Why You’re Not Getting Stronger
Around here, the kids are all back in school and they have the whole year ahead of them.
There’s tons of excitement as they look forward to the many possibilities and potential for the year.
I still remember my Senior year, when I said I was going to not play basketball (which I pretty much hated) and just concentrate on baseball.
I wanted to go into the school weight room three days a week and put on some serious muscle, because I was 6-feet tall and about 200-lbs, but thought for sure with hard work I could put on some muscle and show up for my Freshman Year in college looking like Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire.
While I never ended up looking like Mark or Barry, I did end up putting on some muscle and planting the seeds that would grow into a life-long interest in weight training.
Unfortunately, at the time, I didn’t realize some of the things these guys were doing and taking in order to get so freakish. I also didn’t realize that there was a difference between training for size and for training with strength. I just went in there and did what I read about in bodybuilding magazines and didn’t understand the importance of proper loading and rep schemes in order to get stronger. If finding a balance between muscle gains and improvements in strength levels is something that you struggle with, then today’s article is perfect for you.
Today’s post comes from Eric Cressey. Eric is probably best known for his work with professional baseball players at his facility in Connecticut, Cressey Performance, but he is also know for his work in the arena of fitness and especially the field of strength & conditioning. His knowledge blows me away and he is one of the few professionals in the field I subscribe to. Every article, video and product he puts out is GOLD. Possibly his most well-recognized work, Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look Feel and Move Better is on sale for this week only for $50 off the regular price.
Enjoy today’s post from this world class author, speaker coach, and lifter.
5 Reasons You’re Not Getting Stronger
By: Eric Cressey
Like most lifters, I gained a lot of size and strength in my first 1-2 years of training in spite of the moronic stuff that I did. Looking back, I was about as informed as a chimp with a barbell – but things somehow worked out nonetheless. That is, however, until I hit a big fat plateau where things didn’t budge.
Truthfully, “big fat plateau” doesn’t even begin to do my shortcomings justice. No exaggeration: I spent 14 months trying to go from a 225-pound bench to 230. Take a moment and laugh at my past futility (or about how similar it sounds to your own plight), and we’ll continue.
All set? Good – because self-deprecating writing was never one of my strengths. I have, however, become quite good at picking heavy stuff off the floor – to the tune of a personal-best 660-pound deadlift at a body weight of 188.
Eric Cressey, 660-lb Deadlift
My other numbers aren’t too shabby, either, but this article isn’t about me; it’s about why YOU aren’t necessarily getting strong as fast as you’d like. To that end, I’d like to take a look at a few mistakes people commonly make in the quest to gain strength. Sadly, I’ve made most of these myself at some point, so hopefully I can save you some frustration.
Mistake #1: Only doing what’s fun and not what you need.
As you could probably tell, deadlifting is a strength of mine – and I enjoy it. Squatting, on the other hand, never came naturally to me. I always squatted, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it took the back seat to pulling heavy.
Eventually, though, I smartened up and took care of the issue – by always putting squatting before deadlifting in all my lower-body training sessions (twice a week). I eventually wound up with a Powerlifting USA Top 100 Squat in my weight class.
More interestingly, though, in addition to me dramatically improving my squat, a funny thing happened: I actually started to enjoy squatting. Whoever said that you can’t teach an old dog (or deadlifter) new tricks didn’t have the real scoop.
Mistake #2: Not taking deload periods.
One phrase of which I’ve grown quite fond is “fatigue masks fitness.” As a little frame of reference, my best vertical jump is 37.3” – but on most days, I won’t give you anything over 34” or so. The reason is very simple: most of your training career is going to be spent in some degree of fatigue. How you manage that fatigue is what dictates your adaptation over the long- term.
On one hand, you want to impose enough fatigue to create supercompensation – so that you’ll adapt and come back at a higher level of fitness. On the other hand, you don’t want to impose so much fatigue that you dig yourself a hole you can’t get out of without a significant amount of time off.
Good programs implement strategic overreaching follows by periods of lighter training stress to allow for adaptation to occur. You can’t just go in and hit personal bests in every single training session.
Mistake #3: Not rotating movements.
It never ceases to amaze me when a guy claims that he just can’t seem to add to his bench press (or any lift, for that matter), and when you ask him what he’s done to work on it of late, and he tells you “bench press.” Specificity is important, but if you aren’t rotating exercises, you’re missing out on an incredibly valuable training stimulus: rotating exercises.
While there is certainly a place for extended periods of specificity (Smolov squat cycles, for instance), you can’t push this approach indefinitely. Rotating my heaviest movements was one of the most important lessons I learned along my journey. In addition to helping to create adaptation, you’re also expanding your “motor program” and avoiding overuse injuries via pattern overload.
I’m not saying that you should overhaul your entire program with each trip to the gym, but there should be some semi-regular fluctuation in exercise selection. The more experienced you get, the more often you’ll want to rotate your exercises (I do it weekly). Assistance exercises ecan be shuffled every four weeks, though.
Mistake #4: Inconsistency in training.
I tell our clients from all walks of life that the best strength and conditioning programs are ones that are sustainable. I’ll take a terrible program executed with consistency over a great program that’s only done sporadically. This is absolutely huge for professional athletes who need to maximize progress in the off-season; they just can’t afford to have unplanned breaks in training if they want to improve from year to year. However, it’s equally important for general fitness folks who don’t have an extensive training background to fall back on, unlike the professional athletes.
If a program isn’t conducive to your goals and lifestyle, then it isn’t a good program. That’s why I went out of my way to create 2x/week, 3x/week, and 4x/week strength training options – plus five supplemental conditioning options and a host of exercise modifications – when I pulled Show and Go together; I wanted it to be a very versatile resource.
Likewise, I wanted it to be safe; a program isn’t good if it injures you and prevents you from exercising. Solid programs include targeted efforts to reduce the likelihood of injury via means like mobility warm-ups, supplemental stretching recommendations, specific progressions, fluctuations in training stress, and alternative exercises (“plan B”) in case you aren’t quite ready to execute “Plan A.”
For me personally, I attribute a lot of my progress to the fact that at one point, I actually went over eight years without missing a planned lift. It’s a bit extreme, I know, but there’s a lesson to be learned.
Mistake #5: Wrong rep schemes
Beginners can make strength gains on as little as 40% of their one-rep max. Past that initial period, the number moves to 70% – which is roughly a 12-rep max for most folks. Later, I’d say that the number creeps up to about 85% – which would be about a 5-rep max for an intermediate lifter. This last range is where you’ll find most people who head to the internet for strength training information.
What they don’t realize is that 85% isn’t going to get the job done for very long, either. My experience is that in advanced lifters, the fastest way to build strength is to perform singles at or above 90% of one-rep max with regularity. As long as exercises are rotated and deloading periods are included, this is a strategy that can be employed for an extended period of time. In fact, it was probably the single (no pun intended) most valuable discovery I made in my quest to get stronger.
I’m not saying that you should be attempting one-rep maxes each time you enter the gym, but I do think they’ll “just happen” if you employ this technique.
To take the guesswork out of all this and try some programming that considers all these crucial factors (and a whole lot more), check out Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look Feel and Move Better.
-Eric Cressey-
Articles You Might Also Like:
- Why You're Not Getting Stronger
- Ankle Mobility – Is it REALLY That Important?
- Explosive Conditioning for Martial Arts
- Huge News!
- Men’s Fitness and Experience Life Magazines
Tags: athletic strength training, strength program, strength training, strength training for athletes, strength training program
September 16th, 2023 at 12:13 pm
I have been surfing online more than three hours lately, yet I never found any fascinating article like yours. It’s lovely value enough for me. Personally, if all site owners and bloggers made just right content as you did, the net might be much more useful than ever before.
September 20th, 2023 at 10:01 am
Unquestionably believe that that you stated. Your favourite justification appeared to be at the internet the simplest thing to keep in mind of. I say to you, I definitely get irked whilst other people consider worries that they plainly do not understand about. You controlled to hit the nail upon the top as welland also defined out the whole thing with no need side effect , other folks can take a signal. Will likely be back to get more. Thank you
September 21st, 2023 at 7:29 am
Good post. I’m dealing with some of these issues as well..
September 21st, 2023 at 7:38 am
My brother suggested I might like this blog. He was totally right. This post actually made my day. You cann’t imagine just how much time I had spent for this information! Thanks!
September 27th, 2023 at 2:26 pm
We stumbled over here from a different website and thought I may as well check things out. I like what I see so now i’m following you. Look forward to checking out your web page yet again.
September 28th, 2023 at 12:13 pm
I love your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you design this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you? Plz answer back as I’m looking to design my own blog and would like to know where u got this from. thanks
September 28th, 2023 at 3:24 pm
Wonderful beat ! I wish to apprentice at the same time as you amend your web site, how can i subscribe for a blog site? The account aided me a applicable deal. I were tiny bit familiar of this your broadcast provided bright transparent concept
September 29th, 2023 at 3:11 am
Hmm it seems like your site ate my first comment (it was extremely long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I had written and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. I as well am an aspiring blog blogger but I’m still new to the whole thing. Do you have any suggestions for beginner blog writers? I’d genuinely appreciate it.
September 29th, 2023 at 6:13 pm
Woah! I’m really loving the template/theme of this site. It’s simple, yet effective. A lot of times it’s challenging to get that “perfect balance” between user friendliness and visual appeal. I must say that you’ve done a amazing job with this. In addition, the blog loads extremely fast for me on Opera. Outstanding Blog!
September 30th, 2023 at 1:18 am
Hi there, I found your blog by the use of Google whilst searching for a similar topic, your site got here up, it seems good. I have bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.
September 30th, 2023 at 5:05 pm
I enjoy what you guys are up too. This sort of clever work and exposure! Keep up the excellent works guys I’ve you guys to blogroll.
October 2nd, 2023 at 7:53 pm
I love your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you design this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you? Plz answer back as I’m looking to create my own blog and would like to know where u got this from. thanks a lot
October 4th, 2023 at 7:23 pm
October 5th, 2023 at 1:06 am
hi!,I love your writing so much! percentage we keep in touch more approximately your post on AOL? I need an expert in this space to solve my problem. May be that is you! Looking forward to see you.
October 5th, 2023 at 4:42 am
I absolutely love your blog and find nearly all of your post’s to be exactly I’m looking for. Does one offer guest writers to write content to suit your needs? I wouldn’t mind creating a post or elaborating on a few of the subjects you write in relation to here. Again, awesome web log!
October 7th, 2023 at 1:37 am
I’ve been exploring for a little for any high-quality articles or blog posts in this kind of space . Exploring in Yahoo I eventually stumbled upon this site. Reading this info So i’m glad to show that I have a very good uncanny feeling I came upon exactly what I needed. I so much no doubt will make certain to don?t fail to remember this site and give it a look on a constant basis.
October 8th, 2023 at 9:36 pm
I like reading through a post that will make people think. Also, thanks for allowing for me to comment!
October 10th, 2023 at 3:18 pm
Wow, superb blog format! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging glance easy. The entire glance of your site is fantastic, let alonesmartly as the content!
October 15th, 2023 at 8:36 pm
Greetings! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using for this site? I’m getting fed up of WordPress because I’ve had issues with hackers and I’m looking at options for another platform. I would be awesome if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.
October 16th, 2023 at 6:12 pm
If some one needs to be updated with most up-to-date technologies after that he must be pay a visit this web site and be up to date everyday.
October 17th, 2023 at 4:13 pm
Very rapidly this site will be famous among all blogging and site-building users, due to it’s good articles or reviews
October 19th, 2023 at 2:56 pm
Hi there, I found your website by the use of Google whilst searching for a comparable topic, your web site got here up, it seems good. I have bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.
October 22nd, 2023 at 8:15 pm
Ищете надежного подрядчика для устройства стяжки пола в Москве? Обращайтесь к нам на сайт styazhka-pola24.ru! Мы предлагаем услуги по залитию стяжки пола любой сложности и площади, а также гарантируем быстрое и качественное выполнение работ.
October 24th, 2023 at 7:23 am
снабжение строительства москва
October 26th, 2023 at 8:17 am
С механизированной штукатуркой стен от mehanizirovannaya-shtukaturka-moscow.ru ремонт становится не только быстрым, но и качественным. Попробуйте самостоятельно, вы не разочаруетесь!
October 29th, 2023 at 12:54 pm
What’s Taking place i’m new to this, I stumbled upon this I have found It positively helpful and it has helped me out loads. I am hoping to give a contribution & assist other users like its helped me. Good job.
November 1st, 2023 at 3:16 am
It’s going to be finish of mine day, except before finish I am reading this great article to increase my experience.
November 1st, 2023 at 7:18 am
My partner and I absolutely love your blog and find a lot of your post’s to be what precisely I’m looking for. Do you offer guest writers to write content available for you? I wouldn’t mind creating a post or elaborating on some of the subjects you write in relation to here. Again, awesome weblog!
November 2nd, 2023 at 10:55 am
I read this article fully regarding the comparison of most recent and previous technologies, it’s awesome article.
November 3rd, 2023 at 6:55 am
If you desire to take a great deal from this piece of writing then you have to apply such strategies to your won weblog.
November 4th, 2023 at 6:15 am
Сдайте все трудности процесса оштукатуривание стен профессионалам на mehanizirovannaya-shtukaturka-moscow.ru. Вы в хороших руках.
November 4th, 2023 at 1:24 pm
Thank you for some other informative blog. Where else may I am getting that kind of info written in such a perfect means? I have a undertaking that I am simply now running on, and I have been at the glance out for such information.
November 8th, 2023 at 9:56 am
If some one needs expert view concerning blogging and site-building after that i propose him/her to pay a visit this website, Keep up the nice job.
November 10th, 2023 at 3:09 am
I am actually thankful to the owner of this website who has shared this great article at at this place.
November 15th, 2023 at 8:15 am
This is a topic that is close to my heart… Best wishes! Where are your contact details though?
November 17th, 2023 at 4:06 am
Fabulous, what a webpage it is! This website provides helpful information to us, keep it up.
November 25th, 2023 at 3:49 pm
After checking out a number of the blog articles on your web page, I truly like your way of blogging. I added it to my bookmark site list and will be checking back soon. Take a look at my web site as well and let me know how you feel.
November 26th, 2023 at 3:03 am
Can I simply say what a relief to discover somebody who truly knows what they’re talking about online. You definitely know how to bring an issue to light and make it important. More and more people have to look at this and understand this side of the story. I was surprised that you aren’t more popular because you definitely have the gift.
November 26th, 2023 at 3:33 pm
What’s up, yup this piece of writing is in fact nice and I have learned lot of things from it concerning blogging. thanks.
November 28th, 2023 at 5:43 pm
It’s awesome designed for me to have a site, which is beneficial in favor of my knowledge. thanks admin
November 28th, 2023 at 8:21 pm
I read this article fully about the resemblance of latest and preceding technologies, it’s remarkable article.