York Training Secrets - Tommy Suggs/Gord Venables (1965)

 

The last time Tommy Kono trained in York, I made it a point to corner him at every opportunity to get some "secrets" out of his storehouse of York weightlifting knowledge. 

Tommy finally got tired of my badgering him and in an effort to get me off his back said, "Why don't I just come up to your office and sit down and talk about lifting and some of my training ideas when you have a couple of hours to spare." He probably thought the that the couple-of-hours part would scare me off as we stay pretty busy in the office during the day, and like most lifters I don't particularly like to take that amount of time out of my training sessions. 

However, I fooled him . . . 

the next time he was in my office he mentioned in a casual manner, "You ready to spend that two or three hours talking about lifting?" and I replied, "Yes." Needless to say, Tommy's face showed the same expression that the proverbial fly must have had when he realized that the spider had foxed him into coming into his den. 

Shortly after this . . . 

Tommy sat down and glanced through the stack of letters he had intended to answer before he started his workouts and said, "What do you want to know about my training?" 

Answering such a general question with a direct statement would be like trying to climb Mt. Everest in a bathing suit -- it just can't be done. Therefore, I used the age old method of evasion and put him back in the witness chair by asking, "Just tell me about your ideas on training." 

After much difficulty, we found a starting point and Tommy relayed much of his vast knowledge of lifting gained over some 15 years which included eight world and Olympic championships. Much of the information contained in our discussion was presented in the January issue of Strength & Health when Tommy was the subject of our monthly Lifter's Corner feature. 

However, there was one point that was not discussed fully in Lifter's Corner  and that deserves attention by every weight trainee be he weightlifter or bodybuilder. The point was made when Tommy asked me a common question that usually comes up when a group of barbell bugs start talking lifting. Tommy asked me, "What do you consider the most important thing in making progress?" 

Having heard this question before, I replied with my usual answer: 

"Desire." 

"How do you maintain desire?" he asked. 

I was caught completely off balance with this question and to break the embarrassing silence that fell upon the room as my mind ground at its usual pace, I gave the question back to Kono, "How do you maintain desire?"

Tommy then replied, "The key to maintaining desire, which in turn is the key to success in weightlifting or bodybuilding, is enthusiasm"

I nodded my head knowingly to help cover up the fact that I didn't really have a ready answer for Kono's question. Just when I thought that I had covered up my disgrace by acting so knowledgeable by my actions as he explained his point, he asked me, "And how do you maintain enthusiasm?"

I was about to throw in the towel when Tommy came to my rescue by answering his own question by saying, "You maintain your enthusiasm toward training by changing your routine at regular intervals." 

Now this statement didn't seem too earth-shattering to me as I have personally felt a need to change my routine from time to time. However, he shed a new light on this old practice of schedule changing when he explained, "The reason a person loses his enthusiasm when he stays on a routine too long is because he fails to make progress on the lifts he is practicing. In other words, no progress -- no enthusiasm. Now if a person changes his routine and starts performing new exercises, he usually finds it necessary to handle fairly light poundages when he starts as the exercises are new and he doesn't know what he is capable of lifting -- he must feel his way along. 

Also, the exercises work the muscles in a different manner and the muscles seem to respond better when worked in a new and stimulating way. This combination of starting with weights that are easy to handle and the responsiveness of the muscles to being worked differently allows the trainee to make rapid progress for a number of weeks, and a person has to be a little softheaded not to have enthusiasm if he is constantly making progress."

"Let's see if I have it right," I replied. "Desire is the key to success for both the bodybuilder and weightlifter, enthusiasm is the key to maintaining desire, progress is the key to maintaining enthusiasm, and routine change is the key to maintaining progress." 

"Right," Tommy shouted when he realized that some of what he was talking about had soaked through my not-too-receptive brain. He then went downstairs to train with the comforting thought that he had made things crystal clear to me and that in the future I might find his tips helpful. 

However, little did he know that my fuzzy little mind was already becoming confuses. So quickly, so as not to forget what was the key to what, I waddled over to the my typewriter and and captured his words for our readers before they had time to trickle out of my sieve-like brain.

Now then, let's see . . . if desire is the key to success, enthusiasm is the key to maintaining desire, and progress is the key to maintaining enthusiasm, then how can I write the article I planned for next month about how desire and enthusiasm are the keys to making progress? 

Note: you might like a look at these programs from Zach Telander: 

https://www.patreon.com/c/zacktelander/home?redirect=true 

Enjoy Your Lifting!