👋 Hey.
Welcome to issue #13 of The Everyday Athlete Newsletter. Thanks for being here!
Here are my 3 favourite ideas, learns and resources to help you improve your performance this week (4 min read):
💪 The skill of strength
There are 2 ways we get strong:
- 💪 Muscle fibre adaptation: Stress (e.g. lifting a heavy load) causes micro-tears in the muscle fibre. The fibre then grows back stronger.
- 🧠 Neural adaptation: Our neural pathways become more efficient at the movement pattern.
We can think of muscle fibre adaptation like upgrading to a faster car.
And neural adaptation like putting a better driver in it (to get more out of the one we have).
Combined, we get Daniel Riccardo driving a Ferrari.
Both are important.
But I think the neural side of things is lesser known or at least, intentionally trained. And interestingly gets us strong faster.
Neural adaptation brings about the idea that strength is a skill.
When we move or lift a heavy weight our muscle contracts.
That contraction starts with our brain sending a signal to our muscle fibres.
When we repeat a movement pattern, the muscle fibres get the same signal over and over (rep after rep, week after week, year after year). The muscle fibres start to learn what to do with the signal. And so can do it faster – contract!
(The process is called myelination – there's actually a physical change in the nerve that allows the signal to move quicker)
So we become more efficient at the movement.
But what's cool is the faster the signal, the more muscle fibres that actually contract.
So neural adaptation comes from both a more efficient neural pathway and more muscle fibre recruitment = ⬆️ strength.
So what's the best way to train neural adaptation?
Pavel Tsatsouline calls it "grease the groove" (because we are greasing the neurological groove).
So you'd pick an exercise. Say we want to improve our single-leg (pistol) squat. We can do 10 on each leg.
To grease the groove, we'd do a set of 5 on each leg. Then, rest for at least 15 mins. Do another 5. And continue doing that throughout the day.
Like any skill, the key is lots of quality reps. Fatigue and poor form are the enemy (hence doing half of what we can).
The problem is that this style of training isn't really practical. Not many of us have a barbell handy at work. Or the ability to duck out of a meeting every 15 minutes to bang out a couple reps 😂
The idea is just to do what you can. Bodyweight movements might work better. Like a push-up or pistol squat on WFH days.
Maybe you contract your core hard for 5-seconds whenever you check your phone.
Or something subtle like grip training (more on that soon).
Grease the groove is just an example of how to train neural strength.
But even just understanding neural adaptation as a concept can benefit us.
It might mean lifting at 50% of your usual weight when you're feeling crap. Or really focusing on nailing quality technique before we load the bar up.
Because training our neural pathways is critical to improving strength.
💡 Idea: Probabilities over expectations
I recently did a course by Jack Butcher (the dude behind one of my favourite IG pages).
In a few sentences, he showed a clever way to look at the idea I wrote about in newsletter #8: "You know, you have the right to miss" (talking about process vs outcome):
"Probabilities over expectations.
It's the difference between:
"If I do this, X will happen." (expectation)
And
"If I do this, there's a higher chance X (or something similar to X) will happen." (probability)
Continually falling short of our expectations is a demoralizing process. That's because expectations set a binary outcome – we either accomplish something, or we fail. The truth is less simple. That's where probabilities come in.
Even if we don't take home the prize, progress is almost always made towards it."
This was a real 'aha' moment for me – a helpful way to look at detaching focus from the outcome.
P.s. For new readers, I'm in the process of putting together a website with everything since issue #1. Stay tuned.
💧 A 2-min habit to set up the next 16 hours of your day
We wake up dehydrated. Makes sense... We haven't drunk anything for ~8 hours.
So, first thing in the morning:
💧 Glass of water
🧂 Few grinds of salt
🍋 Sqeeze a wedge of lemon
🥄 Mix it up
😃 Get it in you
It's a great way to replenish the bod with what it's lost overnight.
It's one of those things where you genuinely notice the difference in your energy when you start doing it.
Plus, we're highly sensitive to momentum. So kicking off your day with a good habit puts you in the driver's seat.
As author, Mason Currey, writes:
"What you do first in the day becomes your priority for the day and for your life."
✌️
That's it!
- If you've got a mate who'd enjoy this, share and get rewarded (more info 👇 )
- Is there a specific topic you want to see in future issues?
- Also, if you have anything interesting to share, I'd love to hear about it.
Have a great weekend 
Matt
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