"Because you needed to do it."

If you don't occationally head over to the Elite FTS website to check in on what Dave Tate is doing then you are really missing out! Dave keeps a killer training/life log. I've pasted below an excerpt from an entry Dave made a couple days ago. Basically Dave did two training sessions in one session and went ALL OUT - the session lasted over 3 HOURS. The part I pasted below is Dave remember another time he did something similar to this.

Dave admitted that in his brain "the guy who knows about training" thought it was a bad idea but "the guy does training" thought it was a great idea. For Dave it was all about going beyond the normal. Pushing himself to a point where he thought his training session was going to kill him - but knowing it would only make him stronger. It might sound corny but as Dave puts it at the end of his entry "Only a hand full will understand" Do you? When was the last time you threw out your periodization plan, set/rep scheme, and went all out? What do you do to make yourself feel alive?
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This began as a workout...: "Yep I guess so but I remember years ago after another one of these dumb ass sessions. I asked Louie why he let me do that (I think that session was 40 sets of box squat with 45 seconds rest) when there is no way it would do anything good or help me get stronger.

His replay was...

'Because you needed to do it.'

We spoke more about this and there were other factors involved such as this was way out from a meet, I was healthy and did not have a big session planed for a couple weeks. If these factors were different he would have stopped the session (as he had to do many, many other times with not just me but almost all the lifters he works with).

What I have grown to understand is these sessions do not KILL us and make us stronger. They make us more ALIVE. These are the ones where you test who you really are and what you are really made of. These tests the essence of who you are. When this is what is being challenged then it does not freaking matter what you are doing and what the physical outcome will be. What matters the most is like I said at the beginning...

Only a hand full will understand. "