Matt Foreman
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Sample One-Week Training Program
Matt Foreman
| July 8 2012 |
Weightlifting
A lot of you guys are Performance Menu subscribers, right? For those of you who are, you might have noticed that we’ve been running a special section in the magazine for the past few issues.
About eight months ago, I was cleaning out some old boxes in my garage and I found my training journal from 1993. This was when I was twenty-one and training with the Calpian weightlifting club in Washington. For over a year, I literally wrote down every lift, set, and rep I did in training. Absolu......
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Finding Doctors With Answers
Matt Foreman
| June 25 2012 |
Weightlifting
Let me tell you a fun little story.
Back around 1999, I went to see a doctor about the pain in my knees. Like most of you, knee pain was nothing new and I was used to living with it. But in this situation, mine was nasty enough that I decided to take the advice of my coach and see a physician to get it checked out. Now, we had a woman who trained in our gym at the time who was one of those people with all the connections, know what I mean? If you needed a good mechanic to fix your car, she kn......
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Change of Pace, Let's Do Some Jerks
Matt Foreman
| June 18 2012 |
Weightlifting
This post will be a little different from what I’ve been putting up lately. I’ve written a lot of stuff in recent weeks about motivation, lifestyle, inspiration, etc. I’ve loved doing it, many of you have given me some really kind words that I won’t forget, and I’ll come back to those subjects in the future. But for right now, let’s just get some straightforward lifting analysis and advice on something that ALL OF US need to work on. We’re talking about ......
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Where Our Work Ethic Comes From
Matt Foreman
| June 4 2012 |
Weightlifting
We all probably realize that work ethic is one of the most essential qualities a weightlifter can have. When you’re really pushing the limits of your ability in this sport, the physical challenges are beyond almost any other type of activity you’ll ever attempt. If you’re not a hard worker, you don’t have a prayer.
I think we learn our work ethic as we grow up. Some of us learn to be hard workers because we come from parents who did it all their lives and, when we bec......
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Weightlifting and Relationships....Yeesh
Matt Foreman
| May 22 2012 |
General
I once broke up with a girlfriend because I had a bad squat workout.
Seriously, I did. I was around twenty at the time, dating this saucy little redhead. We were having a lot of fun for a few months, baking brownies and playing Uno, all the cool stuff you do when you’re going out with somebody at that age. Then one day I went to the gym and my front squats folded me like a card table. I was convinced that my girlfriend was making me soft, that my legs were getting weak from too much Uno......
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How To Avoid Sucking When You Get Older
Matt Foreman
| May 15 2012 |
General
How many of you have seen a movie called Vision Quest? It’s a 1985 flick about a high school wrestler who wants to make his mark in life by accomplishing something huge, so he decides to drop two weight classes and challenge the toughest undefeated grappler in the state. Along the way, he falls in love for the first time and has to weave through all the confusion and frustration that go along with that. It’s a fantastic story about being young, about searching for a direction to go w......
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Training with Pain, It's Such a Happy Thing
Matt Foreman
| May 7 2012 |
Weightlifting
A neat little motivational motto has been gaining popularity in recent years. It’s the one that says, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” You’ve seen it, right? It’s all over t-shirts, gym posters, etc.
“Pain is weakness leaving the body.”
Let’s analyze this. None of us want weakness in our bodies, right? That’s affirmative, captain. So, when weakness leaves our bodies, it’s a good thing. Apparently, it’s a moment of purif......
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Risks, Decisions, and Courage
Matt Foreman
| April 26 2012 |
General
This one might not grab you right at the beginning. But if you stay with me until the end, I promise we’ll get something good out of it.
If you’ve read some of my other stuff, you know I’m a fan of Ernest Hemingway. I don’t know if any of you have interest in him or his works, but I’ve been reading him for years and I’ve also learned quite a bit about his life. As we know, he’s generally regarded as one of the best authors in history. But aside from ......
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The Mental Switch
Matt Foreman
| April 18 2012 |
General
All great athletes have a mental switch, and it should be your goal to get one too.
Think of a light switch in your house. You flip it, and the lights turn on. Pretty simple, right? Well, a mental switch is in your brain. When you flip it, your mind goes to a state of perfect concentration, intensity, and confidence. The most experienced athletes usually have really effective, powerful mental switches. They can make themselves internally sharp with a snap of their fingers, just by recog......
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Learning Technique Through Imitation
Matt Foreman
| April 2 2012 |
Ask Greg
Has it ever occurred to you that weightlifting is a monkey-see-monkey-do activity? I’ve thought a lot about this over the years. If there is one thing I’ve become absolutely convinced of, it’s that most athletes learn primarily by imitation. When people are trying a new athletic skill, like a snatch or a clean, the best tool for their learning is to watch that skill being performed correctly by somebody else, and then basically mimic what they’ve se......
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