Mr. Universe - Perfect Practice

The Difference Is in the Details

This morning I trained with my coach, and the advice was so good I actually pulled out my phone mid-workout to take notes—because the tiny adjustments he made to my technique changed everything. Not big, dramatic overhauls. Little, almost invisible tweaks that turned an exercise I could barely do into one that lit my muscles on fire in the best way.

Here's what I learned, exercise by exercise. Steal every bit of it.

Leg day, corrected

Smith-machine squats. Lean back slightly, bar resting across your upper back (never your neck), elbows rotated forward so the bar rolls back into place. Sit your butt back, engage and squeeze the glutes, and move like a piston—straight down and up. And never, ever lock your knees, and never squeeze your glutes while pushing forward with locked knees.

That one cue—butt back—took me forever to get. My brain kept defaulting to a ballet plié: core tight, bending down without letting my knees pass my toes. But that's a different movement entirely. The second I finally sent my hips backward instead of just bending, the burn showed up like magic. Such a small shift. Such a huge difference.

Leg-press squats. Feet high and wide on the platform. Breathe out on the effort—he told me to exhale like I was pushing out a baby—and engage the glutes and hamstrings together to create balance.

He actually had me place my hand on his leg so I could feel his hamstrings firing, because I couldn't understand it from words alone. Once I felt it, I could finally recruit my own—and suddenly a weight I'd been straining against for several seconds moved with ease. Then he had me glance at the stack. Without telling me, he'd increased the weight. He knew that if my form was right, I could handle more. (And that exhale matters for more than power: holding your breath under a heavy load can spike your blood pressure and leave you dizzy—so breathe.)

Leg curls. Lie face down, knees just off the edge of the pad to isolate the hamstrings. Squeeze your glutes, and squeeze your knees toward each other—pressure without actually moving them.

I made that one microscopic adjustment—knees squeezing together, glutes engaged—and the backs of my legs screamed. By the time my calves reached the top, my hips were lifting right off the bench from how hard everything was contracting. I was literally vocalizing (okay, groaning) through an exercise that had felt easy seconds earlier. Tiny change, enormous result.

Stiff-leg deadlifts. (The purpose here is to sculpt the glutes so they sit higher and rounder.) Unlike a squat, you don't sit back—you reach up toward the ceiling as you squeeze and contract glutes and hamstrings. The key is pulling your legs together without moving them. Back slightly arched so the spinal muscles engage, shoulders lifted and back, knees soft—legs straight but never locked out.

Leg extensions. Pull from the hip-flexor rotation, glutes back, chest up, slight arch. He rested his hand over my knee and had me lift my knee into his hand—then keep that exact feeling the entire movement. Don't flex your feet to hoist the weight; keep the knee lifted and the hip flexor engaged the whole time so you lengthen the entire front thigh, not just the muscle by the knee.

At first, moving from my ankles and calves, the burn stayed stuck down by my knees. The moment I pulled from the hip flexor and glutes instead—it raced all the way up my quads.

Abs (with the coach adding resistance). Knees up, resist, crunch—engage the glutes and lay back without touching the floor. Elongate the spine, then curl up from that lengthened position. I could barely move. I laughed and told him, "I'm thinking about it, but my body is not responding!"

His reasoning was brilliant: most people crunch by curling forward, which builds abs you only see when you're contracting. Train them long—curling up from a tall, extended spine—and you sculpt abs that show even when you're just standing there.

Why the little things matter so much

Every time he demonstrated a move and then watched me copy it, he showed me how my old way had been quietly loading strain onto my knees and lower back with each tiny thing done wrong. When I told him those are the exact spots that hurt when I work out, he just nodded. Now I know why.

He told me how hard it is for him to walk into a gym and watch people coaching others into injury. And honestly, after just a couple of weeks of this, I can't unsee it—I catch people muscling through movements the hard, harmful way everywhere I look. We've spent most of our sessions barely lifting anything heavy at all; we spend twenty or thirty minutes on a single exercise, making sure only the right muscles fire and none of the wrong ones. It's been one of the most fascinating experiences of my life.

Perfect practice, he says, makes perfect performance.

The same secret, in the kitchen

That evening, standing over the stove making dinner and snacking on a batch of sauerkraut I'd fermented a few days earlier, it hit me that this exact principle—the magic is in the small details—is the whole story of how I eat now, too.

Years ago, when I first read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. Weston A. Price, I immediately swore off processed food and figured I'd cracked it. But I'd skimmed right past the details that traditional cultures swore by—the little practices that made all the difference:

• Soaking and sprouting nuts, seeds, and grains
• Leaning into fermented vegetables and probiotic drinks
• Buying locally and eating with the seasons
• Prizing nutrient-dense organ meats, the way native cultures did, not just muscle meats
• Truly understanding how vital healthy fats are to how we feel

Cutting out the junk was step one. The real transformation lived in those tiny, easy-to-overlook adjustments—exactly like sending my hips back in a squat.

And speaking of tiny experiments: while I ate that kraut (which I'd made with a little shredded carrot, a sprinkle of coriander seed, and a few juniper berries), I remembered my coach's tip to eat fats and proteins first and carbs last. On a whim, I stirred olive oil and a dash of cayenne into the sauerkraut… then got bold and tossed in some pecans and a tiny dab of raw honey. Three servings later, I realized I'd invented something genuinely delicious. I have no idea how many people think to combine raw honey, pecans, cayenne, and olive oil with kraut—but wow. (Fair warning: this only works with homemade sauerkraut; the store-bought stuff is a completely different animal.) My kids, meanwhile, were happily devouring beef heart and insisting it "tastes just like steak."

    

The takeaway

Whether it's your hips in a squat, your breath under a barbell, or a spoonful of honey in your kraut—the difference is almost always in the little details. In the gym, in the kitchen, and honestly, in just about everything in life.

Perfect practice makes perfect performance.

Here's to health and happiness!

With much love,

Steffi