Distracted Training/Lifting

You see it all the time on the roads, people behind the wheel texting, eating, applying their make-up or the lead car sitting motionless on an advanced green left turn. How many times have you gone through an intersection on a green light and looked in your rear-view mirror to see what the colour of the light was. We have a name for that, it’s called, “Distracted Driving”.

In sports you see baseball players routinely holding up 1 or 2 fingers to their teammates on the field to indicate 1 out or 2 outs.  These guys are professional athletes making millions of dollars, surely they don’t need to be told how many outs they have accomplished and how many are still needed to end the inning. Worst case scenario, all they have to do is look up at the scoreboard and see how many outs their team has. Well they do, just watch the sports network’s highlight of the night or should I say lowlights as a player starts walking off the field with the ball in his hand after only two (2) outs believing it was the third out and the base runner takes off and steals another base or worse, steals home and scores a run.   In some cases the player will flip the ball into the stands, graciously giving a fan a souvenir with only 2 outs. It’s inexplicable but the million dollar player was distracted with thousands if not millions of baseball fans watching.

Now imagine yourself in the gym, you’re pumped, well rested and full of alacrity. You’ve just completed a set with your cambered squat bar by Force Of Habit. Just as you rack the weights you ask yourself, “Was that set #3 or #4”. How can this happen, surely you can count to 4 or 5. You try to remember how did set #1 feel? You kind of remember set #2 or was that set #3. It happens to the best of us. Don’t panic, if you lose count, always err on the side that you have done one set less than you think. If you’re not sure if that was set 3 or 4, default to the lower number of 3. This allows you to either do the right amount of sets in the end or even better, you do an extra set but you won’t short change yourself. Of course, you can reduce the chances of “Distracted Training” by keeping a log and charting your progress.

Why do you do it, “Force Of Habit”.