Strength as our primary goal

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Michael Adams
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In theory, the majority of clients come to us because they feel something needs to change in their life. Weight loss, quality of life, confidence, being healthier, all are things commonly said. Through experience, however, most trainers have learned it goes a lot deeper than that. Humans by nature all want to look better, both in clothes and out. They want to move better, with less pain, and perform better in their sports, or simply daily life. The strength-training model can help with all of these.

   The fastest way to improve the way a client views themselves in the mirror, is not weight loss, not muscle toning, or making them feel capable. It is posture. Now of course weight loss, muscle appearance, and making them feel more capable are all major contributors to self-image and not to be understated. Now here we have some luck because we can achieve all 3 of these things with strength training. So let’s break down what strength training is.

  1. Increasing the muscular capacity for maximum force output.

  2. Increasing the nervous systems capacity for force output.

  3. Increasing the bone density through high load stress

  4. Increasing metabolic demand through high intensity loading

  5. Increasing the athletic threshold of the body

   These are 5 clear examples of what strength training encompasses, the list of benefits is much longer. Strength training is the act of placing the body under high resistance based stress in order to cause adaptation to the workload set upon it. In short, you get better at moving heavy things by moving heavy things.

   You can use these theories to improve posture, by increasing the body awareness through teaching proper form during heavy loads, this will also increase the strength in the muscles related to posture and help the client maintain that posture. They become more aware of when they are standing wrong, sitting wrong because they have now had a nervous system adaption to hold a certain posture (neutral spine) during lifts.

   The same can be said about weight loss, the metabolic demands of strength training will cause significant weight loss in clients. Strength training is incredibly demanding on the bodies’ capacity to adapt to the training stimulus, and any changes in the body and its systems take energy to happen, thus the large metabolic demand.

   Muscle growth happens as a natural side effect of any resistance style training. With a decrease in body fat from the metabolic demands of the strength training, combined with the muscle growth that occurs as a result of the training, you will see an increase of muscle definition in your clients.

   So with one training model we have moved the client towards all 3 major aspects of looking better naked. Now, of course, strength training is not as effective as a specially designed hypertrophy program in creating muscle growth in specific areas, this is due to the nature of strength training being a full body activity. However, this is not to say we cannot make an amazing looking body when pursuing a performance-based such as strength. So I challenge you, the reader of this blog, to look into strength as your primary fitness goal. You may just be shocked to see how your other goals fall into place.