Intuitive Lifting
By Gus
We had worked together for weeks. We finished the warm-up sets. I could see him thinking and thinking about all the ideas he had learned for “good form.” He really wanted to get this first working set right.
“It’s just a squat,” I said, before he got under the bar.
It knocked him out of the thinking spiral and he gave me a shocked look. Doesn’t coach want to see the perfect squat every rep?
“You’ve been doing this for weeks and you already know the details. No amount of brainpower is going to make this next rep better. For your next set, I don’t want you to think about anything but Breathe, and Squat. Two words.”
And he did, and it was great.
The perfect lift is not made with thinking, it feels intuitive to a body that has trained the movement. Novices sometimes have a hard time making this leap especially in the squat. Learning to lean over, knees out, hip drive, stay in the hips… it’s foreign at first. But all that thinking just takes up energy we’d rather put in the bar.
Think as long as you need to. But once intuition can do its job, use it.
