BECOMING A METAL MILITIA WARRIOR

What makes a competitive champion? Besides technique and a training plan what else is required to become a METAL MILITIA WARRIOR?

Desire, heart, belief, stubborness to not quit, internal fire, fighting for the right reason, team synergy and support, the right atmosphere, the right equipment. Eating, sleeping and breathing your goals.

What's Inside Your Head?

What's inside your head? What are you made of? This is what will be brought out in your journey to building a champion, a warrior. It is already inside you. You know it and you feel it and it is time to bring it out. METAL MILITIA TRAINING is about bringing out that inner beast, that inner warrior, that inner strength and belief you already know that you have.

MENTAL TOUGHNESS

METAL MILITIA WARRIORS are already champions in their head.

In training with and meeting METAL MILITIA WARRIORS, I have found one thing that happens to each lifter 100% of the time. It is a door that eventually every lifter walks through. Some go through it early, some take months, most take at least a year. It happens one day, one lift or one competition. All of a sudden, nothing is the same and everything before that moment was child's play. The lifter crosses over into Mental Toughness and experiences the strength and focus that it brings. Every METAL MILITIA lifter that I have seen and worked with crosses over eventually. And, the feeling and understanding when they get there is unlike anything they have ever experienced.

METAL MILITIA training is about getting to and staying in that place of mental toughness. Every training session, every lift is now done with it. And, huge PR's all of a sudden appear and keep coming.

I have personally trained several people who found their mental toughness early and used it to get on the Top 20 All-Time World rankings in powerlifting. Mat Court, Mike Guay, Shany Gilbert and Shawna Geraghty-Saldan all made this list within 18 months of training METAL MILITIA. Many others in our team reached within 50 lbs of this list as well and made huge personal transformations. Most notably Ghislain Roy squatted 550 lbs with fear and shaking and with his personal transformation to a warrior mental toughness he squatted 900 lbs within 4 months at just over 200 lbs and drug free. Joanick Boilard also at just over 200 lbs squatted 900 lbs and benched 650 lbs. All within a matter of months and drug free.

So how do you cross over into this mental toughness? It's a matter of bringing it out in each person. Hard work, watching the courage and success of others on the team, consistant commitment, a frustration with fear and a desire to excel and exceed.

How to Build Mental Toughness

Who you are comes out under extreme stress. Getting under heavy weight that can crush you and pushing for a Personal Record is extreme stress. So, who are you under that weight? Are you a detemined, focused hungry beast? Or, are you a wimpering child looking for an excuse for a way out? Actually, most of us have both of these characters inside of us. We all have the scared child but we also all have the fearless beast. Which one of these

Everyone has a crying point. It's that point where it's just too much and we let go. It hurts too much, we let go. It is too scary, we let go. It won't work anyway, we let go. Something went wrong, we let go. We don't feel like it today, we let go. Developing mental toughness is all about raising that crying point to a higher level before we let go.

Our head tells us to let go. Your head wants to protect you. STOP listening to your head. You head does not know what your body is capable of. Your head has never seen you do this before. You have to override your head. In fact, just get your head out of it altogether! Shut down all the voices and all the beliefs in your head. How do you do this? There are many approaches.

Get your head out of the way - Get Out of Your Head

Well, you could just tell your head to "shut up" but usually that won't work for long. But wait, if your are telling yourself to shut up, then who is talking and who is listening? Are there two of you inside your head?

Yes, actually there are two inside your head. Let me explain without getting psycho. Let's call them Self 1 and Self 2*.

Self 1 is your conscious self, the one that is aware of what is happening. This is the one doing the talking. This is also your ego self. Unfortunately, this Self 1 is not always right and in fact is almost always wrong. Self 1 is the one that tells you things like, "who are you fooling, you can't do this", "this is too much for you", "you didn't eat breakfast this morning, so you know you are weak today, right?", "you missed this the last time", "you are weak", "you are tired, quit and go home". And on the other negative side it tells you, "you are better than everyone else and you don't have to do this work", "don't listen to anyone because they don't know", "this is just stupid, don't do it".

Self 1 is the many voices in you head that undermine you, that talk to you and distract you from what you are doing.

Self 2 is your unconscious mind. This is the one listening. It doesn't think, it does. In fact, it has no judgement at all, it does not question right or wrong, it just does what it is told. Wow, that's scary. Yes it is, that is why Self 2 is not easily available. We protect it. But, there are a few ways to access it. You can access Self 2 through repetition, for example flicking on a light switch hundreds of times then becomes automatic. Or, Self 2 can be accessed through hypnosis. Self 2 can also be accessed under extreme focus, pressure, emotion or desire. This in sports is called "The Zone".

Accessing Self 2 in sports or "Being in The Zone" is a blank state of mind, not thinking just focus.

So, to get your head out of the way really means to shut out Self 1 and let Self 2 take over. Ok but how do you do this? How do you stop yourself from talking to yourself?

There are two approaches to do this.

Distract Self 1 with something else. I could write a few more pages on this but just let me list a few ways to do this. 

• One, go through all the steps of doing your lift, all the things you need to do technically to make the lift perfect. 
• Two, replace every negative thought with a positive thought instantly. Replace, "I am afraid" with "I am not afraid". Take all the negative thoughts and replace them as soon as they come up with, "I want this", "I can do this", "I am strong inside", "I AM A WARRIOR", "I am all my ancesters inside of me", I represent METAL MILITIA", you get the idea. Replace every negative thought with a positive thought. 
• Three, call up an extreme emotion. In a forum discussion, about 80% of the powerlifters said that they used anger as a way to focus. You can try that or you can just focus on why you really want to do this. 
• Four, use repitition. Shut the voice of Self 1 our with a repetitive mantra. Repeat it to yourself over and over. Try, "I want this", or, as Ghislain Roy did, "I am not afraid, I am a Warrior!". 
• Five, listen to the music, listen to your coach yelling at you.

Focus on emotion, desire or

Here are a few ways:

Don't overthink it

Break it down to big chunks

Focus on the feeling. Remember the entire feeling of a good lift.

100% commitment to being in the moment, being right here, right now and nowhere else.

Guy Razy had been training for 14 years when he came to train METAL MILITIA style. The first 3 and a half weeks were spent introducing him to technique and getting him mentally tougher. His introduction was a Korke 3x3 program where he trained 3 times a week and did all three lifts each day. He squatted 4 heavy work sets of 10 reps, three times a week increasing the weight each time until he squatted 40 reps with 365 lbs which was just 40 lbs less than his personal best or PR. He also benched 20 - 25 heavy bench reps ( 4 sets of 5 or 6 reps) and deadlifted 20 heavy deadlift reps (4 sets of 5 reps) on the same day.  Many times he pushed and added an extra rep to a set just to push harder. At the end of this, his confidence and his mental stick-to-itness went through the roof. Then we went into regular METAL MILITIA training and withing four months, Guy squatted over 500 lbs raw at just over 180 lbs which was a gain of over 100 lbs on his raw squat.

* Timothy Galloway first described this concept in his book "The Inner Game of Tennis".