In this article I will explain the bare minimum keys of lifting that athletes and gym goers need to understand in order to consistently increase their strength, week after week, month after month, year after year. While these concepts are basic, I challenge everyone who reads this article to go through this checklist and see how many of these concepts you are employing on a daily basis. I have been in many gyms and I train clients 50 hours a week and I can tell you through personal experience that 99% of the people that I see working out, even those of you who are genetically gifted and naturally athletic, do not employ these simple guidelines and are therefore retarding your fitness level and keeping you self from becoming stronger. And yes, I am talking to all you big guys with the fake macho attitudes and the 500 pound "half bench press." Please read this article and employ these tactics before you hurt yourselves.
1. Reps, Range of motion and Bar speed.
Everyone loves to move heavy weight. Everyone loves to "max out." It gets their juices flowing and makes them feel like they are working hard. This is a common misconception. Maxing out is good because it pushes your body to the limit. However, it is extremely taxing on your central nervous system and if done too often will ultimately throw your body into a regression, or rather a catabolic state where your muscles and nerves cannot recover in a timely fashion. Your central nervous system sends the messages to your muscles to contract, so you can imagine if the CNS is extremely taxed you will not be able to send those messages efficiently to your muscles. This will result in reduced strength and fatigue. That being said, maxing out is important, but you must max out at the appropriate times. For a major lift like squat you should max out no more than every three weeks. And that is if you are on a very intense training regimen. I personally only max out 2 times per month but only on one major lift. For instance, this month is deadlift so I will max out on deadlift on the 1st week of training and the last week of training for the month. This allows me to see progression but at the same time keep my central nervous system functioning optimally. Keep in mind my program is quite a bit more intense than most of humanity. Two times a month for maxing for any lift may be too much for you.
Instead of trying to push up as much weight as possible or as many times as possible, try something a little different. Try lowering the reps of your set, decreasing the weight, and increasing the speed at which you move the weight or the bar. If it takes you 7 seconds to get your final bench press from your chest to the lock position, you are not performing the bench correctly and you are training to be slow and weak. The mathematical formula for power is work/time. This means you are producing more power and training your body to be more efficient by moving 225 pounds of weight through full range of motion in one second, than you are if you are trying to press 350 pounds and it takes you 5 seconds. So athletes, please increase your power. If you do this your maximal strength will increase naturally.
I referenced those bench press champs a minute ago...the ones who lower the bar 3 inches and then take ten seconds to move a huge amount of weight. What is the point of this? Just stop. It not only looks ridiculous but it's also extremely dangerous and pointless. TRAIN YOUR BODY THROUGH FULL RANGE OF MOTION. There is nothing more to say about this ridiculousness.
2. Stretch your opposing muscles and strengthen your secondary muscles with heavier weights.
When performing any lift it is always important to stretch your opposing muscles. These are the muscles that naturally counteract the movement that lift you are about to perform requires. For instance if you are about to perform a bench press...why the hell are you stretching your chest? Warm your shoulders up, warm your chest up. Get a couple of practice sets in but please stop stretching your chest. You can stretch it after the bench press but if you stretch it before you will lose the much needed cross tension in your muscles to perform an effective lift. Instead stretch your back. Stretch your rhomboids, stretch your biceps. These are muscles that oppose or counteract the contraction of the triceps, anterior deltoids of the shoulder, and the pectorals. THESE ARE THE PRIME MOVERS OF THE BENCH PRESS! If you stretch the opposing muscle groups you will have an easier time moving weight. Those muscles need to be loose and slightly deactivated so that they do not oppose the movement of the prime movers.
3. Strengthen your synergistic secondary muscles with heavy weights.
I will use the bench press once again as an example. If you want a huge bench you have to have a huge chest right? Wrong! While having efficient pectoral muscles is important, it is NOT the only thing you need to produce a large bench press. In order to increase the amount of weight you can move in any major lift, you must strengthen the synergist muscles - THE MUSCLES THAT ASSIST THE PRIME MOVERS! And notice that I said strength. Not power. While power is important in all movements, especially compound movements, it is essential that when isolating a muscle you push it to its maximum potential or close to it. For instance, being able to do a triceps kick back with 35 pounds for 15 reps really serves very little purpose when looked at from an athletic standpoint. Instead perform your isolated shoulder movements and triceps and lat movements for 8 reps and 5 sets. Or whatever is comfortable, but please work them heavy.
4. Breathing and core conditioning
One of the most essential things that almost everyone neglects to do is train their core properly. Your core has 3-4 times the nerve innervations as most muscles. Therefore your core was designed to perform more tasks in more directions and even move in multiple directions at one time. It is imperative that you focus on strengthening your entire core musculature from your neck to your lower abs (TVA) to the stabilizers in your lower back. If your core is weak how can you expect the rest of your body to function properly? I find it interesting that most people in the gym focus on their extremities so much more than their core and fail to remember that all of their extremities attach to the core. I'm sure that everyone has heard the saying one must build a house on a solid foundation. The same applies to your body. If you have strong arms and a weak core, YOU ARE WEAK! END OF STORY. If your core is weak you are not maximizing the potential of your body. Someone who has a weak core is unstable, not properly proportioned, and most definitely not as athletic or as explosive as they could be. Train your core properly and you will become stronger.
I recently read a study that showed that the average American breathes 18-22 times per minute. This is perfect representation of how humans have become so de-conditioned that they don't even know how to breathe properly. In order to maximize the amount of oxygen your body can intake and utilize we should all learn to breathe into our diaphragms rather than taking these short lung breaths that do nothing for increasing our vo2 maximum. Not only do we perform at higher levels with more oxygen in our body but we are also happier human beings when we slow our heart rates down by taking these larger deeper diaphragmatic breaths.
Breathing into your diaphragm also has a direct correlation to controlling your lift in any exercise. By "charging" the belly, or filling it with air before our lift. We increase the stability in our core and spine, resulting in a much more stable environment for our bodies to produce maximum force.
As I stated above these concepts are the basics of exercise. 99.9 percent of people I see everyday do not follow these basic principles. That means that 99.9 percent of people are either hurting themselves in the long run, or hindering their overall performance.
The staff and I at Primal Athletic Performance will be writing another article soon on the more advanced techniques to power production and athleticism. Please, if you choose to use the techniques that we employ on a day-to-day basis, start with basics and master them before you move onto the more difficult techniques.
David Gentile
Owner/ Head trainer
Primal Athletic Performance
No comments:
Post a Comment