Ten years ago, I made shift in my training approach. My primary focus shifted to getting everyone I worked with stronger. This was after observing how strength solved a lot of perils. I chose to get people stronger because I could increase muscle density without adding size. Leading into this change, I had focused on muscle hypertrophy for years. Muscle hypertrophy is when you increase the size of a muscle. As per the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s (NSCA) definition of hypertrophy:
Muscle hypertrophy (known simply as hypertrophy) is an increase in the size of a muscle, or its crosssectional area attributed to an increase in the size and/ or number of myofibrils (actin and myosin) within a given muscle fiber. Muscle hypertrophy occurs in both type I and type II muscle fibers, but to a greater extent in type II muscle fibers (Weir & Brown, 2012).
Much of my clientele were woman. They consistently aspired to have an increase in the appearance of muscle tone, without the bulk. One of their fears was to get “too bulky.” My clients who were in the mature population requested to get stronger to improve their quality of life. The research was out about how the senior population needed strength. I used high intensity, interval, training (HIIT) to stimulate a fat burning effect for those looking to reduce body fat. A driver in a HIIT workout is the use of strength exercises. Even the kids who I trained for sports had a need for strength. Many of them were directed by their coaches to get stronger. So why am I changing my approach again?
Strength is built upon the foundation of movement quality. You must first possess the ability to move well and then you can progress to get stronger in that pattern. Once you are stronger within that pattern, you can add skill. I will provide an example of this using tennis. You must first be able to squat without movement limitations. Then you can build strength in the squat. A strong squat can transfer to the ability to take off running down a ball in tennis. Skill is the ability to stop and position yourself to hit or return the ball. If you change or jump the order, you can create a compensation which leaves you susceptible to injury. Based upon this theory, I began to emphasize mobility in everyone. That makes sense. Then I thought, what about power?
You don’t need to be a powerlifter to know the importance of power. Just ask anyone over sixty-five getting out of a chair. Power, or the sum of forces, is mass x acceleration. Without using your hands to push off, you need power getting out of a chair. Just try to do it slow. Have you ever reacted to something falling and you take off attempting to catch it? Exploding or moving quickly can be considered a form of power. It’s all relative on the person.
What threw me off was when I mixed in cardiovascular training into someone’s program. Your heart is your most important muscle. Improving aesthetics and strength without addressing your cardiopulmonary system is a flawed program. I came to this revelation seven years ago. This was one of the reasons I purchased sleds and Cross-country ski machines when I opened the studio. But here is the dilemma.
When you focus on mobility, there’s a diminish in power output. There is a benchmark study that proves this. They use the vertical jump as a test for power output. They take two groups. They calculate everyone’s vertical jump. They then take one of the groups and stretch them out and re-test the vertical jump. They consistently have a decreased vertical jump. The increase in mobility came at a cost towards power. They lost power output. On the other side of the spectrum, they have tested mobility in world class power-lifting athletes and observed a loss of basic movement patterns.
I guess the point I’m attempting to make is that in an overall fitness program, balance is the key, and I don’t mean standing on one leg. You should have a program where you shift between working on different goals. You may spend three months improving mobility to then shift into a heavy strength phase. This phase may then be followed by a phase in which you improve your cardiovascular strength, which becomes a catalyst in dropping body-fat. The best overall program may be the program where the bull’s eye is a moving target.
I’ll see you at the studio.