Training

Brandon Lilly: Commit to Your Diet and Lifting Without Emotion

August 24, 2012
Written by Team Juggernaut

By Brandon Lilly

I am not writing out a diet guideline that I follow just yet because as this article will disclose, I know that 98% of the people who read what I do for diet would read it and never put it to use. So I’m gonna cover this first.

If I told you there were 100 shoe boxes in a room and 1 of them had a million dollars in it, I think it’s a safe bet you would not stop opening shoe boxes until you found a million dollars. Right? You’d open a million boxes if you had to. So why are people so lazy when it comes to being the best they can be? Why do people only do the “easy” stuff? In every gym I’ve ever been to I see guys and girls working out hard, I see the guys who are always raving about the latest and greatest supplement that hit the market, and of course the guys who speak of the unfathomable doses of drugs they take. Rarely, RARELY, do I hear anyone going on about diet. Diet is the absolute cornerstone for your progress as an athlete.

I’m not talking about a losing weight diet, I’m talking about a diet that will help you achieve your goals. If you know by formula you need 4500 calories to progress, why do you only get 3500? Why do you cheat yourself? Why do you bust your ass in the gym only to be lackadaisical about refueling yourself? Look at what strongmen of the past had, Kazmaier for example had weights, food, drugs, and basic proteins, beef liver tabs, and vitamins. Not hardly the $79.99 jug of creatinenitroblast Post Workout drink that we have today. But, he would bury most everyone of us in the gym. Why? He was a huge proponent of whole foods over supplements and he was dedicated to eating to be the best. And, he would always rather eat a little more than a little less.You can’t run a drag car without fuel, and as an elite level lifter your body is pretty much like a drag car, so fuel yourself. You can eat steak or McDonalds, and save the money you waste on crap supplements, then reinvest that money in good quality food. Commit to your diet and tell me you don’t see immediate, drastic improvement.

Team Juggernaut's Brandon Lilly is one of the World's strongest raw and geared powerlifters. JTSstrength.com — Gotta eat big if you wanna get big. Brandon Lilly knows what is needed to fuel his 315+ pound frame

Lifting Without Emotion

I want to start out by saying that I really hope you finish this article and try to digest what I’m telling you. A simple analogy: Imagine a polished boxer gets into a fist fight with a guy that he bumped into at a bar. The boxer probably isn’t going to get overly excited, and act purely with anger. What happens when the boxer gets hit? He stays focused. What happens when “Angry Joe” gets hit? He gets more angry and becomes more reckless.

The point of the story is this, great athletes succeed through repetition of their craft. Watch a training session with Russian weightlifters, my favorite being Klokov, there is no stereo pumping music, there is no yelling and screaming on every attempt. There is just intense focus and a reliance on training to lift the weight rather than digging deep into the pit of emotion.

Please don’t get me wrong there is a time and place to bring emotion to the bar, but truly great lifters harness it. I see young lifters go up to the bar, yell, and scream, all the while those very actions are depleting energy stores. Approach the bar loose and focused. Run through your mind what you need to do. I’ve always said a lifter who can think his way through a lift rather than react to a lift is a lifter who is going to find long term success.

Try it for a few weeks, harness your emotion. When under the weight, focus on how things feel, try to slow each lift down in your mind and learn to process what your body goes through each and every rep… Trust me, when the meet roles around you’ll be much better for it because you’ll be a thinking lifter and the emotional drive of the meet will be enough to guarantee you rise to the occasion.