“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” -Epictetus
Epictetus’s chief task is simple but often difficult. It’s easy to complicate life. It’s easy to let things that shouldn’t affect us, affect us. And we’re often frustrated by it. I can hear the voice in my head from times past saying, “Why am I letting this bother me?” It could have been someone driving like an absolute butt sucker and cutting me off in traffic or a negative comment on a video or article posted online. Regardless, what should have been a passing blip of minuscule emotional reaction became a lingering, hot emotional needle.
And other times, the darkest paintbrush in my mind, sopped with black paint, swirled into scenes of the worst possible scenarios. I was intrusively shown my failures before I even began. Every negative externality, every circumstance I couldn’t control unfolded nightmare-like in my mind’s eye. I took it as truth. Anxiety grew into a spiked ball that bounced through my guts and stabbed me in the chest. I fear mongered myself into being overwhelmed by what I couldn’t control. It happened because I didn’t have the tools and skills to focus on what I could control.
We hear it often, though, don’t we? So many voices from the past and present echoing in chorus: focus on what you can control. Yes, of course. But it’s like any other positive action – it’s just a nice idea until you have a strategy for how to do it. And it’s a disembodied fantasy until you have a means to practice it. Without a strategy, and without practice, you’re left to remind yourself, “I should work on that,” without ever making progress. You’re left at whim and mercy of a mind without a sharp scalpel to separate internal control from external circumstances.
Eustress strength training is that strategy and that means of practice.
But it’s also something else. It’s a great method for building strength endurance, something that most training programs, especially hybrid training programs, miss on.
Being strong and having endurance is great. But you’re at another level when you combine them and you’re able to express that strength over longer periods.
So, we have a training technique that sharpens our sense of control, enhances our emotional control, and builds fitness in a way that makes us stronger for longer. It really is that powerful.
Locus of Control, Emotional Response, and Stress
Let’s start with a quick chat on stress. Our body wants to adapt to it so the next time you encounter a stressor it doesn’t take as many resources from you. This is how training works. You lift 100 pounds with enough volume and frequency that your body supercompensates, making it easier to lift those 100 pounds. The cost goes down. (Provided that you’ve done what’s necessary to recover.)
But this isn’t just true of training. It’s true of all stressors, from environments to people. Your initial experience with a combination lock in middle school likely stressed you out. You had to navigate the halls, figure out where classes were, and get in and out of your locker in enough time to avoid being late for class. At the start of sixth grade, it was a lot. By the end of sixth grade, you didn’t even have to think about it. The difference was that you developed skills and strategies that sharpened your internal locus of control. You felt as though your actions could influence and help you successfully navigate your environment.
The problem in most instances is we give our emotions an external locus of control. We believe we feel a certain way because of the circumstances we’re in. Partially, that’s true. The situation roused an emotional response. But the other half of that truth is that it didn’t have to be that emotional response. You didn’t have to fume for the rest of the day because some Karen stole your parking spot. The crux, then, is to understand that you have no control over Karen, but you do over your response to Karen. You focus on what you can control, which are your emotions and reactions.
Now, it’s one thing to limit how much a stressor emotionally affects us; but we’re on a higher level when we can take something that once provoked anxiety and turn it into something that we willingly approach. That’s the difference between distress and eustress.
We’ll go back to our 100-pound analogy. Let’s say you’re lifting those 100 pounds during a goblet squat. Let’s also say it causes a twinge of panic when I say you’ll be doing a 100-pound goblet squat. You think it’s going to be too much, and it stresses you out. That’s distress. But if feel a twinge of excitement and slight nervousness when I say you’ll do 100-pound goblet squat, you’re experiencing eustress. The 100 pounds didn’t change. The goblet squat didn’t change. The only difference is your perspective; and that’s trainable.
You train yourself to approach rather than avoid. Think of it in terms of predator vs prey. Approach turns you into the lion stalking the wildebeest. Your eyes are narrowed and focused. You’re going after what you want instead of avoiding what you don’t want. You’re the wildebeest when you’re avoiding a stressor. You’re constantly searching your environment for what could hurt you rather than remaining calm, relaxed, and confident.
Approach comes from feeling that you have the resources, skills, strategies, and reserves to deal with the situation. It also comes from understanding what you can control and what you can’t, and limiting the emotional weight that you put on the things you can’t control. As Morgan Housel says in The Psychology of Money, “…the world is too complex to allow 100% of your actions to dictate 100% of your outcomes.” You can control your behavior and your responses, and that’s where you have to put your focus. You can control how you approach the wildebeest, but you can’t control whether or not you kill it.
Eustress training gifts us that focus, that ability to take what was once anxiety-provoking and morph it into something exciting. It trains us to focus on what we can control and let go of what we can’t control. And it does that by repeatedly exposing us to heavy weights.
Eustress Training: Heavy Lifting…and lots of It
When you lift relatively heavy weights over and over you train your body to use strength over and over again. That’s where most training programs miss. They have you lift heavy for low reps. Or they have you do a lot of reps with a little weight. But there is a crossover zone that trains you to access high levels of your strength even as fatigue builds. It’s what gave Chris the motor to pass seasoned runners on the uphill climbs of the Georgia Death Race.
Strength coaches from all over the world designed heavy-lifting, high-volume training protocols that approximate eustress training; and Chris and I have used them for years.
Rich Sadiv, legendary powerlifter and strength coach, developed a protocol which his more famous training partner, Martin Rooney, coined the “Sadiv set.” The goal is to do as many reps as possible with 60% of your deadlift max in 12 minutes. Sixty percent may not sound like a lot, but it takes it out of you when you’re focused on moving the bar as fast as possible while maintaining quality reps.
Brett Jones of StrongFirst fame developed “iron cardio,” which he turned into a book of the same name. You perform sequences of different exercises strung together as chains in a given time with a relatively heavy weight, while shaking your body out and remaining calm and loose between sets.
Here’s an example from Chris’s IG during his train-up for the Georgia Death Race:
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The method that we’ve adapted for use at Beyond Strength comes from our colleagues at Building the Elite. Where the other methods are great for developing specific, and general, strength endurance, the Building the Elite eustress training method adds elements of heart rate and focus on mental skills, improving the physical and mental training effect. You can perform their method for time or for total reps. We’ve adapted it for use with single lifts, supersets, and circuits – all with great results.
How to Do Eustress Training
The first thing you must do is drop your expectations and desire to influence the outcome. You must accept where you are that day. It’s not about hyper focusing on how many rounds or reps you get done. It’s not about overemphasizing how much weight you use that day. It’s about controlling what you can control. And that is how well you follow the parameters, how well you control your emotions, and how much you relax between sets. I’ve found it helps to approach the workout with a relaxed sense of curiosity. Rather than thinking, “I have to get 30 reps in under 10 minutes,” or “Why isn’t my heart rate dropping faster?”, think “I’ll get them done as fast as I get them done,” and “It’s interesting that my heart rate is taking longer today. I’ll just hang out until it slows down. Then I’ll go.” This line of thinking keeps you from stressing out while also maintaining an internal locus of control.
The second thing you must do is choose a weight, or weights, that make you a little nervous. If you choose a weight that you know you can bully for 50 reps, then there won’t be a stress response worth working to control. Remember, we’re training ourselves to approach stressors rather than avoid them. If there is no stressor there is no training opportunity.
The third thing you must do is stay at the bar or the weight you’re lifting. Part of the imposed stress is having to stay in one place. Walking away is avoidance. We’re staying in place and dealing.
There are many different ways to apply eustress training. You could do a prescribed number of reps, or you could lift for a prescribed amount of time. Our current Beyond Strength program has us doing sets of 1 to 3 reps for 15 to 18 minutes with 2 to 3 reps in reserve at the end of each set. During that time, we are supersetting two movements, a lower pull and upper push on Monday and a lower push and upper pull on Wednesday. Each rep must be snappy and there can be no breaks in form.
On top of the reps and intensity, we monitor heart rate. Our heart rates must stay under 150 beats per minute throughout the entire workout, and we start the next set as soon as our heart rate hits 160 minus our age. Staying under 150 beats per minute limits the magnitude of the stress. Choosing weights or moving at a rate that takes our heart rate above 150 takes us out of the sweet spot of learning to take distress and turn it into eustress. Physiologically, staying under 150 ensures that we’ll use more aerobic metabolism than anaerobic metabolism, training you to stave off fatigue while also building strength endurance and aerobic capacity.
Resting until our heart rate is 160 minus our age provides an appropriate amount of recovery. It also ensures that we’ll be able to use appropriately heavy weights without too quickly mounting fatigue.
You’re likely wanting an example after reading all of that. Here’s one using hex bar deadlifts and double kettlebell overhead presses:
Complete a set of 2 hex bar deadlifts with 2 reps left in reserve. Then move to your kettlebells and stand there.
Rest until heart rate is down to 160 minus your age.
Complete a set of 2 double kettlebell overhead presses with 2 reps left in reserve. Then move to your hex bar and stand there.
Rest until heart rate is down to 160 minus your age.
Complete a set of 2 hex bar deadlifts with 2 reps left in reserve. Then move to your kettlebells and stand there
Continue on this way for the prescribed amount of time.
All the while, you focus on what you can control – your breathing between sets, your form during the lifts, and your focus on how many reps in reserve you have at the end of each set. It helps to ask yourself questions like the following, and then answer in your head:
What can I control? I can control my breathing. I can go when I’m supposed to go and rest when I’m supposed to rest. I can change weights as needed to maintain the correct reps in reserve.
Additional Strategies and Skills
Thinking about things in totality provokes anxiety. For example, if you think about cleaning out the entire mess of your garage, you’re likely to feel overwhelmed and avoid it. But if you just start with one aspect, say, that you’ll just organize the lawn equipment, you’re more likely to get started. And once you get started, you’re more likely to keep going. This is a mental skill called segmentation, and it works for eustress training. Rather than thinking of the full-time prescription, focus on the set you’re doing. Ask yourself, what must I do to be successful during this set? Then do that and keep doing it until time’s up.
No pain face! It’s a half-joke I often say when I’m coaching a difficult class at the gym. Whenever I see someone smushing their face in discomfort, I say it to them and remind them to relax their face. It seems silly, but the faces you make have a direct effect on your mental state. If you maintain a calm face, it’s more likely that you’ll remain calm. If you make a stressed-out face, it’s more likely that you’ll feel stressed out. So, while deadpan might not be the most attractive look, it’s the best one for a successful eustress training session. Bonus: if you can smile and feel happy during a eustress session, you’ll pile on more emotional resilience.
Lift Heavy, Control What You Can Control
Stoics like Epictetus would dig eustress training. Not only does it build the physical resilience necessary for a robust life, it builds the mental resilience necessary to make the most of our physical resilience. Lift heavy. Mind your heart rate. Control what you can control. You’ll improve your emotional regulation and what once provoked anxiety will leave you unbothered.
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