What I am about to write about is absolutely NOT new information. Honestly, I don’t really come up with totally ‘original’ ideas too often if I’m being honest. But in the world of health & fitness we need to do a lot more learning from the past instead of constantly trying to satisfy our content hungry culture we have found ourselves in today.
Anyways… let’s dive into today’s topic: How Strength Training IS the answer to your fitness frustrations and what exactly does ‘strength training’ mean?
First let’s talk about what strength training isn’t.
It isn’t doing 15 different exercises in a short period of time.
It isn’t doing everything with a light pair of dumbbells.
It isn’t ‘booty bands’.
It isn’t 90% of group training classes.
It isn’t 99% of the online programs being advertised towards Women.
It isn’t particularly interesting to try to sell.
I could go on but I might start getting annoyed by these things.
You will see some commonalities between these examples when I start talking about what I would consider ‘strength training’ to be.
Strength training has only one priority. To get stronger… duh.
This single factor drives everything about the style training. When it comes to pure strength training we get rid of things that are superfluous. We don’t have time and energy to do sets of 20 curtsy lunges.
(I want to make a quick point that what might come off as me bashing other modalities of training is not meant to be seen that way. I encourage people do what they enjoy. Right now I am purely discussing what will yield RESULTS… everyone might not like what I say but I will say it nonetheless)
So I want to pinpoint 3 things that can differentiate strength training from other modalities:
rest time
progressive overload
consistency
Before we dive into these 3 things individually I want to point out why I think strength training doesn’t really ‘sell’ and why it isn’t discussed in typical media.
It’s because on the face of it it’s boring and difficult.
Not easy to sell boring. Not easy to keep up with difficult.
But if I could hold you back from running away from me for 10 seconds I would tell you to not miss out on the other thing the masses miss out on: RESULTS.
Getting results all of a sudden makes things fun and easy… because you actually experience success!
Alright… let’s talk about rest time.
In order to get stronger… you need to rest and recover.
And yes I mean sleeping at night. This is a HUGE factor.
But what I am talking about right now, specifically, is the rest time in a given workout.
You see, what people often do is try to work up a sweat by jumping between 2 or 3 exercises with no more than a minute of rest between exercising. This is affording your body no time to recover for the next bout of straining you expect it to keep up with.
This means lower performance in the moment. It also means your body isn’t going to be adapting to stimulus that will yield strength and muscle.
So what do you need to do?
You need to work hard on a set of whatever it is you are doing. Then sit your ass down and don’t do jack shit for 3 minutes… AT LEAST!
I’m not kidding. This will feel like absolute hell to so many people but here is what’s going to happen. You will be able to work WAY harder during the sets. AND you won’t have time to do most of the things that aren’t even effective in the first place.
All of a sudden your workout goes form 15 exercises to 3 or 4… so you better choose stuff that yields dividends.
Now, in my gym we don’t “sit on our asses” for 3 minutes of rest. Instead, we do a lot of mobility and low intensity work between sets of our most demanding exercises. This will still be seen as rest as far as our body is concerned. But I am there with my watchful eye… I won’t be there in the gym with you… so don’t assume you can do the same thing.
Trust me.
Work hard.
Rest hard.
Ok… onto progressive overload.
Progressive overload is the practice of increasing the demand you put on yourself in a series of workouts.
You could do this by doing 5-10 more pounds on a given exercise compared to the previous time.
You could do this by doing 2 or 3 more reps than before.
You could do this in a variety of other ways but the point is simple… YOU PUSH HARDER THAN BEFORE.
The key here is that you only push 1% more than previously.
A mistake I often see is people going for excessive increases from workout to workout.
You are in this for the long haul there is no rush.
Plus people act like ‘only’ getting 5 pounds stronger on your squat isn’t good progress to make in one month’s time.
Guess what… if you were able to keep that up for a year that would be 60 pounds on your squat! I would kill for that progress.
So the lesson here is simple right?
Instead of spinning your wheels try to improve on at least one exercise each and every workout.
Finally we have come to the topic of consistency.
In order to get stronger you will have to practice the same exercises over and over.
That means if you are doing deadlifts this week you should also do them for the next couple of months.
Your body needs practice to not only get more efficient from a neurological sense, but also to get the repeated signals of muscle growth to actually add the muscle/strength you are looking for.
If you are constantly doing a new batch of exercises each and every week you are greatly limiting your potential.
Olympic weightlifters focus on maybe 10 different exercises their ENTIRE CAREER. Sure they do some other things here and there but as far as what they are repeating time and time and time and time again… it is the exercises that have the most carryover to their sport and to making them stronger.
If that concept is good enough for olympians I think it is good enough for you too.
Alright cool cool gang.
I hope this is helpful and if you have ANY questions then don’t hesitate to email me at brickbybrickgym@gmail.com
If you are interested in working with me as a personal training (in person or remote) then email me with ‘training’ in the subject line.
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