The Importance of Intent

Over the past week I’ve been diving into different types of programming. Something I’ve been interested in lately is training for speed, particularly in weightlifting. I’ll be honest, until a few months ago I had never thought to deliberately include speed training into any programs, nor did I recognize it in anything that I follow, since the type of speed development I was familiar with was primarily focused on sprinting. And while I knew that movements like snatch balances, block work, and pause work forced you to be fast under the bar, I had always thought about speed as a byproduct, not the purpose. So, I was at a bit of a loss trying to find “speed movements” and feeling pretty stuck.

My reading led me to some books and articles by Louie Simmons (RIP) from Westside Barbell. I knew that he often programmed “Dynamic Effort” days that focused on speed and that he had read a LOT of books on weightlifting, so I knew I’d learn something. One of the lines I wrote down was, “You can turn almost anything into speed training if that’s what your intent is.”

Reading that line was a “lightbulb” moment for me. I realized I could do or program basically any movement for speed as long as that’s what I wanted to use it for. It got me thinking a lot about a practice that my coaches at RWL Weightlifting introduced to while I was grinding to qualify for AO Finals in 2017. Each day, I would set an intent for the training session. Most of the time the intent was something like “patience” or “make every lift on purpose.” These words or phrases helped set my focus for the training session and limit a lot of the mental chatter that took away from training.

I bring this all up because it’s easy to get lost in the minutiae of training. Sometimes athletes will text me things like “I hit all of my lifts but I kept jumping backwards!” Or “Idk I just didn’t feel strong today.” Usually my response is something like: “I get it, but what were you there for?” Sometimes we find that the goal of the training session was actually much different than the negative reflection suggests. You wanted to make all of your lifts and you did. That’s great! You also jumped backwards. Ok! Sounds like something you can focus on next time. Other times we find that the goal was drowned out by the chatter. You want to make all of your lifts, but then you start thinking about jumping backwards. Next thing you know, you’re missing lifts because you’re trying so hard not to jump back that you get distracted from making your lift. That’s no fun at all.

So, if you’re looking to squeeze a little more out of your training but don’t want to renew the subscription to that mobility app you never use, try writing yourself a little note at the top of whatever you use to track your workouts. If you start getting lost or losing focus, take a minute to re-orient yourself to your intent and just do that.

Here’s a list of some questions to consider:

1. What am I trying to do today?

2. What is important about today’s session?

3. What part of today’s training is in my control?