Strength training is quality of life insurance.
Everything improves physically and mentally when you consistently provide the body with the movement it craves and needs.
Nutrition was tool #1 because it has such a powerful impact on every aspect of health and fitness. If you missed that email, here it is Tools of Change #1 - Nutrition
Strength training is tool # 2 because it enhances life more than any other form of exercise.
This is how you should approach strength training.
The body is one piece
Think about some of the activities you do in your daily life - gardening & yard work, picking up the grandchildren, playing pickleball, carrying groceries, taking out the trash, putting dishes away, getting stuff out of the trunk of the car…
All of these movements involve muscles working together to create movement.
Muscles do not work in isolation.
That’s why your program should be built around these three things:
- Full body training sessions
- Standing (the majority of the time)
- Free weights (most of the time) - dumbbells, medicine balls, resistance bands and the ultimate free weight - your body!
I’ve found this approach to training builds usable strength and protects the body from injury.
Train the fundamental movement patterns
We are designed to move and do all kinds of wonderful things like run, throw, jump, crawl and so much more. All of these start with the fundamental movement patterns:
- Push - exercises where you are ‘pushing’ the weights away from you. An example would be pushing or pressing a dumbbell straight up from your shoulder to an overhead position. These movements emphasize the shoulders, chest, triceps and abdominal muscles.
- Pull - exercises that ‘pull’ a weight or training implement towards the body. These types of exercises emphasize the back, biceps (front of the arm) and abdominal muscles.
- Squat - exercises that require maximum bend of the knees. Your basic squat involves both feet planted on the floor as you sit back and down. Every time you sit in a chair or the toilet, you are essentially performing a squat.
- Bend- exercises that start by bending at the hips. The most well known bending movement is the deadlift where you learn to properly pick something up off the ground by bending or pushing your hips back instead of just folding over at the lower back.
- Carry- This is probably the most functional exercise we can do, but no one does. Simply carrying things from here to there.
You carry and move things from here to there on a daily basis. Whether it’s groceries, bags of mulch, a cooler or the heavy boxes of random stuff you decided to clean out of the house this new year.
Posterior chain and abs (prioritize the back of the body)
The muscles on the back side of the body play a crucial role in our posture, how we resist injury and overall function.
Rhomboids (muscles between the shoulder blades), mid-back, Gluteus Maximus (booty), Hamstrings (back of legs), Deltoids (shoulders), Triceps (back of arms), deep ab muscles and obliques (muscles that run up the sides of your torso)
These are the muscles that will keep you youthful.
If you've been wanting to start strength training, but not sure where to start, our Ageless Strength Program starting 1/23 might be a perfect fit.
Keep Moving,
Coach Dom
