1. Dismissing Body Weight Training: Strength focused programs often neglect body weight training—a costly mistake.
Gains in absolute strength are important—they are the main focus. But they can’t be at the expense of body composition. Body fat must be kept in check.
Body weight exercises, such as push-ups and pull-ups, are great for monitoring body composition and relative strength. If your bench goes up, but you can’t doas many pull-ups, you know that there’s a problem.
Body Weight Training is a key element to developing relative strength which is critical for sports performance and overall health!
2. The Rep Only Mindset: Three sets of ten were drilled into our heads. It’s been that way since we’ve picked up our first barbell. We can remember the days of picking up a Muscle and Fitness Mag, grabbing a jug of Weider Protein from Wal-Mart and slinging dumbbells at the YMCA. These days are gone.
Don’t mistake what we say, hypertrophy is important. Building true strength, however, requires higher... intensities and utilization of low rep ranges. Max effort training is a great example.
Strength is mainly a neural adaptation, not a muscular adaptation. To prime the nervous system, and build true strength, low rep and max effort training is necessary.
In order to build maximal strength you need to add in some max effort exercises into your routine!
3. Shutting Off The Power: Power training enhances strength (ever hear of the dynamic effort method?). Like strength, power is the product of fine tuning the nervous system. Reaching optimal strength levels requires power training and development.
A good reference point is a sticking point for a given lift. Let’s say your deadlift sticking point is at your knees. Building deadlift power by including... dynamic effort deadlifts in a program will alleviate the sticking point.
Without power training, sticking points becoming increasingly difficult to overcome.
4. Dismissing De-Loads: Training week after week, month after month at the same volume will wear on your body—resulting in an overtaxed nervous system and soft-tissue that won’t recover. Planning de-load weeks is a crucial pre-emptive strategy to avoid over-training. Sometimes a step back is required to take a step forward.
5. Skipping the Preparation Phase: The anticipation of huge gains sometimes is... sometimes too much for folks. In haste, they jump into the middle of a program without completing the preparation phase.
Overlooking the preparation phase of any program is detrimental to performance during the later phases. It’s named preparation phase for a distinct reason — the design and execution enhances the adaptations of future training.
Those strength gains you couldn’t wait for might not be waiting for you if you put the kibosh to good preparation.
Many people also tend to forget to build strong foundation with very basic movements such as uni-lateral lower body work. Many single leg exercises can really aid in stability and increased performance out on the field.
Including dynamic work with a barbell, performing jumping exercises for the upper and lower body, as well as including full body explosive movements in your program can drastically improve your performance on many lifts and athletic endeavors.
Don’t mistake what we say, hypertrophy is important. Building true strength, however, requires higher... intensities and utilization of low rep ranges. Max effort training is a great example.
Strength is mainly a neural adaptation, not a muscular adaptation. To prime the nervous system, and build true strength, low rep and max effort training is necessary.
In order to build maximal strength you need to add in some max effort exercises into your routine!
3. Shutting Off The Power: Power training enhances strength (ever hear of the dynamic effort method?). Like strength, power is the product of fine tuning the nervous system. Reaching optimal strength levels requires power training and development.
A good reference point is a sticking point for a given lift. Let’s say your deadlift sticking point is at your knees. Building deadlift power by including... dynamic effort deadlifts in a program will alleviate the sticking point.
Without power training, sticking points becoming increasingly difficult to overcome.
A good reference point is a sticking point for a given lift. Let’s say your deadlift sticking point is at your knees. Building deadlift power by including... dynamic effort deadlifts in a program will alleviate the sticking point.
Without power training, sticking points becoming increasingly difficult to overcome.
4. Dismissing De-Loads: Training week after week, month after month at the same volume will wear on your body—resulting in an overtaxed nervous system and soft-tissue that won’t recover. Planning de-load weeks is a crucial pre-emptive strategy to avoid over-training. Sometimes a step back is required to take a step forward.
5. Skipping the Preparation Phase: The anticipation of huge gains sometimes is... sometimes too much for folks. In haste, they jump into the middle of a program without completing the preparation phase.
Overlooking the preparation phase of any program is detrimental to performance during the later phases. It’s named preparation phase for a distinct reason — the design and execution enhances the adaptations of future training.
Those strength gains you couldn’t wait for might not be waiting for you if you put the kibosh to good preparation.
Many people also tend to forget to build strong foundation with very basic movements such as uni-lateral lower body work. Many single leg exercises can really aid in stability and increased performance out on the field.
5. Skipping the Preparation Phase: The anticipation of huge gains sometimes is... sometimes too much for folks. In haste, they jump into the middle of a program without completing the preparation phase.
Overlooking the preparation phase of any program is detrimental to performance during the later phases. It’s named preparation phase for a distinct reason — the design and execution enhances the adaptations of future training.
Those strength gains you couldn’t wait for might not be waiting for you if you put the kibosh to good preparation.
Many people also tend to forget to build strong foundation with very basic movements such as uni-lateral lower body work. Many single leg exercises can really aid in stability and increased performance out on the field.
Including dynamic work with a barbell, performing jumping exercises for the upper and lower body, as well as including full body explosive movements in your program can drastically improve your performance on many lifts and athletic endeavors.
