It really is, once we understand that’s it not just about lifting the heaviest weight possible or sculpting perfect muscular symmetry.
It can be balancing on one leg, performing a squat without pain, or doing a pull-up.
In order to balance on one leg, we need the strength to hold our bodyweight on it.
Same goes with the squat, or a sitting to standing through that hinging movement.
The examples continue, the message remains the same, we need strength to undertake movements, whether that is daily active living or a specific activity (in or out of the gym).
When we look at the shapes we make during the day this can give us a great insight to area’s that we should investigate, sit at a desk for the majority of the day? Let’s look at your upper back and shoulders with a side order of core and hips.
Moving those area’s and creating additional strength, or stability through strength will help to stave off the tightness we experience and allow a faster transition into other activities away from the desk.
Carrying the shopping in – by keeping your pelvis level you’re activating your core – maybe that’s why there’s so many memes about doing it in one trip?
Just as an injury can radiate outwards, such as an elbow affecting a shoulder, we can use strength to improve area’s of our body and help to reverse those.
Improving our strength will help with mobility, the better our mobility the more we can move which increases the amount of strength work we can undertake.
The volume of workload really doesn’t need to be intense, we need to look at working the muscle(s) that are underused and work on integrating movements that help to work them, we should be concentrating on creating the correct movement (form) then slowly building up the load (either reps or weight).
It can be logical to look to work on muscles directly and we want to ensure we are, to start with it would be wise to choose movements that include those muscles rather than targeting them directly.
An example would be a row movement with 2 hands before undertaking single arm variations.
Lot’s of food for thought here, main take aways are:
Increase Movement
Increase Strength
Increase Skill (proficiency) of each muscle
Information overload? – if you have any questions or would like some help speak to a member of Team SF on info@spikefitness.co.uk or 07597215652.