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Let yourself develop!

People are so impatient. They want everything now. I get emails daily from people asking me to look at their program and let them know if it will make them stroger. Usually the program is something which is thrown together, with very little direction or progression and is set up to pretty much max the person out every week.

People need to be patient with their gains and let themselves develop. Don't worry about rushing into things. You have your entire life to get strong, get big, etc. Take your time and allow your body to properly adapt.

This is a problem I face when working with youth athletes as well. You get parents that want their kids to be professional athletes, and end up just running their kids into the ground. One kid I work with came in on wednesday with a sore back. He walks in and he father says "he has a bit of a sore back". I immediatly think that maybe it was something I did on monday? I wanted to look at the program and my progressions and see if I pushed him a little to much. However, his father then goes on to say "I think he hurt it pitching yesterday." I said, "Oh, you were pitching at practice?" The kid said "yea, after awhile I felt my back really tighten up." I said "okay, how much throwing did you do?" His father then says "Well, we have a game on thursday. So to get him in the game mode, we had him throw 100 pitches yesterday." I said "100 PITCHES!" his father replied "yea, that is pretty much a full game. we really wanted to get him ready for thursday though." I said "how often do you throw that many pitches? What is your stamina like." The kid says "that was my first time pitching that much." I was amazed! Oh by the way.....the kid is 14 years old. We barely did anything during the session....stretching, loosening up, and some light movement and then I iced him up real good. I had to sit down with the father and just tell him "look. he is 14. he needs to develop. he isn't even in high school and playing high school ball yet! If you have him throwing this much through the season and year round, he is never going to make it to high school ball!"

People just don't get it. They want everything now. A cool quote I read the other day was from an article about Adam Archuleta's (NFL) training to prepare him for college ball and then the NFL combine, where he pretty much brought down the house. The quote was from Archuleta about his trainer (Jay Schroeder) who had trained him since he was 16 or 17. He said:

"Jay told me right away that he's not trying to make me Superman in my senior year of high school," Archuleta said. "He said, 'This is my goal, this is my vision for you, and it's all going to really start happening when you're 23, 24 years old."


I thought that was pretty cool.

I think we can learn a lot from other countries who begin training their athletes starting at a young age and allow them the time to really develop over years and years into the champions they finally become.

Whether your goal is strength, muscle mass or athletic performance, Take your time! Plan out your training and let your body progress naturally. Don't try to rush into things.

-Patrick

Kids shoulder is gonna be fucked in a few years doing shit like that.

This is the other end of the spectrum. On one hand we have people who stay away from exercise like a plague, but on the other hand, there are people who just overdo it... Can’t have enough… LOL

I have to admit, sometimes I have the urge to overdo it too... Like going to the gym 5 times a week... But I've got more self control now. :)

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