Get Off Your Phone While You Train

A study was released recently that stated that training performance is negatively impacted by browsing social media prior to executing training.  It had all the inter set doom scrollers out there defensive about their screen time.  Admittedly, I didn’t read the study.  I already knew this to be true.  I feel like a lot of people already knew this.  I feel like this is another example of science picking a low hanging fruit off the tree, stealing from the bro’s intuition, and publishing scientific proof that social media scrolling is probably not helping you complete more reps.  Well, duh.  The negative side effects of chronic phone usage and social media apps have been apparent for years. 

Jonathan Haidt published The Coddling of the American Mind in 2018, describing the negative impact that the inception of the iPhone had on the youth and young adults that grew up in a world with access to a smartphone and social media all the time.   The iPhone was invented in 2007.  Depending on your age at that time, living your life with an iPhone or smartphone has significantly impacted your life to some degree.  Whether it is access to information, social media pressure, screen time, YouTube, texting, games, or all these factors combined.  University and college campuses noted a clear relationship between the advent of the smart phone and the rise of anxiety related conditions on campuses.    If you are really interested in the negative impact created by phone usage, I strongly recommend this book.  In the 6 years that has gone by since this work was published, social media platform size, reach, and usage has grown, not to mention accelerations in growth due to covid shutdowns, measures, and restrictions.   

Moore’s Law is the observation that that number of transistors in an integrated circuit will double every two years with minimal rise in cost.  This concept helps explain the massive growth and development in the relationship we have with our phones.  If we consider that smartphone technology is getting cheaper and more accessible, along with population growth, social media is a form of exponential technology. Scientist Ray Kurzweil argues that we will see as much technological progress over the next 100 years as we have seen in the last 20,000.   Kurzweil’s Law of accelerated returns explains that methods from one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage of progress, and that the rate of progress increases exponentially over time.   Think about how 17 years of personal smart phone usage, social media technology, app development, and dopamine addiction engineering may have impacted you as an individual, especially if you are younger and smartphone usage began in your more formative years before your brain was fully developed in your mid to late 20s. 

Quit Social Media

I remember my friend suggesting I check out Cal Newport’s “Quit Social Media” Ted Talk in 2018.  Everything he described in this presentation resonated with how I was feeling about my life and work from day to day.  The slot machine in your pocket metaphor was so clear.  In the morning, between clients, before training, between sets, while training, after training, at dinner, before bed, I was pulling the slot machine lever all day every day searching for that next hit of dopamine.  Not only that, but it was also making me miserable and exhausted. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E7hkPZ-HTk&t=1s&pp=ygUdY2FsIG5ld3BvcnQgcXVpdCBzb2NpYWwgbWVkaWE%3D

I realize the hypocrisy created by sharing this information to you via a social media account.  If you are reading this blog, you either stumbled on to it via Instagram or Discord, or you are familiar with the company I work for via YouTube.  While Cal’s suggestions may be overly aggressive for some people, my hope is that it might at least curb some of your usage, or at least convince you to limit social media use before and during your gym time.  At the end of the day social media is probably just a source of quick entertainment for most people.  I know I love a good meme.  These companies hook you by offering shiny treats in exchange for minutes of your attention, time that is then packaged up and sold for ad revenue.  Attention engineers are hired with the sole purpose of trying to make apps as addictive as possible. 

Do you really think that social media is vital to your success or enjoyment? It has been designed to fragment your attention, forcing you to spend most of your day between bouts of attempting to focus, and pulling the slot machine out of your pocket, leading to the loss in your ability to sustain concentration.  You are going to need to have high levels of focus and concentration if you are going to train hard and lift weights that you have never lifted before.  Treat your attention with respect.  Not to mention the pervasive background hum of anxiety that so many of us live with now that we have been poisoning our minds with social media use.  If you can get off and stay off your phone, training will move faster, you will be more locked in, technique will improve, training joy will increase, and all of this should lead to better and better gainz. 

Have you ever received a text, DM, or phone call in the middle of training that complete through you off your whole game?  At the height of my phone usage addiction, I can think of a specific training session where I had been training for nationals and happened to see what one of my competitors had lifted that day.  I am not sure if it was before or after my top set for the day, but either way the top set did not go well, and watching my opponent be so successful in their own training left me spiralling mid training session.  Being all jack3d up on pre workout with squatxiety didn’t help the situation, but it could have been avoided if I hadn’t been either placing unrealistic pressures on myself by doom scrolling other powerlifters all day. 

Unplugging Strategies

I can already hear the retort.  I have heard it many times before.  “My program is on my phone.”   “I want to listen to music while I train.”  “You asked me to film my training and send it to you”.   I understand.  I had to navigate these issues to, but the solutions are simple.   First off, you can open your program ahead of time and put your phone into airplane mode. I know some clients who write all their training down in a physical journal like we had to do “back in my day.”  This means that not only will you not receive any unwanted notifications, texts, or calls, but you will also be incapable of browsing the internet or scrolling social media in between your sets.  Yup, just you alone with your thoughts and feelings, present in the moment, sounds terrifying doesn’t it.  Heck it might even lead to you striking up a conversation with a training partner that yields positive psycho-social benefits and leads to improved training.  There is something to be said about the group atmosphere of a hard-working training crew, or just being in an environment where other people are training hard.  Spending less time on your phone will aid in being present and experiencing this environment allowing you to feed off it. 

I encourage people to listen to music while they train.  There are too many studies supporting the fact that the driving pulse of the right music can be motivating, hypnotizing, cathartic, and lead to better training outcomes.  You can either select and download the music you want ahead of time or do what I used to do and use two phones.  Treat an old phone like an iPod, using it strictly for music, while using your other phone to film your training.  I know I started by telling you to get off your phone while you train, but using your phone to film and study your own training is not what I mean.  Filming training is very beneficial in helping individual technique, gauging RPE, and watching your training after your set probably helps improve practice.  We do not only learn through movement and skill practice, but our brains use mirror neurons to respond to actions we observe in others.  In this case, the other is you. Watching your own training either immediately post set, or later in the day can help build neuropathways leading to improved technique and higher skill levels.  Eventually you won’t necessarily need to go through all these steps, you will just learn to stay off the poisonous apps. 

Like I said, I realize that I have reached most of you via social media.  While I took time to get my social media usage under control, I still fall into the trap of boredom doom scrolling.  The main strategy that I use these days may seem silly and extreme, but it helps me shut down and control my social media usage from day to day.  I delete Instagram every single night, sometimes for entire weekends.  When I feel like my work is done for the day, my DM is cleared, and I have shared everything that I would like to share that day, I delete the app off my phone.  I tried hiding the app from my home screen, but it never created enough friction to limit my use.   Oddly enough, it does help my brain shut down from work for the day.  Limiting the doom scrolling is one thing, but also limiting the hours that clients can contact me via Instagram and email is very helpful for my work life balance.  I have clients that live in time zones all over the world, it would be unrealistic and mentally unhealthy for me to be available to them 24 hours a day.   In the morning, I try to not redownload the app until I have done a few hours of work.  This ensures that my brain is not receiving all kinds of unwanted or unnecessary inputs first thing in the morning.  I know that I can and will procrastinate work if I allow myself to go on Instagram.  

If you haven’t already done this, turn off all your notifications, or at least the ones that don’t really matter.  These days you can even go as far as to limit reception of messenger and text notifications to only certain contacts.  You probably don’t need to urgently know what is happening on Instagram, discord, Facebook, TikTok, twitter, personal emails, work emails, etc., etc., all day every day.  Honestly assess how much more time you would have in the day if you limited, or better yet completely cut out all social media scrolling.  Not only would you have more time to do what you really needed and wanted to do, but eventually you will regain your ability to concentrate and focus, again freeing up more free time to do the things you want or spend more time with the people you love. 

Learn to let your thoughts think themselves, rather than polluting them with cheap entertainment. 

Mindfulness and Meditation

It just so happened that around the same time I took a deep dive into meditation practice, partly to relearn how to focus my attention, partly working to curb some anxiety and depression I had been battling, mostly just out of curiosity and fascination with Zen Buddhism.  While I wouldn’t say that I have any kind of strict meditation practice these days, the couple years I spent attempting a daily meditation practice were invaluable, and some of the lessons and strategies learned are still in practice today.  While I am no expert, I can try to give you some things to play around with that might help you start your journey to regaining your focus. 

The main place to start is to begin my trying to count your breath, and only count your breath.  Try to focus on your stomach or diaphragm slowly pulling the air into your and exhaling slowly.  Feel the air pass through your nasal cavity, down your windpipe and expand your lungs.  Try to count to 10 breaths, and then count backwards from there.  The goal is to try to get to 10 and back to zero without thinking about anything else.  You will fail.  Everyone fails.  This is okay!  When your mind wanders, acknowledge it, lean into why your mind wandered to that thought, let the thought go, and then start back at zero.  Some people set timers for 20 or 30 minutes and just focus on being still and trying to count their breaths until the timer goes off.  This will be difficult, but with practice you will get better, just like lifting weights.  For powerlifters it also has the added benefit of learning how to control our breath.  From there you might progress to practicing some body awareness while continuing to breathe mindfully.  I used to do this standing, breath by breath working from my toes all the way up to the top of my head.  Inhale, 1, Exhale, feel your toes.  Inhale, 2, Exhale, Feel your feet.   Inhale, 3, Exhale, feel your ankles, and so on until you have covered you whole body.  I used to do this first thing in the morning and follow it with a stretching routine where I would continue trying to count 10 breaths holding different stretches.  Your mind will wander.  Acknowledge the thoughts you are having, let them go, and come back to your breathing.  Let your thoughts think themselves, then let them go. 

Admittedly, I fell out of this routine when I got a high energy dog that needed morning walks.  Eventually I figured out that I could practice most of the breathing and the mindfulness while walking.  There is a practice known as walking Zen where each step is completed after each breath.  The walk can be slow or fast, the goal remains the same, take a step with each inhale and exhale, and keep your focus on your breathing.  While I did practice this mindfulness and meditation for a couple of years, I have fallen out of the habit.  I do still find the breathing practice very valuable when going to sleep, a lot of time I don’t even make it to 10 and I am already snoring away.   Or when I feel like I need to take a breath and take a step back from a stressful situation.  If nothing else this time was valuable in helping myself rebuild my ability to focus, and purposefully spend less time on my phone.  Part of the goal for me, even to this day, is to simply learn how to be at peace in my own head without the gnawing feeling of needing to take the slot machine out of my pocket and begin cranking away on that lever. 

Put your phone away while you train.  I promise you won’t regret it.