In this new you tube world of fitness it is easy to slough off the fundamentals. This leaves the veterans of the iron game laughing at us young bucks and our gizmos and triplane movement (sometimes they should). Yet, we are not the same population of the 60s-80s. We live in a world full of iPads and lack of play, people will walk in your gym with very little general preparedness and thus we have to reteach them how to move. How to load the hip. How to pack a shoulder. How to stabilize. How to create tension…How to crawl.
*And if you think the answer to this is a CrossFit Elements class – go home – You’re drunk on thrusters. We have evaled all of them and the compensation patterns will make your head spin. They are finding a way to get the job done in the name of performance, fiddling with parts on a speeding car. Not good. Not built to last.
Back to the fundamentals, think about the best chefs in the world, they take simple ingredients and make them blow apart in your mouth. One can get creative in the appetizer or dessert portion, but don’t fuck with my ribeye.
Same goes for our exercise selection. Train Adapt Evolve has an exercise library of well over 200 movements, but the main course is always simple, dirty, and delicious – this goes for lifting and our conditioning. Our clients become savants at the fundamentals. We have 45 year old women who don’t think twice about a single leg squat or body weight deadlifts for reps because they have built up their foundation over time - in Coach’s Davis’ words they are Anti-fragile. Built to last.
Here are our main course options in the order of progression
Speed and Power:
Medballs/Sandbells
Jumping/Plyos
Olympic Lifts
Squat:
Split Squat/Lunges
Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat
Front Squat
Back Squat
Hinge:
Reaches
Bridge
Deadlift
Vertical Pull:
Lat Pulldown
PullUp
Horizontal Pull:
Stance Phase Cable Row
DB Row
Bent Over Barbell Row
Vertical Press:
Landmine Press
DB/KB Press
Barbell Press
Horizontal Press:
Db/KB Bench/Pushup
Bench
That’s it.
The other 175ish exercises are integral regressions and progressions and they have their place in the warm-up and general strength work. They only function to build the ability to do the common – uncommonly well.
Not everyone is going to need to pile wheels on a back squat, but every human has to be able to load each hip.
Not everyone has to barbell press a Mac truck, but everyone needs to exhibit full shoulder mobility and stability, as well as be able to create tension in the system. How we get there looks different for each client, but the objective is always the same.
Some think this ideology is boring and inside of an ADD culture this makes sense. This is the reason why EXTREME fast forward exercise systems have gained such popularity over the last decade, yet they are now faltering because many people injured or realize that they are being driven to the middle and can’t improve past a novice ability because they have not built a solid enough base to add anything on top. They are addicted to constant variety in time domain and exercise selection. But please don’t convince yourself you are doing anything productive by incessantly switching it up.
Changes/slight tweaks in your programming are important and make training life worth living. But for most they either become obsessed with finding the perfect program and then jump around like a 3 year old in a toy store, or they end up giving zero shits and just do whatever fits their fancy on that particular day and create a system of chaos and disorder inside and out.
This same no bullshit fundamentalist ideology goes for our conditioning. Get really good at blasting something out in 15 seconds. Be able to go places no one else can go and if for some reason you want to be healthy or want the ability to endure, build up your aerobic power through increased cardiac output work. After you have built up these bases of movement and general preparedness then you can play in other domains, you have earned that right. How long will this take? Three months. Three Years. Maybe the rest of your life. Depends on your goals, how patient you are, how beat up your aerobic motor is, and how ridiculous your movement compensations are.
To finish, the philosophies of Variety, Tri-Plane Movement, Gary Gray, and The Postural Restoration Institute are unbelievably powerful tools in the evaluation and progression of athletes. But, as strength coaches we cannot lose sight of the forest for the trees. We have a job to do and the majority of the time that job is simpler than it is complex, the hook is can you stay the course and are you well versed enough in the fundamentals to get them results so they keep playing the game.
Recent Comments