Hocevar Performance

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July and got to spend time with their family while being grateful for our freedom.

Just like everyone else I had a bunch of places to be on the 4th from spending time with my wife to hitting up a family BBQ and then meeting up with friends to watch the fireworks at Coulon Park. Because of that I made sure that I got everyone in the gym early that morning to get our scheduled training session in. One of the things that takes the Hocevar Performance athletes to the next level is the mindset of no excuses. Everything in life worth getting takes sacrifice and if you’re not willing to do that then maybe you don’t want to achieve that goal as much as you though you did. There were people that sacrificed their lives and future so that we could have what we have, yet there is so many people that just whine and don’t do anything about the situation they are in only to make excuses about how unfortunate things only happen to them!

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I guess training your back is still the long forgotten art. I have been keeping track of the people that have did a freeweight or bodyweight back exercise in the gym in the past three days and I have to say I could count them on my fingers (for the record I have 5 fingers on each hand).

Everyone is still on the "mirror muscles" program and asking me why they have hit a plateau. And let’s not mention the fact that the amount of pressing that is going on, is causing an imbalance in the body that already has a crappy posture. If you were perfectly balanced (nowadays very rare) you should be doing a 1:1 ratio of pulling and pushing exercises. Considering that the posture of the average person is very messed up from leaning forward the whole day, it should be more like 2:1 or more for pulling compared to pushing.

 It also seems that people believe that having a sharp pain in the shoulder is just a part of lifting weights….and fighting through it makes you tough. The tough part is paying for shoulder surgery instead of training smart!

The point I am making is start training your back, actualy how about you start training all the muscles on the backside of your body, from your calves up to your neck, and see what will start happening: busting plateaus, better posture, a reason to dance when the "shake that ass" song comes on….

By the way, for all the athletes out there that want to get faster, at the football combines studies have showed that the fastest athletes also had the best relative strength when it came to doing chin ups/pull ups. Coincidence? I think not! Stop doing bench presses for a month and get your back stronger and let me know what happens to your performance.

Does no one want a "six pack" back?

Its late at night and I have been waiting for the right time to start writing this blog because I am the type of person that always feels everything needs to be perfect. I’m trying  to get out of bad habits so even though it’s not perfect, it is time…..

I am all about reseacrh and the optimal way to train when it comes to strength and performance, but there is nothing that will beat a great training environment! I went away from that for a while and trained by myself (also because there weren’t highly motivated people around me…..and I made the mistake of not seeking them out). I stuck to the program and pushed myself as hard as I could (at least I thought) and I did get good results out of it, slowly progressing towards my goals. You might be asking what’s wrong with that? Nothing, if you are ok with good. That doesn’t do it for me and I knew something had to change.

An opportunity presented itself when three younger guys (a high level athlete and two other very athletic individuals )sought me out to train them. Little did I know this was a great opportunity to take my training to the next level. Our first session was meant to be a lower level of intensity session where I would join in to show and explain exercises, intensity, concepts……..and it turned out to be the best training session all four of us had in a long time. After, that the decision was made that we will train together three times a week to take it to the next level for each of our goals.

Bottom line here is, that deep down inside you know whether you are training at the level that will get you where you want to be and you have to be honest and call your own bluff if you’re not. Are you really giving it your all? Did you leave your session knowing that you left nothing on the plate and if it was your last training that you could look back and say you would have done anything different? Who do you train with? Where do you train?

Where and with whom you train is one of the most important factors for improving in any given field and if you are an athlete you need  to find and enviroment that will propel you to another level of performance.  Ask yourself, are you in the environment that will give you that “extra”? Surround yourself with people that are stronger, smarter, more motivated and more succesful than you, give it everything that you have and see what will happen……