At a recent workshop someone asked me a good question that got me thinking about this topic and this is one of those things where the specific example is important, but not nearly as important as the bigger picture.
The question was, how do you cue someone to deadlift who is maybe afraid of bending at the hips due to a back issue.
And the answer, my friend, is not to cue them at all.
We have this obsession with cueing in physical training, as if it’s the only way to get the outcome we’re looking for. “Push your knees out, spread the floor, break the bar” and so on.
But as good and useful and double plus good that cues can be, ultimately you are still using a cognitive tool to address something that’s not very cognitive at all.
Instead of cueing, a better approach is to simply change the environment so that the only outcome you can get is the one you’re looking for.
In our example if someone is afraid to deadlift, or even more pertinent they literally CAN’T bend enough to deadlift, then we create an environment where they CAN deadift. Maybe instead of a bar we use a single kettlebell, and instead of coming from the floor we elevate it so that it’s just a few inches below their hand, and instead of breaking completely at the hips as in an ideal deadlift we bend a bit more at the knees.
Is this not a deadlift? It is by my definition.
Can we not lower the kettelbell over the weeks and months? Can we not switch from one bell to two, from two bells to a bar?
Of course we can.
No cueing involved. Just changing the environment so that you can only get one outcome. There’s also no effort involved, by the way. Cueing can take a lot of time, a lot of effort, and only be moderately effect. Making changes like this is literally an instant fix.
To change the frame a little, think about this in terms of nutrition. Getting ourselves or someone else to make nutrition changes when decisions and choices are involved can be really hard.
But if I cleaned out your cupboards of junk and provided you with a chef that would prepare anything you wanted fresh from primary ingredients, don’t you think it would be pretty easy to only eat really good food?
Of course it would be.
Quit training to brain-wrestle when you can just change the environment.
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