It happened on a day that felt good. No warning. No red flag. Just his body, mid-rep, deciding the effort was over.
Two weeks into a free-squat cycle, at a point in life when he felt strong enough to think about getting back on a competitive platform, Mark Rogers felt his adductor go “POP.” He calls it one of the worst pains he’s felt. Even worse than the three shoulder surgeries that came before it.
The injury brought more reflection than pain; it forced him to separate who he used to be to who he would train to become. It meant letting go of who he was to step into who he wanted to be for this next chapter of life, without “what if” distractions.
Mark spent his mid-20s until recently with strength at the center of his identity.
Strength training wasn’t just part of his life, it was his life. (I can relate. It’s also how Mark and I met nearly 20 years ago.) The adductor injury cost his platform comeback attempt and it made him confront a question every human has to answer eventually: what happens when the thing you built your identity around isn’t your [primary] story anymore?
On this episode of Muscle Moments, Mark and I get into:
Why chasing an adaptation over numbers is strength training evolved (percentages be damned!)
Training age vs actual age
Understanding that coaches are “just a resource” for clients will set you free
Pain and injury are not the same thing, and the distinction between the two
A hand-me-down breathing cue that changes how your body handles stress (or a heavy lift)
On the personal side, we get into Saturday steak-night traditions, the best salad he’s ever had (& ate five times in one week), and his [current] favorite training song which is decidedly heavier than you’d expect from a guy who talks this much about presence and breathwork.
Letting Go of Your Core Identity
Mark is candid about something all lifelong athletes experience: his favorite sports & fitness modalities, powerlifting & strength training, weren’t a part of his life, they were his whole life.
In his mid-20s, his identity centered around what he could do under a bar, or on the field. Recovery wasn’t something he thought about, because he didn’t feel like he needed to. He pushed every session as hard - or harder than - the last, because the training was the identity. No separation.
Somewhere in his early-40s, Mark had to make peace with a new truth: lifting, strength training for sport, isn’t his life anymore. Through the evolution, he learned how to evolve to make it part of his identity, which meant building an entire career around it.
I talk about this a lot with my own clients, most are rebuilding strength after life took over and they lost confidence in what they are capable of. Unfortunately, when you stop moving, the body stops adapting, so going back to what worked 20 years ago is like stepping into an old identity that won’t run on your current operating systems, it will not produce the desired results.
Chase the Adaptation, Not the Number
Mark asked me to ask him what he’d ask his 25-year-old self, so I did. The answer came without hesitation, “Stop chasing numbers. Chase the adaptation,” he said.
Chasing a number means measuring your training against a single weight for the day. It could be a PR, a max, or a percentage, in any of those cases it’s a quantifiable number. It’s a situation where either you did, or you didn’t. It has it’s place, but according to Mark, it can really make or break your day.
Chasing an adaptation means training because of what it’s doing to my body, and checking in to make sure it’s what your body needs.
Behest of my deepest desires, most people do not need to lift hundreds and hundreds of pounds to achieve the benefits of strength training. I’ve learned to accept this, for my clients more than for myself.
When your workout focuses on adaptation, you’re focused on how you feel. A heavy three-rep squat can be the right stimulus for a 50-year-old client, but the same lift would barely register for a college athlete.
Getting a person’s body to adapt has many sequences to build from: Volume, load, even tempo can all be adjusted to stimulate the training effect without adding weight to the bar. This is a nuance most overlook because chasing the number is simpler, it’s concrete. Chasing adaptation means getting in touch with your feelings. And, it’s easier for coaches to spot.
This also aligns with a core belief that more does not mean better when it comes to building muscle.
The Washington Post recently released an article that analyzed over 100,000 people and found the sweet spot for strength training is around 90 to 119 minutes a week. That’s two sessions in the gym a week. Mark’s read tracks with what he teaches: past a certain point, more time under the bar isn’t better training, it’s likely chasing the dopamine hit that comes with being in the gym.
The key is knowing when the adaptation your body needs has happened. Everything after that is ego.
Coaches Are a Resource Not a Fixture
Mark coaches athletes from all skill levels including Paralympic swimmer, Lizzi Smith.
Mark has trained Lizzi through two Olympic cycles. Her presence in the gym gave him a regular reminder about what his job is as a coach. “We are just a resource that they see maybe two to three hours a week,” he says. “They are on their own the rest of the time.”
A small statement with a large correction. A lot of coaches (start to) believe their program is the most important thing in a client’s life, it’s the answers to all that ails them, and it’s sold as such. I get it completely, our clients’ success is our life but their time with me, as a coach, is only part of their life. The training is real, the stimulus matters, but the person walks out the door and lives an entire life that has nothing to do with their coach. Our job is to make sure the two or three hours we get are valuable for them, it leaves them feeling the impact of our time together.
I believe this understanding is part of what makes Mark a successful multi-faceted coach for over two decades.
Pain Is Not Injury
“Pain does not mean injury,” Mark says. “You can have pain without injury. Sometimes they are not mutually exclusive, but they can be one and the same.”
Until you’ve lived both sides of it, it’s a hard distinction to make. For Mark, the adductor tear was an injury; sudden, debilitating pain is a clear sign to stop. The discomfort that comes with training isn’t a clear stop sign; in training it’s tension and fatigue that are the ordinary cost of asking your body to adapt to something harder than it’s done before.
The line between the two comes down to honesty. Know what your goal is and stay aligned to that goal. Center your training around what you can currently do, not what you think or wish you could do. He calls the latter “trying to ride two horses with one ass,” chasing strength and a small body composition goal at the same time, at max intensity, and wondering why neither is working. We can’t out-train dishonesty about what we’re capable of in the gym.
The adductor injury slowed Mark down long enough to force him to retrain smarter. Today he can free-squat pain-free because he stopped trying to out-muscle the truth about his body’s capacity and started working with it instead.
Your Turn
Mark closes the conversation with a question: are you chasing a number, or are you chasing the adaptation you need?
Write down what you’re currently measuring yourself against. Is it a PR, a number on the scale, or a pace you used to hold. Then ask if that number tells you the truth about where you are today, or whether you’ve been chasing a version of yourself that no longer needs defending.
Strength is a life strategy.
You don’t get to keep the old identity and gain the new results. Chase the adaptation.
ABOUT MARK
Mark Rogers is the founder of MR Sports Performance, based out of Trybe Wellness and Performance Center in Leander, Texas, where he works as a performance specialist with clients ranging from general population adults to collegiate athletes to Paralympic and professional competitors. He has spent nearly 20 years in the private sector coaching strength and performance across every level of athlete. He is a father of four.
GET IN TOUCH WITH MARK
Instagram: mr_saf_atx
Website: trainwithtrybe.com
