It's Not Natural: When Doing What You're Supposed To Do Doesn't Feel Right

An expert deadlifter at work...

When teaching the deadlift, I tell clients to keep their shins vertical and knees "soft" while sending their hips back and sending their chest forward. Even if they nail this new technique right away, most people say this feels really weird, awkward, and unnatural.

I've been there too, I really have. All of my coaches, my parents, and every teacher I ever had growing up will attest that I am the queen of back-talking. I am the student that always insists that what I'm told to doesn't feel right, can't work, and won't work. I am the athlete for whom hardly anything is intuitive-- it has taken me thousands of repetitions to learn things that others learned in a single class.

During training, clients often tell me that doing a particular movement in the way that they're being told to do it "just doesn't feel right." There are two sides of this coin:

• Doing something correctly doesn't always feel natural
• What does feel natural isn't always useful

The problem is not that our intuition sometimes fails-- it's that we don't expect it to. This comes up frequently for students of self-defense. Throwing a punch, choking another person, or struggling out from under an opponent aren't things that most people do on a day-to-day basis (or ever). So how could these actions feel intuitive?

When learning something new, keep in mind that there is likely no precedent for this skill to be natural to you. What in your life would have prepared you for this? Why do you have the expectation that what feels right is right?

It takes hundreds of repetitions to build a new habit-- and thousands of repetitions to break an old one. That means that while you're plugging away practicing replacing bad habits with good ones, the bad ones will still feel right for a long time to come.

For example, you may feel like your body is telling you to eat in a certain way, even when your doctor, personal trainer, or sports coach tells you otherwise.

But try it. Once you've gone four or five days eating more protein, more vegetables, and more fat your body will grow accustomed to eating that way. By practicing what you know is right (even when it doesn't feel like it), you will train your body to prefer it that way.

Be aware of the inclination to defend the status quo, to insist that the way you take care of yourself is already perfect. If you're "doing everything right" and still not getting the results you want, chances are good that your default behaviors are not serving you. In the words of peak performance guru Tony Robbins, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten." 

Besides, if your natural inclinations were always correct, you wouldn't need to have a coach. 

You Just Get Stronger

I’m loading up my barbell for my last set of squats when I decide to sneak a peak at the person lifting next to me. I’m almost done, and he’s just getting started.

His barbell has four large plates loaded onto it: 225lbs. My bar has 220lbs on it.

Now, I can be a little competitive... But I already know this is a fight I can’t win because that meathead is warming up with my max weight.

I watch him go through his set and load the bar to 315lbs and then 380lbs, wondering what it would be like to pick up that much weight, and take it for a ride.

Coach stands behind me “spotting” my lift. I wiggle my hips and adjust my grip on the bar, stepping back and forth to find just the right foot position.

“Don’t contemplate life," He hisses, "just go!”

So I take a breath, and start to drop down.

---

Have you ever felt that the weight on your shoulders might just be a bit too heavy? 

Whether you’re physically testing your body at the gym, or mentally testing your courage in front of a room full of strangers, let me tell you:

The weight never gets lighter-- you just get stronger.

When you first put that cold piece of steel on the back of your neck, all you feel is the bite of metal pressing down on the most vulnerable part of you. You think, “This can’t possibly be right. This can possibly be what I’m supposed to do.” But you will need to do it thousands more times, and every time you will get just a bit stronger, a bit faster. 

I think of my first day in the gym, back in college. I was running on the elliptical next to my best friend, Rose. She had those perfect, pink matching gym clothes and could run for over 30 minutes easily-- and she would read her philosophy textbook while she did it!

On that first day I ran for almost 10 minutes, unable to read or even look at the TVs on the wall without feeling nauseous. I just stared into the mirrored wall opposite us, feeling ashamed of my red face and sweaty armpits, and hoping I was invisible to the regulars.

But I kept going back to the campus gym-- only with Rose, at first, and eventually on my own-- until soon I, too, could keep pace for 30 minutes on the elliptical.

It wasn’t until years later that I discovered weight training, and the principle of progressive overload, which says that by incrementally increasing the stresses placed on a physical (or mental) system you can create specific adaptations.

Essentially, our bodies super-compensate to persistent, unfamiliar stressors in order to decrease the impact that they will have in the future. That is to say, whenever you’re leaning against the edge of your capacity, you’re causing that capacity to grow.

I'm told that the commander of the airborne training regiment has a short motivational speech for paratroopers in training. In it, he describes how the school is designed to familiarize the soldiers with the process of going through airborne operations. The familiarity is to instill trust in their gear and their training.

“That trust decreases your fear, but does not eliminate it,” He says. Because, at the end of the day, the person who is not afraid to jump out of an airplane in flight is not brave-- he’s just crazy.

Of course being afraid of heights isn't abnormal. It is consistently ranked the second most common fear, right after public speaking anxiety.

Googling public speaking will turn up loads of “simple tricks” for ridding yourself of that fear:

Imagine your audience in their underwear.

Memorize every slide verbatim.

Practice deep breathing.

But new speakers be warned: there is really only one way to do it.

You have to get up in front of people and speak. Then, do it over and over again. It’s only when we force ourselves to go outside our comfort zone that we can improve. When we practice speaking in front of others, it’s that little bit nervousness that causes us to adapt and feel a bit less stressed the next time.

The weight never gets lighter-- you just get stronger.

So when 100lbs begins to feel easy, go for 125lbs, then 150lbs. 100lbs will still be 100lbs, but you will be stronger. When the weight is easy to bear, that’s your cue to add more of it. If you’re not struggling, it’s time to go up. 

The principle at play is simple: as long as you're always operating at the edge of your capacity, you will be uncomfortable. But as long as you’re always a little uncomfortable, you will be growing.

---

Back in the gym, straining under the heaviest object I have ever rested on my shoulders, I fight to keep my knees from shaking as I stand back up and re-rack the bar.

Coach says, "Looks good. But next time... add more weight."