train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way.”

If you’ve been training for any decent amount of time, then you have certainly experienced your share of motivation. On the other hand, you have also most likely experienced a lack of motivation. When you were new to training, motivation was something that was much easier to come by. You had this vision in your head of what you wanted to accomplish, and woke up every day just waiting to be able to walk into the gym. Over time, you realized that this is a very challenging journey filled with many ups, downs, and crossroads along the way. At that point, the motivation may have disappeared. Maybe you missed a couple of workouts, or maybe you fell out of your nutrition routine. When the motivation disappears (because it will), discipline MUST be established in order to continue towards your goals. 

Motivation is great for short term progress. Listening to motivational podcasts, seeing great progress within your body and your mind, pre workout and energy drinks, and simply the excitement of a new stimulus will all have short term benefit that will wear off at some point over time. What will continue to propel yourself along the road when all of the motivation fades away will be discipline. The same discipline that wakes us up each morning, brushes our teeth and makes our bed, and takes us to our job so we can support ourselves and live the life that we want. That same mindset MUST be applied to our training if we truly want to accomplish everything that we tell ourselves that we do.

Often times, it’s simply about showing up. Not every day will be a spectacular training session. Not every week will be a new personal record with our lifts. And not every month will we see the change in our body that we want. However, if we keep showing up and putting one foot in front of the other, especially on those days that we just want to give up, then I promise you great things will happen. Discipline yourself to do the hard things. Make them become second nature, just like that bed, those teeth, and that career. Ride the wave of motivation when it’s present, but when times get tough and you aren’t sure what to do, the discipline to succeed will always guide you down the road to your goals.

Curtis Miller