Dr. Layne Norton

So I did a pin squat above parallel the next time I was in.

some more belt squats.

Within three weeks, I was back squatting below parallel with no pain.

And again, I'm like, okay, pain, the idea that it's a tissue injury, maybe, but also maybe not.

Sometimes it's your body trying to send you a signal saying, hey, our volume is getting pretty high and we're not recovered enough, like back off, back off.

And so I've learned to kind of

take pain more as a, take it as it comes and not put so much judgment behind it.

And it has made such an enormous difference in my training.

And yeah, I just, long story short, the best explanation I heard, I think it was from Sean Mackey when he was on Huberman's podcast.

I think he said, pain is an experience and it's more like an emotion than it is

What we would normally think of as like the old school brain connected to your body, that sort of thing.

And so, again, I've become big on what happens in the mind affects the body.

What happens in the body affects the mind.

So I think everyone should auto-regulate their training regardless of whatever happens, OK?

And so if you have a poor night's sleep and you come in and you're feeling like crap and it's not moving well, then reduce the load and adjust accordingly.

But that set of squats, my best ever set of squats I hit, that 530 for 10, that was after a night where I literally slept nothing.

But I had the approach of, well, I'm going to go in and just see how it feels.

And if it feels bad, I'll reduce my target load and we'll just manage it.

And I felt a little shaky.

I felt like, you know, I didn't feel great, but it was moving for whatever reason.