Have you ever heard of Spetnaz?
Spetnaz is an elite Soviet special-forces unit and in the 1980’s one of their instructors was a guy by the name of Pavel Tsatsouline.
Pavel came to America and became a fitness trainer, started calling himself “The Evil Russian” and wrote some great books. I’ve been to a couple of his seminars and he is a great speaker. If you’re into this kind of stuff, I highly recommend his books and products.
Anyway, I was re-reading one of his books the other day when I came across his term for “Greasing the groove.”
He explains how greasing the groove will improve physical performance but it really applies to dog training too.
Here is his greasing the groove formula:
Specificity + Frequent Practice = Success
Brilliant!
This is how greasing the groove works:
Let’s say you want to be able to do more push ups.
Instead of doing one long hellacious workout you would break it up and do more frequent, shorter sessions during the day AND quit before your arms became toast.
You would never train to failure – you would end while still having some gas in the tank.
By being specific (Specificity) and doing it often (Frequent Practice) you’ll get much better results (Success).
This is great for dog training.
Let’s use greasing the groove to help your dog.
First we need to get specific with a command. Let’s use the recall (come when called) command.
For the next two weeks we are going to focus on your dog’s recall.
NEXT: Instead of doing one long session a day we are going to do many short, exciting sessions always ending with your dog wanting to do more.
Through the course of the day you are going to do two or three recalls and quit. Some examples would be:
* In the morning before you feed call your dog over to you.
* Have a friend or family member help you do the “Spring Loaded Recall Exercise three times and end.
* Put a long line on your dog and go outside. Wait for your dog to get distracted and use the long line to guide your dog to you.
* While walking, let your dog get out in front of you and then back up and call your dog back to you.
* Practice attention before leaving the house (attention is the foundation for all obedience).
Doing three to four recall training sessions a day will greatly improve your dog’s recall.
Give it a try and let me know how you do.
BTW – if you’re looking to get the best recall, if you want your dog to come back every time you call, check out our basic dog training class. Included with the class is instant access to my popular Ultimate Online Recall Course. You get it all by going here NEXT:
All the best,
Eric