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Lifting Psyche
I just re-listened to your interview with Kirk Karwoski, one of my all time favourites, so much treasure in there.
I’ve noticed a “psyche creep” permeate my lifting over the last six months and have since addressed it, re-capturing the required intensity and thus a discernible increase in performance in terms of the ease with which the reps are performed.
In your personal experience as a lifter and as a coach of many thousands of clients, how much of a difference do you think a psyched lifting performance makes versus a non-psyched performance - a bit, quite a bit or a lot? I won’t bother asking what percentage difference it generally makes because that’s just silly.
What was your preferred psyche when you were performing at your peak and is it the same now? I see from your two 500lb deadlifts on YouTube you are externally quiet a la Coan rather than a berserker like Karwoski. I heard Jim Steel say in a podcast with Gallagher that he imagined his family being wiped out if he didn’t make the lift to fire him up.
Ps. Your hint of “just see white” I’ve always found to be brilliantly useful when the mental chatter takes over, as is my tendency to overthink the minutiae.
TMPHBITEU
Reread your Inner Game of Tennis. Psyche can either interfere or facilitate, depending on how it's used. When used correctly, it can increase motor unit recruitment, and when taken to ape-shit extremes it can prevent correct technical execution because of the fog of berserker-gang. I personally had better luck with quiet focus on what I considered to be technical execution than yelling like a histrionic asshole.
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