How we learn by doing, in the gym and in life

One of my biggest aha moments in coaching has been watching people learn new things over and over again, and starting to see a pattern.

Here’s what I’ve also seen with this learning process – it’s not just in the gym. It’s any time we’re faced with something new, or a change. A promotion or a new job (or starting a new business as it turns out), trying a new hobby, taking on a new responsibility at home or with loved ones. A new relationship, a new phase of life. We go through this learning process, spending different lengths of time in different stages along the way. We can read, study, prepare, and that all helps. But we don’t really start learning how to do something until we actually just do it (a scary prospect for a recovering Type A perfectionist like yours truly - what do you mean just start before you have it all figured out?).

Here’s what I’ve watched that process look like:

You see it but you don’t get it. Say we’re working on learning how to do a clean, a movement in Olympic Weightlifting. You watch someone do it, lifting a barbell from the floor to the front of their shoulders. You understand that it’s a thing you can do in the gym that’s good for your health and fitness, but maybe you think: I could never do that. Or you watch someone do it and are nervous about even trying it because it’s so foreign to anything you’ve done before.

But you decide you’re going to try.

You see it and you get it in theory, but you can’t do it (yet). You’ve decided to try so you’re paying attention. You’re listening and you get it – at least in your mind you do. You get the idea of how it’s supposed to work, but when you try it doesn’t turn out the way you pictured it. You can’t seem to get your body to do what your brain understands.

It’s frustrating, and you’re starting to wonder if you’ll ever get it, but you keep trying.

You somehow almost accidentally got it, once, but you can’t figure out how to do it again. You did a clean! You felt it! You don’t know what you did differently, or how you got it right this one time, but you did it! The thing is, because you don’t know what you did to get it right, you can’t figure out how to do it again. So you feel even more frustrated than you felt before, like you might even be further away from getting it. But here’s the secret: now that you know what it feels like to get it right, it’s only a matter of time till you’re able to figure out how to do it consistently. You have an experience to return to, even if you don’t yet know how to get there on purpose. You are so much closer than you think you are. This is the stage where I get really excited as a coach because I know how close you are, even if you don’t know it yet.

You’re really frustrated, but you keep working on it.

You can get it from time to time but you’re not consistent. Yet. You’re starting to connect the dots, slowly but surely. Sometimes you’re missing the lift or dropping the bar, but you’re starting to figure out what you’re doing when you get it right, and how to do that on purpose. Which means that you’re getting it right more often now, even if it’s not consistent yet.

It feels like you might be making progress, so you keep working on it.

You’re getting pretty consistent so you’re gaining confidence. You’re starting to get it right more often, and you have a better sense of why so you’re able to do it on purpose. You’re not thinking so hard about how to do it every time, you’re trusting your body to lead, and gaining confidence in the muscle memory you’re building. It feels pretty cool, because you can now generally do this thing – a clean, a highly complex full-body movement that’s called an Olympic lift because they do it in the actual Olympics – when you didn’t even know what it was not that long ago.

So you keep working at it. And you might even be having fun doing it.

Now you’re refining it, getting more technical and efficient. You’ve figured out how to do a clean, and you’ve been able to lift more and more weight. You’re realizing that now that you have this foundation – you can do a solid clean – there’s a whole new world of technique and form to focus on, new things that may not make sense yet, or you can’t yet feel in your body. You’re back in familiar territory.

You’re learning something new again. Because this process doesn’t actually ever end. Though with more practice you might get better at knowing where you are in the process and moving your way through it more quickly or efficiently (or patiently). You get that frustration doesn’t mean you’re failing. That getting it once matters, even if you can’t repeat it quite yet. And that inconsistency is a stage in making progress.  

After years of coaching, I’ve seen how much of a difference it makes to pause, reflect and connect the dots while moving through this process. And by connecting the dots, I mean also being able to see how practicing this in the gym helps to practice outside of the gym: knowing what this process looks like, placing yourself within the process, knowing where you are and feeling reassured that you really can get to where you’re trying to go, you just have to keep trying.

The next time you find yourself thinking, “I can’t do this,” find where you are in this process and give yourself a little more room to add, “yet.”