Focusing on Execution: A Mental Approach to Lifting

By: Noah Hayden, PBC

Barbell training demands more attention and energy than most people think—no matter how experienced you are. Showing up to train is just the first part of the process. You must show up consistently (i.e., not missing sessions), which is likely the most important factor for long-term progress. But you also have to approach your programming intelligently to avoid wasting time. You need a system to refine and maintain your form to avoid setbacks or injuries. And, of course, you need to stay on top of your nutrition to fuel workouts and help meet your health and body composition goals. Each of these things takes time and, notably, mental space—which can be distracting while lifting if you are working on form errors or handling challenging loads.

For these many aspects of barbell training, context is key. It is important to recognize that there is an appropriate time for each of these tasks. By recognizing their context, you can handle each one when needed without detracting from other aspects of training.

Programming and nutrition are great examples of planning tasks—things that are decided on days in advance of lifting sessions. When form errors are stubbornly persistent, or reps are in danger of being missed, it is easy for the mind to skip past the work in front of you and go straight to wondering if you need to eat more or less or whether right now is the perfect time to change up your programming. Right when the most concentration is needed, these non-urgent tasks pry our focus away from the struggle in front of us—which can be the very thing that causes us to fail a rep!

Likewise, when a form error is particularly stubborn, we tend to overanalyze the most—which can be precisely the thing that distracts us from making substantial refinements. It may seem counterintuitive, but analyzing form errors while lifting is a divergent task that detracts from modifying the execution of a movement. What are the chances a rep will be excellent if you are preoccupied with thinking about how terrible the last rep was?

Execution

So, as you approach the bar, if you are not thinking about programming or analyzing your form, what should you focus on? Execution. When you step on the platform, your only job is to execute the movement to the best of your ability—focusing on the particular cue you are currently working on. You should not be making any decisions while lifting, only following a predetermined plan, with the goal of consistent reps.

Note that I did not say perfect reps. Perfection in lifting is a moving target, since every increase in weight brings new challenges to your form. Only when a movement is repeatable can it be modified and improved. Consistent, repeatable technique requires a standardized procedure of steps that you go through in exactly the same way, every time. This set of steps might change slightly as you refine different aspects of a lift, but either way, these steps become part of a ritual. When performed with exacting detail, this ritual leads almost unavoidably to the most consistent outcome you can currently achieve.

As you gain experience, your ritual of steps will probably become a bit more elaborate. If you have ever seen a strong veteran lifter, this will make sense: They have probably developed little quirks in how they approach the bar—and they do it every time. They know exactly what comes next at all times. There is no uncertainty. They may have a form error or miss a rep, but they quickly know where the mistake was because they are dialed into a groove. They are acutely aware of this groove, and they focus on not deviating from it.

As you develop a winning set of steps for yourself, you can find comfort in them. As weights become heavier and more challenging, trust your steps and lean into them. Trust that if you just stick to them and forget about everything else, you will have the best chance of successfully completing the set. Have confidence in your procedure and focus on consistently adhering to it.

Remember that repeatability is more important than perfection. If all your reps are nearly the same but accompanied by a consistent flaw, you simply change the procedure slightly to address that flaw. Excellent technique is the result of a process. It does not come from luck or critiquing yourself for every bad rep you perform. This builds on previous sessions and embraces the fact that training is a journey of habit and not a destination of perfection.

Successfully Missing Reps

It is okay to miss a rep!

There is a difference between failing a rep and missing a rep. Missing a rep means you did your best in the moment, and your muscles simply did not have enough physical strength to complete the rep at the loaded weight. This is a successful miss because you executed everything correctly! You stuck to your plan.

A failed rep is one that was not executed according to the plan because the effort (or something else) distracted your execution. Notice here that a completed rep (i.e., your muscles were strong enough to complete the movement) could still be a failure if you failed to focus on the current form error you were supposed to be working on or fumbled the execution of your steps.

There is great value in successfully missing a rep. How else will you get better at grinding through difficult reps unless you practice this skill? It teaches you how to stick to the plan, even when a lift becomes impossibly difficult and when the outcome is uncertain. The ability to sustain a difficult effort—without reflecting on the potential outcome of that effort in the moment—is not something that comes naturally to most people.

Beyond this, there is something freeing in having that experience: Knowing that your sense of accomplishment can have nothing to do with results, only the quality of the effort that went into a task. This is especially freeing for perfectionists, who can start to focus on perfect efforts, not perfect results. There is a life lesson here.

Compartmentalize Tasks

This is also a great reason to have a (great) coach. If you are paying an expert to handle programming, nutrition, and form correction (the technical details), it frees you to focus only on the quality of your input and habits. No one can lift the weights for you, but coaches can take the guesswork out of the many technical decisions that accompany training. If a successfully missed rep is due to the need for a programming change, it is not your problem! That is your coach’s job, so let them worry about it.

If you coach yourself, you must manage all of these tasks on your own. This is still perfectly doable, but you must identify when it is the appropriate time for each task and not let them overlap each other.

The platform is still a space reserved for execution. Rest periods are the time to review video, decide on what form errors need attention, and how you will cue it. On the platform, revert back to the foot soldier who is simply following orders. No more analyzing should take place. No one is a coach on the platform! Review the video again during the next rest period and see how you performed. Consider how these results inform your long-term planning and goals when you are reflecting on programming and diet outside of a lifting session (preferably outside of the gym). Compartmentalizing tasks like this can be a successful way of simplifying the process of handling multiple roles.

When you step onto a platform, all that is important is sticking to your ritual—simply performing the current step as consistently as you possibly can—and letting go of your infatuation with the results of that effort. When you can finally do this, there is no longer the burden of outcome as a metric of success, which is not in your control.

You have no control (in the moment) over how much glycogen and ATP reserve is in your muscle fibers or how much force those muscles can produce at a particular time. All you have control over is how consistently you command them to do their best. Just remember that the outcome is not the success. Consistent execution is your real aim, and that is always in your control.