 Joel YounkinsPrepare For Success A lot of people have a lot of "strong" (you see what I did there) opinions when it comes to strength training. The opinions range from, one side that will say, "it's the best thing you can ever do for yourself and it's the only thing you ever need to do in order to get in shape." And you also have people who will say "that it's unhealthy and will cause long term physical harm." And what you'll find is that these opinions are strongly and heavily (I did it again) biased behind the person saying them. You'll hear people say things like, "you just need to worry about strength training and you don't need cardio." To people who say things on the flipside, "lifting weights will make you slow, stiff, and cause body pain when you're older." Both viewpoints are heavily inaccurate and dramatic to say the least, but that's what people say and sadly believe... The reality is, training means are a lot like water. Water is good for you, and so is strength training. But too much, too little, or drinking it from the wrong places can cause you serve harm... So, let's get to business on what strength training is, and how to properly apply it. Strength training is a process of causing mechanical damage/stress to the muscles and tendons on the body. It's a process that starts in the brain and spinal column, and it expresses itself into the muscle fibers to move your limbs/skeletal system on your body. There are many ways to train for strength, it's not just about pumping lots iron. You can train strength through body weight movements, suspension training, bands, machines, dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, and even other unorthodox means. As long as you're causing mechanical stress to the muscles of that given movement pattern, then it's considered strength training. Now, when we speak of movement patterns, we're taking things to the next step. Strength training is also actually, coordination training. Remember how I said that strength starts in the brain? Well, the brain is an organ that learns and builds new skills, so we can not ignore the fact that by training strength within movement patterns, like a squat, hip hinge, push, pull, flexion, extension, rotation, and anti-rotation movement patterns, you're body is building efficiency in that movement as well. The process of training the muscles, also heavily improves coordination in your body. Because those same movement patterns that you do in the gym, are the same movement patterns you perform in life or in a sport for that matter. It builds timing coordination as a skill in those patterns, whereas most people look to strength training as a means to build visual muscles. Not all strength training is created equally, there are different levels to the game of strength. Strength also lies on a spectrum or continuum. Some strength exercises are very stressful on your CNS (brain and spinal column). While others are not very stressful on the CNS as those don't require high outputs of energy from your brain to perform them. Simple rule of thumb, the heavier the exercise is, or the more force you need to produce, the more CNS you will need to recruit the maximal amount of muscle fibers to lift the weights. Whereas the least amount of force needed will equate to less CNS muscle fiber recruitment. Let me show you some examples below as they go from most stressful to least stressful (top down) on your CNS.
This is important to know, because the more CNS you use, the longer you'll need to recover from it. It's why if you squat really heavy one day, the next couple days you wouldn't be able to do that again. Whereas if you did bicep curls or some crunches, you could probably easily do that 3 to 4 days in a row (not that I recommend that). The more you use your CNS for strength training and to develop it, the stronger you'll get. Think you train your nervous system versus your muscles. Now on the other end, think body building exercises. Higher reps 6-15 reps with strength training exercises. These tend to be less stressful on your CNS, but they are good to build muscle size do to time under tension with reps so these reps focus more on "tearing of the muscles themselves" versus needing high CNS recruitment activity. So, as you may be seeing here, people often say, "is it better to lift heavy or lighter with more reps." And the real answer is both, because they compliment each other but serve different purposes. The idea is to train them both in the right mixture for what your goals are.
At this point, you can see that strength training on the surface is quite simple. But as you peel back the layers to it, you will see you can uncover new truths and possibilities. There's obviously much more we can go into, but I think that's enough for this email, I'm sure you have things to get to. So I will leave you with some strength training rules to live by to take with you until the next email about "cardio." Strength Training Rules to live by:
When you're ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:
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