Finish the Drill

“Anyone can start the drill. Show me the guy who can finish the drill.”

-Coach Brad Grayvold

Coach Grayvold, or Coach G as we called him, was my varsity football coach way back during the fall of 2000 and 2001, my junior and senior years of high school respectively. He was an awesome guy who always watched out for his players. When we were sweating our asses off and showing fatigue during a tough practice, Coach G would holler out the above mantra. It always managed to get inside my head, allowing me to push myself just a little bit further.

I recently finished an eight-week kettlebell program that was based around one-handed swings and snatches with a five minute snatch test scheduled for the final day of training (the goal for a typical snatch test for a man of my size is 100 reps in five minutes with a 24 kg/53 lb kettlbell). Admittedly, when I saw the program template and thought about the end goal of completing a snatch test, I was very skeptical. None of the snatch days even had 100 total reps, much less 100 reps in five minutes. How was this going to prepare me for the end goal?

See, I’m like most people who buy a training program or find one online. Even if the program comes from very reputable sources and coaches with years, and sometimes decades, of experience training themselves and athletes, my first thought when I see the exercises used or the program outline is that I should change or modify things to supposedly make them better. Surely I know what’s best or how all of this is going to fit together over the next several weeks and months even though I’ve never done the program myself. Never mind the fact that the coach or trainer who wrote the program likely put a ton of time, effort, experience, and experimentation into making sure the program was designed in a very specific way using carefully selected movements that will lead to achieving an end goal.

Over the years, I have begun to see the value in doing a program exactly as written at least one time through. This requires putting my ego aside and acknowledging that I have much to learn about strength training. When I take this leap of faith, it usually turns out that I learn a lot, have fun, and begin to understand why the coach wrote the program a certain way. I also find that the program went so well that I want to make further progress by going through the program again. Looking back over old training logs, I realize that my former modifications of various programs typically meant adding in tons of extra and unnecessary volume that completely destroyed my ability to maximize all of the benefits of a program like volume, intensity, and recovery. I was very well-versed at starting the drill, but very rarely could I finish the drill.

I completed my final snatch test pretty comfortably, hitting 105 reps in five minutes. I didn’t suffer all that much and definitely still had more in the tank.

Take that leap of faith. Put your ego aside. Do the program as written and learn.