06/01/2022
Want to feel and look better? Do you want more strength, energy and performance? Or simply to become healthier?
Choosing the best lifestyle changes for you will get you on the right path. Eating a healthier diet is important, and so is proper rest. To enjoy the full rewards of wellness, we need to add activity to our daily habits. All of this requires commitment, discipline, and consistency within a framework of properly dosed physical activities that match your goals. Yes, I said âdosedâ, and it is important that the intensity and duration of the activity matches our ability to adapt. If we are not careful, we can over-reach and burn ourselves out, or worse â get injured.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then context is worth a million. We can look at the pictures and visualize what we think we will enjoy, and yet miss the mark when it is time to apply the proper âdosingâ to our training program. For example, if we are simply exercising to burn calories, we can simply lift weights as an exercise form. We can also choose something like walking or running on a treadmill, but we are going to talk about weight training for our example. Simple enough right? Ease into it and slowly increase the intensity as you feel better.
What if we change the context of what we are doing, so that we want to build strength in the three main lifts of powerlifting (Bench Press, Squat, and Deadlift)? In this situation, training needs to be directed at providing a stimulus that specifically builds strength in these lifts. How hard you train and how much you train becomes very important. Training needs to focus on adaptations to the nervous system that preferentially allow you to lift more weight. We train these movements with a form and dosage designed to lift the most weight, and it works well. You build some muscle as you progress, with the priority being to train the nervous system to allow you to lift more. In this context, there is a very specific training strategy that must be reflected in a training program. This means lower repetition numbers such as 1-5, with weights close to your 1 repetition maximum.
Okay, so what if we want to focus on building muscle? There are lots of reasons to build muscle besides looking good, and that is a subject for another day. Training to build muscle is also fairly specific, and the proper amounts of sets, reps, weight, and rest periods become important. The three main lifts of powerlifting are still relevant, except that we are not using them the same way. In contrast to powerlifting, training for hypertrophy is all about providing a stimulus designed for the main purpose of building muscle. You still get stronger, and yet the emphasis is on getting bigger muscles. The focus of each exercise is to build muscle, and we want as much range of motion as we can safely accomplish. The hypertrophy range that works best is 5-30. I like 5-10 the best because there is less fatigue and faster recovery between sessions.
To become faster with more explosive power on the field when playing football or basketball, we apply speed to our exercise performance. To a certain extent, getting stronger with more muscle will help. Bigger, stronger muscles are usually faster muscles, but only to a point. Exercise selection and performance need to be aimed specifically toward a speed and power adaptation. This necessitates some degree of speed and explosiveness while lifting in a safe manner that allows transfer of training into our sport.
The last three paragraphs each lean toward a specific target stimulus in our training that pushes us further towards our goals. The three main lifts of powerlifting can be used in each application, and yet the context in which they are used is different. Training context is everything and proper use gets us to our goals faster.
Training progression is important in each of these scenarios, and individual training age and recent experience is important to define a starting point. With this in mind, we can design a measured training program tailored to the individual for all ages. What do you like to do?
