Looking back on the first year of running Newstrength it’s safe to say there’s been a lot of lessons learnt. Lessons in training, lessons in business and probably most importantly, lessons in life.
A few of these were reminders of lessons learnt in the past, some have been taken on into how we approach training for our clients. But all have been an extremely valuable learning process moving forward.
So over the next few weeks we thought we would share these training and life lessons for others to implement in their own lives.
When it comes to training here’s 3 of the main lessons we’ve learnt in the past year:
- Speed training for strength development
- Simple linear progression works well for lagging lifts
- You don’t need to train that much to get really strong
There’s tonnes more we’ve learnt and began incorporating with our training but these are a good start for now.
Using Speed Work To Build Strength
Since we’ve opened our doors we have been fortunate to work with a bunch of guys and girls competing in sports at a bunch of different levels. One of the things we find with these guys is most of the time they sit somewhere on the spectrum of needing to focus more on getting stronger to needing to take their strength and be able to apply it quickly on the field.
We don’t believe in the gimmicky rubbish of using strength exercises designed to mimic the actions of the sport however, we do believe strongly that a team sports athlete who prepares solely in the gym won’t ever reach their full potential.
I know this first hand, back when I was playing sports I was generally one of the strongest on the field but… There was never a deadlift bar on the field so it didn’t matter how much weight I could lift. Looking back now I know I should’ve spent more time working on sprints, jumps and throws to complement my lifting.
Knowing this we knew we needed to be able to provide some level of speed training for our athletes and that would take away from the time we could spend on getting bigger and stronger…
As we started to implement more speed work though, our clients continued to gain strength as quickly as they were beforehand, with much less time dedicated to working on it.
At first, we thought it must have been a residual effect of the previous phases of training but since then we’ve continued to see the same trends with new clients working into those programs.
Wanting to try this yourself?
The key factor here is preserving the quality of the speed work. We use primarily 10m sprints along with various jumps and throws but ensure to rest long enough to maintain high outputs. Slow sprint efforts (relative to your max pace) doesn’t make anyone fast or strong!
Simple Linear Progression For Lagging Lifts
You know how sometimes you get the feeling of not being super motivated to train?
Yep we know it too, particularly through some of the busier periods where we would spend 16 hours a day at the gym working. Training in the gym during those phases just isn’t nearly as fun as it should be. But what came from that time has been extremely valuable too.
In different times when we had been busy and training wasn’t our main priority we decided to place the focus on doing one or two things really well in a brief session and then getting out of the gym.
This brought us back to using a basic linear progression on a few lifts and working on bringing them up. For me, overhead pressing has always been a tough lift but by simply coming in each week, starting easy and only adding 2.5kg per session while trying to complete the same rep scheme I’ve seen it make more progress in the last 6 weeks than it has in the last few years.
The main point here is that you don’t need super advanced strength protocols if you haven’t tried the simple tried and true methods first.
Want to try this out yourself?
Pick a lift, let’s say bench press take 60% of your max and start with 5×10, then simply add a few kilos per week until you can no longer hit 5×10. For fun at this point I like to do a rep max at what you were doing sets of there ie. 10RM after 5×10. Then move to 5×8 until that’s exhausted, then 5×5, then 5×3. Once you get to 5×3 if you’ve done it properly and not starved yourself in the process you should be pretty close to surpassing your old 1RM.
Little rule of thumb to follow
You’re weekly progression shouldn’t exceed 5% of your max each time ie. jumping 10kg each week on bench when your max is 100 pretty quickly leaves you no room to progress.
Here’s what rule I use:
1RM = <100kg – 2.5kg/wk
1RM = 100-150kg – 5kg/wk
1RM = 150-200kg – 7.5kg/wk
1RM = >200kg – 10kg/wk
If you’re much over that number you probably are going to get to the point where simple linear progression doesn’t work as well any more. So don’t worry about adding much more than that.
You Don’t Need To Train That Much To Get STRONG
This has been the biggest lesson I’ve came across in the last 12 months. Watching clients of ours who train 2-3 times per week increasing strength and hitting numbers I had always thought required nearly daily training to reach.
Anywhere you go, you’ll often hear train more to get better results… And while I strongly agree with this if we are talking about body composition goals but when it comes to strength and particularly lower body strength, we’ve got guys pulling over 220kg who train twice a week.
Yes they also have active lifestyles playing sports and the like which I think contributes heavily to their success but my point is there are plenty of people attached to needing to be in the gym all the time to get results and we have guys and girls who are proving that you can be really strong and fit while not spending your whole life in the gym.
Do I think you can do this without living an active lifestyle outside of the gym?
Probably not, I think that the other activities help the nervous system recovery and may even somewhat act as a light stimulus in between sessions which could help provide better results.
Here’s To Another Year Of Lessons
The most exciting thing of reaching the 1st birthday of Newstrength is seeing the lessons we learnt in the past year and knowing that this time next year there will be a bunch more lessons we have to share with you all.
Make sure to check back in next week where I share our top 3 life lessons learnt in the first year of Newstrength.