Get strong. Build muscle. Swole patrol. You know what it is!
Strength is the ability to generate a force. More strength, more force. It is something that is traditionally understood as a direct function of muscle mass. Big muscles, big strength. This is misguided, as your ability to generate force is as much brain as brawn, and for this reason trained athletes can generate much more force than untrained persons with the same amount of muscle mass. Strength is a neurological and physiological adaptation.
How much strength do you need? Well, it always depends on your goal, but for basic function we all need to be able to carry our bodies through normal ranges of motion without issue (squatting down and picking stuff up), and handle external loads that regularly come up in life, like a 20-40 lb piece of luggage, your groceries, or your grandkids.
Or your grandkids… Or your kids… Or your dog or cat. Or your bike. Or your self. Let’s get real for a moment: these are the things that matter. Too often we get bogged down in which system produces the best athletes or feats of strength. The maximum, as if that is even relevant to 99.99% of people who engage with exercise. These are the things we take for granted in youth. Can you imagine if you couldn’t pick up your kid or pet when they needed you? I would be frustrated to tears. All your lifetime weightlifting records would seem silly in that moment.
That’s why I focus so much on function and longevity with my clients. It’s of limited use to be able to Squat 200 lbs one time if you can’t sustain your strength long enough to be able to take care of the people that matter to you when it counts, including yourself. We must keep that big picture in mind when planning what you’re doing right now.
On a related bigger picture level, one of my older clients jokingly reminds me: “I’m just trying to avoid Nurse Ratched.” If you don’t know who/what that is, google it (there’s a new Netflix remake of the original as of this post).
By building a buffer or surplus of strength earlier in life, you greatly improve your odds of avoiding the need for a caregiver later in life. It’s going to take father time a lot longer to knock someone down who has built their way up brick by brick over years to a 300 lb Deadlift, than someone who has never lifted at all.
On another, more common level: if you are trying to lose weight, you also need a basic level of strength in order to generate sufficient power to do the meaningful interval conditioning workouts that we discussed last time. Low levels of strength will limit the impact your conditioning can have. Driving a car with only one gear, your world becomes small. Develop many gears and your world expands.
On a mindfulness level: building strength is a personal journey of learning about your body and what it is capable of in a fundamental way: Aristotle said “It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” He also believed that earth, air, fire, water, and “aether” were what matter was made of… but he was right about strength. It is your duty to build that booty.
But forget about what you need to do. Getting stronger can be really fun! Let’s make strength training something you enjoy doing, by being systematic and flexible in our approach.
There are so many ways people go about attempting to get strong, but there are only a few systems that are proven to work: Gymnastics, Plyometrics, Weightlifting (lumping Powerlifting and Bodybuilding with true Weightlifting for the moment), and Throwing.
I will be brushing past Track (sprinting), Wrestling, Swimming, Cycling, and unfortunately most of your favorite field sports (including Football!), as though they do have some varying, significant strength components, the amount of time and skill development involved in sport far exceeds the needs for strength (3-4 hrs per week), often you are merely expressing strength and power rather than developing it, and all sports are imbalanced in their strength demands due to the narrow, repetitive ways the body is stressed during the style of play (whatever the rules are). This is true even of multi-sport athletes. Good athletes do their Strength and Conditioning work!
In the next articles of this mini series on strength, we will take a deep dive into the main proven methods above so you can better understand how over many years I have arrived at what I consider to be the optimal system for most of the people I coach.
See you in the next post!
Coach Mauricio