Deliberate Practice

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? So, back in December 2022, I started lifting again after a fairly extended break, almost 10 months or so? And in weightlifting when you have taken a break for a long time, you deload.

[00:00:36] The concept of deloading is basically, hey, if you were lift lifting about 225 pounds, you know, bring that weight down to a smaller number that is a little easier on your body as your body becomes getting used to, you know, lifting heavy weights again. So I deloaded by 150 pounds or so, [00:01:00] and you know, the weight that I was lifting then was very easy for me.

[00:01:04] You know, I have a lot of muscle that can handle that level of weight, and I could have just mindlessly weightlifted for a few weeks until I pushed myself back up to my normal lifting number, for weights. However, I wanted to keep it fun and interesting. So I used that opportunity to work on not how heavy I was lifting, but how I was lifting entirely.

[00:01:38] So one of the main exercises that you do in weightlifting in the program that I follow is a squat, right? You have a barbell with a bunch of weights on it, and you put it behind on your shoulders or a little below your shoulder blades, depending on the form that you prefer and you squat. But a good squat [00:02:00] is driven entirely by your legs and hips.

[00:02:03] It is not, there is no upper body work involved, right? Your upper body actually stays unmoving and rigid. But as you go down, that whole process is driven by your legs, your thighs, your hips. And you go down until your hips are just a little below parallel from your knees, and then you drive yourself back up again with your legs.

[00:02:32] So what I did was I went down really slowly being very present in my body to make sure that my upper body wasn't moving and my legs were in fact doing all the work. And then when I did hit that bottom point where I'm supposed to stop and go back up, I decided to not just pump myself back up real quickly, which is what most of us will do because it's a lot of work to [00:03:00] stay in that position with a lot of weight on your back.

[00:03:04] Instead, I chose to lift and get up slowly, and in doing so, I knew that even though the weight was lighter than what I was used to lifting, I was strengthening my body in a different way, in an endurance way, I guess, instead of a sprint. And that meant that even though I was lifting almost 150 pounds lighter than what would be my normal number, I was still sore and I still felt like I improved.

[00:03:41] And I realized later when I was thinking about it that this is Deliberate Practice. Regular practice is doing the same thing again and again in the same way. Deliberate practice, which is a scientific term, has a lot of studies [00:04:00] behind it. I think it was Anders Ericsson, I think who came up with it maybe, or at least has talked about it a lot.

[00:04:11] Anyway, the concept of deliberate practice is that you tweak the system and push yourself even as you are practicing the same skill in order to increase your limits and become better at it in a way that you haven't been before. It's like unlocking a new level in a video game, and I was thinking about how that is such an important concept that we could probably apply in a lot of different parts of our lives.

[00:04:40] You know? Deliberate practice. That is what's on my mind today. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.