Herd instinct

Not a drop of nectar in this winter snowscape. Birds have no pockets, no provisions. How would it feel to embody such courage? IN RESPONSE TO the massive threats facing the planet, increasing numbers of people are engaging in strategies to create a more just, sustainable, and ecologically diverse world. Millions of organizations have sprung up in the past three decades to do just that, collectively seeking to advance rights and opportunities; In his beautiful article Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken describes the sheer number of organizations and individuals pursuing social change that have emerged in the past thirty years as the largest movement the world has ever seen. When we act on behalf of the common good, we feel proud, and that pride is important to environmental engagement. Over the past few decades there has been a dramatic increase in the number of research studies exploring the role of emotions in behavior change. Tapering is simply allowing the athlete to stay mentally sharp, very strong, very crisp, and very powerful. We are taking all the newly developed strength, speed, power, and conditioning and allowing you to be game ready. DROP THE VOLUME, NEVER THE INTENSITY. During the recovery and tapering phase, the intensity will remain high, but the time in the gym and the amount of work are reduced, and we gradually reduce the work volume before you get into that important day. We prescribe numerous explosive movement exercises such as snatches, cleans, jerks, jumps, and medicine ball throws. We pair that work with maximal strength exercises: back squat, front squat, chin-up, bench press, and push press. The focus in this phase is not to hit a personal best or personal record in any lifts. The focus is to stay sharp, stay fast, at a high intensity of at least 90% of the maximum effort. This allows you to get into game day, camp, try-out fresh, sharp, and strong as possible. Every movement you do, you move with velocity. Republicans cast more conservative votes. Diverse groups can make better decisions than homogeneous groups because they bring together unique viewpoints and past experiences that provide a broader framework for a problem.

If the group cannot find someone who genuinely disagrees with the majority view, they can designate a group member to play devil's advocate, someone who is given free license to search for flaws in the group's thinking and planning. This will help the group consider the relevant information more carefully before deciding on a course of action (Nemeth, Brown, et al. Group diversity is also a powerful safeguard against groupthink. Although we may feel more comfortable discussing decisions in groups of like-minded others, including people with diverse perspectives and opinions is likely to result in more vigorous discussion, fresh perspectives, and creative ideas (Nemeth & Ormiston, 2007; In the courtroom, for example, racially diverse juries make better decisions than all-White juries (Sommers, 2006). Racially diverse jurors exchanged a wider range of information and facts and were less likely to misremember evidence as they discussed the case. In fact, when members of the White majority simply expected to make a decision in a racially diverse group, they took a broader perspective on the evidence at hand (Sommers et al. Reinterpreting Group Cohesiveness And what those studies reveal is that feelings of pride, or compassion, or that you are part of something meaningful, are much more likely to keep you engaged in changing your behavior than if someone is telling you there is no hope. Princeton University research demonstrates that emphasizing the pride people will feel if they make environmentally conscious decisions is a better way to promote eco-friendly behavior than making people feel guilty for not living more sustainably. You are hopepunk When you stand up for other people and other species, you are adding your voice and actions to a vast movement focused on making change for the better. Hopepunk is a narrative of positive resistance. We see evidence of hopepunk in families and communities that welcome and support refugees. We see it in Finland, where people do not sleep on the streets. A dramatic change in policy recognizes home as a basic human right and now gives people housing as soon as they need it. Hopepunk fuels the protest marches against climate change, racism, inequality, and human-rights injustices. We see it in mission-driven institutions, like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which successfully mobilizes big-scale social change around marine protected areas, sustainable seafood, climate change, ocean plastic, and more by working in diverse partnerships, and modeling ocean conservation values in everything they do. Speed is heavily emphasized while tapering. When you squat, squat with speed.

When you bench, bench with speed. When you do chin-ups, chin-ups with speed. Power cleans, snatches, and everything else needs to be done with speed, efficiency, and proficient. The technique at this point must be sound, and all we are emphasizing is getting to maximum velocity for the explosive movements. A common mistake I notice is that athletes not training heavy enough during the taper or are taking an excessive amount of break from lifting or they would completely stop--that is harmful to the progress already made. You may reduce the volume of the lifts, meaning less reps and less sets, but you should never ever stop. For example, if you bench 200 lb, your goal is to try to work up to 180 lb which are 90% of your maximum effort as frequently as possible. For exercises like the bench, athletes should be doing this at least twice a week, and stay within 10 to 20 kg away from their max or within 90% of their max at any given time. Stressing the importance of group cohesion can create a breeding ground for group polarization and groupthink. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that improving group decision making requires squelching group cohesiveness. Rather, group members can reinterpret what it means to be a cohesive group. Groups can be cohesive in their commitment to help group members make the best possible decisions. That is, rather than think of cohesiveness as pushing the group toward consensus, think about it as a promise to reach the best possible outcome and prevent the group from doing something harmful. Studies show, in fact, that if group members think about how one of the group's norms could harm the group, the ones who are strongly identified with the group voice their dissent about that norm, whereas those who are weakly identified stay silent (Packer, 2009). They care so much about the group that they are the first to voice their dissent to protect the group from a bad decision. Groups make better decisions when they follow a norm of sharing constructive criticism than when they focus on maintaining group harmony (Postmes et al. Encouraging Individuality Recall that according to the social comparison theory of group polarization, groups shift toward more extreme positions because group members are concerned with other group members liking them. Hopepunk shines through in the rising tide of people who volunteer, and in those who help friends and neighbors. Americans, for instance, volunteered a record $203.

The term hopepunk emerged within pop culture in a Tumblr post by Alexandra Rowland, a Massachusetts writer, in July 2017. And of course, there is also noblebright, which is basically the storyline of fairytales--a powerful hero comes along and saves us. I think a lot of people have positioned Greta Thunberg in a kind of noblebright narrative. Rather than waiting for a single heroic figure to lead us out of trouble, hopepunk situates heroism as a collective response. It's about committing to what you believe in and acting as a force for good. Regardless of how wrecked something is or how bad things might be, you act in the best ways you can. Hopepunk acknowledges that caring about something requires strength and bravery. Vulnerable, inspired, defiant, responsive, connected to others present and elsewhere--these are just some of the feelings Jason Miller, a graduate student, described as he shifted from being a sympathetic bystander, sending support through the internet, to standing in solidarity with protesters demanding human rights. This will help you maintain your strength because strength is the quality that you can lose quickly. When you lose strength, you lose power. There is an inverse relationship between strength and power, so the goal is to stay above 85% of your max load at any time of the week. We like our athletes to aim for 90% so they have another 5% to drop if we see that the velocity of the movement becomes too slow. The reason I am so bent on keeping athletes strong is to prevent them from losing the power developed. Especially if this is your first off-season in building strength and power, you will lose those qualities exponentially faster than someone who has done proper off-season training for years. The key components are to create that power, harness that power, and sharpen that FEELING GOOD VS ADAPTATION Athletes sometimes confuse feeling good from being ready. When it is time for them to perform, they perform poorly. Thus, they exaggerate their agreement with the group's position. It seems that group polarization would be reduced if group members focused on themselves as individuals and cared less about how they are evaluated by the group.

Indeed, one study showed that group discussion did not polarize group members' initial attitudes if, prior to the discussion, group members were primed to focus on their unique individual qualities (Lee, 2007). The same holds true for groupthink, which occurs in large part because group members fail to break from the group norm and voice their doubts about ideas they perceive as wrong or harmful. If group members are led to believe that they are personally responsible for the outcome of their group's decision, they are less likely to fall victim to groupthink tendencies (Kroon et al. THINK ABOUT Consider this research on groupthink and individuality side-by-side with our previous discussions of deindividuation and social loafing. What themes do they have in common? Planning to Be Objective Another safeguard against bad decision making is to schedule some distancing into your group interactions--step back, cool down, and take the perspective of a neutral observer on the process of decision making. The experience finally gave me a bodily response to what I have known intellectually for some time--that this goal of affecting positive change will always be an uphill battle, and that one must be willing to play the role of the outsider even when advocating for a collective. But I also left feeling the vitality of those desiring change. Dystopias thrive in an unjust world Our feelings about the state of the planet are intimately tied to our conceptions of utopia and dystopia. The narrative of planetary doom and gloom assumes a universal decline into a dystopian future. Yet the vast range of issues changemakers seek to address reminds us that dystopias are not only a future threat but a current reality in places all over the world. Speaking on CBC Radio in February of 2020, Dr Mohamad Abrash, a surgeon in Syria, described the horror experienced by the more than 700,000 civilians trapped by a closed Turkish border and below-freezing temperatures while trying to flee the fighting. We are living day by day. Such terrible situations occur because of systemic inequity and injustice, which too often inflames political, ethnic, or religious tensions. We live in a world where power and wealth are highly unequally distributed. Do not make that mistake. Taking a huge amount of rest days may make you feel good mentally, but at the risk of losing strength, power, and speed especially if you are new to strength training is a disadvantage you do not want your competitors to have on you.