Growing up as a footy loving young guy I was constantly in awe of the players playing at the elite level. These guys had superhero like strength and were as tough as gladiators but the thing that really impressed me was the way these guys could move.
They weren’t like the guys you see breaking world records in powerlifting who sometimes have a hard enough time putting their arms over their own heads. They could sprint, jump, change direction and then throw another player off them like they were a small child.
Fast forward to today’s game and there’s more and more of these guys that have viking like strength but also move as smoothly as a gazelle. Guys like Jason Taumalolo, Israel Folau and Buddy Franklin making big footprints on the game.
It’s easy to be inspired by these guys to want to get stronger…
The only problem is there’s not a simple framework on how to build strength like those guys that doesn’t turn into compromising your athleticism and conditioning for simply getting bigger.
Sadly, most guys trying to move like these athletes train like bodybuilders…
Think about that…
If you want to be strong and move like an athlete, then training like a bodybuilder who does absolutely zero athletic movements outside of the core strength training lifts like squats and deadlifts doesn’t make any sense.
So what should you be doing?
Want to look, move and feel like an athlete?
Then for starters you should be training like one. Throw away the old body part split and start focusing on training the body through movement patterns and not simply muscles.
Incorporating multiple training means and methods will achieve a larger athletic base upon which you can reach your athletic potential.
These means include but aren’t limited to; speed training, weightlifting, powerlifting, strongman, gymnastics, energy systems training (conditioning) and bodybuilding.
Each of these modalities will have a varying degree of importance dependant on where you are in your training experience and which you have tended to favour previously.
The last piece to take into account before we discuss how each training modality influences building strength without losing your athleticism is fuelling your training.
One of the most common problems we find with people we work with is not eating enough to fuel training and recovery. The biggest problem we find here is recovery tends to take longer and the adaptation to a training stimulus is reduced or simply your training sessions feel harder physically and give you less of a positive result.
Yep that’s right… If you don’t eat enough then you will get worse results and everything will feel tougher for you.
How do you know whether you are eating enough?
A good start would be to take your bodyweight in pounds and times it by 16 (for someone who trains hard around 5 days per week, drop it to 14 if you train less or up it to 18+ if you also have a physical job)
Eg. 90kg x 2.2 (to get pounds) = 198
198 x 16 = 3168 Calories per day
The second simple thing to check is are you making progress with your training?
Yes? Then you are probably eating enough.
No? Then there’s a good chance you don’t eat enough.
Now to the fun stuff, what should be in your program.
Sprints, Jumps and Throws
This is probably my biggest regret of what I should have spent more time on when I was younger in my training. I spent hours upon hours of training in the gym trying to get bigger and stronger.
My limitation however, wasn’t not being strong enough. I was someone who needed to place more focus on high velocity work rather than high load training to improve my athleticism.
These movements are essential for building power in a way that transfers to the field and something that you simply can’t do with weights alone.
Weightlifting
The olympic lifts tend to pop up somewhere either in a love or hate way when people start talking about developing athleticism. Now although I don’t feel like they are absolutely essential, I strongly believe in the athlete who can learn the widest variety of skills and means of developing and transferring force has a greater potential.
Olympic lifts have a particularly strong carryover to acceleration and explosive hip extension in sports. Some might find pull variations more comfortable but I believe in learning how to receive heavy weights whether in the power position or in a deep squat is an important athletic quality.
As an added bonus how good does it look to see someone who can throw a barbell over their head and land in a deep squat! If that’s not a sign of athleticism then I’m not sure what is.
Powerlifting and Bodybuilding
I’m going to wrap these two in together as I feel most people already have a lot of this covered but simply, a stronger athlete (relative to their bodyweight) has the greater potential for developing speed and power. So long as they don’t chase strength and size at the expense of other athletic qualities this will hold up true.
Focusing on developing strength in heavy compound movements like squats, deadlifts, presses and rows in a conservative and progressive manor will help lay a foundation for all other means to build upon.
Just be aware to not go overboard, the best thing about this type of training is it is easily measurable. But likewise it also makes it the worst thing about this type of training as we can get stuck chasing numbers and forgetting about everything else.
Bodybuilding comes in as an important factor for balancing out the body and particular importance should be place on the upper back, hamstrings and core to balance out the body and bulletproof it for the other training modalities.
Strongman
Here’s one of the most important training methods that most people often neglect…
The huge benefit that strongman style training has over other weightlifting methods is that it’s not about lifting perfectly balanced barbells. Lifting kegs, stones (or heavy dead balls more likely at most gyms) and carrying farmers handles, yokes and odd objects bridge the gap between being gym strong and viking strong. Anyone can lift a symmetrically loaded bar but chuck a heavy ball on your shoulder and try to lunge with it and it quickly becomes a different story.
Gymnastics
I wrote off gymnastics strength training when I was younger saying it was only for little lightweight people. How wrong I was there…
Even though there’s a big advantage to being smaller when it comes to the gymnastic movements. If you maintain the ability to do some of the basics on rope climbs, rings training and hand balancing there’s a lot you can gain from it.
The end range strength, coordination, joint conditioning and stability built through these movements are well worth the struggle at first to rebuild that foundation and carry over significantly to other training means.
Conditioning
So often I hear people mention that they got so unfit in trying to get stronger, now this doesn’t have to happen.
You just have to dedicate some time to maintaining your fitness while you work on your strength. It may only need to be 1-2 sessions a week and often they can be as simple as going for a light bike ride rather than feeling like you need to go and do 30 airbike intervals.
The main thing to consider is giving the majority of your volume and recovery to the most important factor. If that’s getting stronger than you shouldn’t spend too much time doing high intensity conditioning, and if you really want to do that then make sure you eat enough and sleep enough to compensate for it.
Getting Stronger Without Losing Athleticism
The biggest thing to building strength without losing your athleticism comes down to training like an athlete first rather than just trying to get strong while recklessly forgetting about everything else.
This is a huge focus on what we use for our clients at Newstrength.
If you would like to see more of how we implement these training modalities to get our clients the best result possible then check out our FREE 7 day pass to check us out for yourself.