The problem, however, which I’d like to bring to your attention is that not all “strength” training is the same. Many people, including health care professionals and personal trainers for that matter, would agree that it is a good idea to incorporate strength training into your personal fitness plan. The problem, though, is just because someone gives a nod to the virtues of getting stronger does not mean they have a proper understanding of what legitimate strength training is, let alone how to help you achieve it. What’s more complicated is that just because a particular trainer is strong or at least looks strong does not mean they are skilled at helping you to improve your strength. This is similar to the way that a person who excels in math does not necessarily make for an effective math teacher. It can be frustrating when you are in the market to find a trainer who can help you intelligently increase your strength in an efficient manner but you keep running into countless variations of the same flavor of training, which does little to actually improve your strength. This frustration is compounded when you have doubled down on your investment of time, energy, and money with multiple trainers, only to keep finding yourself with the same poor results. You are certainly working hard; you’re just putting your effort in the wrong place. Many trainers fail to understand this.
Evaluating Strength Training
So how does one accurately evaluate and improve their strength? Well, I use some very simple and proven methods to do this. Those methods involve using the major barbell lifts. These exercises are unique in that they enable the one performing them to lift the most amount of weight over the longest effective range of motion while incorporating the most amount of muscle mass. This makes them safe and efficient tools to assess and build strength. This method is also easily measurable, observable, and repeatable. That makes it reliable for repeat assessments over the life of the trainee. The squat, bench press, press, and deadlift are my go-to measurement tools. They allow me to increase or decrease load in increments of as little as 1/2 pound total. They are an easy way to repeat testing to accurately track client progress. In comparison, many other training programs offer no legitimate, concrete measurement to assess progress. The barbell lifts have largely been eschewed in place of inferior movements that fail to meet the criteria mentioned above. While the barbell lifts require an experienced coach to teach them, they are clearly superior in testing for strength but also eliciting potent gains in strength, bone density, and increasing lean muscle in all who train the movements regularly and intelligently. Aside from assessing strength via the main barbell movements, you are left with exercises and methods that offer a far less accurate means of tracking progress. Weighted isolation movements (using only one joint during execution) are very limited in that you cannot get stronger at them for nearly as long as the compound (using more than one joint during execution) movements I prefer.
Then there are bodyweight exercises. These are notoriously difficult to scale, since the set resistance for every exercise is your own bodyweight, which can and often does fluctuate somewhat on a weekly if not daily basis. Bodyweight exercises are therefore difficult to increase or decrease the resistance incrementally, which makes them very difficult to scale for a person who is not yet strong enough to move their own body through the required range of motion. There are methods in which to do this; however, they require a person to have a fair degree of athleticism and courage to be able to perform many of them. For most bodyweight movements, the primary means of assessing improvement is to increase the number of reps one can perform in a row or across a set amount of time. You probably have already begun to realize the inherent limitations here when the aim of the assessment is to measure maximum force production. These other kinds of movements do have their rightful place within the overall scope of a complete training program. They can make for great additions to a sound strength program in order to add variety or to incorporate conditioning work. Suffice it to say for now, they are simply inadequate to form the foundation of an effective strength training program.
Find a Strength Training Program Near Greensboro
In conclusion, to significantly increase your strength, you must first choose the correct movements and measure where you are starting from. You must learn to execute them properly over their fullest effective range of motion, and you must follow an intelligently designed plan in which you systematically increase the load over time. This is by no means a complicated process for the vast majority of people looking to get stronger. Barbell training is not ancient, but it’s sadly a lost art for most in the personal training business. Unfortunately, the shift in the fitness industry has moved toward fancier, more sophisticated looking exercises which are easier to teach. The client’s head begins to spin as they are blinded by the fancy footwork of complicated movements, randomized workouts and unnecessarily sophisticated programming. The illusion is that if the exercise or workout is hard, then it must also be productive. Let me leave you with this analogy to make this final point: if you had to take down a huge oak tree, would you rather swing away at it with a 10 pound sledge hammer or cut it down with a well-oiled chainsaw?? The sledge hammer would certainly be more work. You’d leave the day’s work hot, tired, sweaty, and maybe even confused, but an ugly, marred oak tree would likely still stand. The chainsaw, however, would make for short work of the same task. When you want to increase your strength and get in shape, choose the right tools for the job and work in the right order. At Revolution Strength & Conditioning, we stick with the “chainsaw” approach and use the barbell lifts as the foundation of our programming for strength. Everything else just “falls” into place better that way.