The goal of a strength block is to generate as much force as possible. All of that muscle you built in the hypertrophy block might look cool, but it doesn’t do much if you can’t use it, and that comes down to learning to create a ton of force and move heavy things. If you want to be independent, capable and healthy long term- strength might be the most important aspect of your physical health.
Now that we are entering our 12-week strength block, we want to revisit some of the biggest mistakes we see when it comes to strength training.
- Not warming up before lifts
- Warming up may seem like an optional step, but it’s a crucial part of preparing your body for heavy lifting! Skipping a proper warm-up can lead to poor performance and increase your risk of injury.
- What we suggest: Take at least 3 warmup sets before you start your heavy lift. For a squat, it may look like this: 10 reps with an empty bar, 5 reps with 50% of your goal weight, followed by 3 reps with 75% of your goal weight.
- Increasing weight too quickly
- Progressive overload is a misunderstood concept. Progressive overload is essentially the idea of increasing load or intensity of a workout over time. However, it’s commonly thought that you must increase the load on the bar in order to “force” the body to adapt and get stronger. More contemporary research suggests that this thought process is actually backwards: you’re able to increase weight on the bar BECAUSE your body has adapted to the loads you’ve been using. This may sound like a semantic argument, but the difference is important. Trying to force the body to adapt to a load it’s unprepared for is a great way to stall your progress and potentially increase your risk of injury.
- In a strength block, we have clients increase weights by 2-5% (if form, technique, and goal reps are being accomplished) on a weekly basis. We would not suggest an increase over 10%! To put that in perspective, if you are benching 60lbs we would not expect you to increase your weight more than ~5lbs the following week.
- What we sugest: Track your weights to ensure you are consistently being mindful of increasing weights in a sustainable manner.
- Not resting between sets
- Rest is a must in a strength block! Incomplete recovery will hinder your progress and prevent you from reaching your full strength potential.
- What we suggest: For your working sets, rest should be around 2 minutes between sets. Or, the rest should be long enough for complete recovery. If heart rate is being tracked, it should recover close to your working baseline between sets.
Use the above tips to improve the results you see from your strength training workouts!
