A Graphical Representation of Strength Gains over Time

Over your time lifting you may have noticed that the gains just don’t come as easily as they used to, if you are a more experienced lifter and have been lifting for a number of years. Younger lifters numbers are quick to go up and they have the ability to do practically anything in the gym and get stronger. After a couple years have gone by and doing the same thing every week has stopped working, it can be frustrating when strength gains only come in 5-10 pound personal records every few months. Getting stronger is not a linear relationship (figure 1). If it was there would be a lot more 1,000+ pound squatters in the world. In reality, getting stronger more like what is depicted in figure 2. You get stronger fast! Then, as the years go on the amount of time and effort it takes to get even stronger returns marginal gains. 

 Figure 1: Not how strength increases over time.

Figure 2: How strength gains over time actually looks, and the range of marginal gains.

Don’t be discouraged if this you are in the range of marginal gains. This is when you can start using more advanced training methods and mixing it up to add more variety to your training, which can be very effective! Having a good idea about where you fall can give you a better understanding of what to expect as you continue to try and get stronger. It all comes down to how much time and effort you are will to put into the task. That decision is up to you.

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

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Do You Have Good Recovery Practices?

How well you can recover is just as important as how hard you can train. Finding a balance between the two is extremely crucial to performing at your peek potential. I will go as far as saying that this is not just a training concept but a universal concept that can apply to all other practices upon which you want to improve. The universal principle I am talking about here is that you can only train as hard you can recover.

That means that if you cannot fully recover from a workout, all that extra hard work you’ve done is going to waste. Ideally when we train, we expose our bodies to a stimulus that causes us to adapt. Training places stress on our tissues, like muscles and bones, creating a small breakdown of those structures. Our bodies’ response to this is to rebuild these tissues, making them stronger than before. The catch to this is that our bodies need to be ready to adapt and recover from what we’ve exposed them to. Two of the biggest factors in that contribute to how well you are going to recover are your sleep and your nutrition.

Sleep is sooooooooooo important. I cannot stress that enough when it comes to recovery. While we’re sleeping is when the body does the majority of its work towards recovery. It literally has nothing else to do during that time, so its only effort is to recover from the day, repair itself, grow, and become more resilient to the stressors we expose ourselves to. Ideally, we want to be getting between 7-9 hours a night. 

Your nutrition is another huge component of recovery. The phrase “you are what you eat” is so cliché but oh-so-true. If you eat garbage food, your body will perform and recover like garbage. Think about it this way: you don’t put $1 food into a $1,000,000 athlete. This reminds me of when I was playing baseball in college, and we would stop at fast food chains while traveling to and from games. When a whole team feels and plays like garbage, because they’re lethargic from all the crap they ate, some people wonder why their athletes aren’t performing as well as they should. I won’t get into this any further, but something is better than nothing in terms of energy needed to recover, so don’t starve yourself! I’ll stop now before I go off on a huge rant… Just try and do your best when it comes to getting the best nutrition you can.

Before you even consider taking supplements, make sure you’re addressing both of the aforementioned factors. Realistically, supplements are a small piece of the puzzle, and you need to do the big things right before worrying about other things. Work on getting enough quality sleep and eating real food that your body will use to its fullest potential to repair itself and grow. Adopting just these two habits will put you on the right track to performing your best.

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

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Changing Up Your Tempos

Changing up your lifting tempos can be a great and simple way to add more variety to your lifting program. You can achieve this by adjusting the time of your eccentric, concentric, and isometric muscle contractions during an exercise. 

First, a quick recap of the three types of muscle contractions listed above:

Concentric: Muscle shortening. For example, the initial motion of a bicep curl.

Isometric: A static muscle contraction. For example, if you were to hold your elbow at 90 degrees of flexion during a bicep curl.

Eccentric: A muscle lengthening contraction. For example, the lowering of the weight during a bicep curl.

I apologize for using the bicep curl as an example, because it is the most standard and boring one, but it is also the easiest to do while sitting down and reading this. Now back to the point of this article… tempos.

The tempo of a lift is the duration of each contraction during an exercise. For a squat, the first movement comprises the eccentric phase. This could range from 1-6 seconds depending on the results you desire. The bottom position of a squat, before you start standing up, is the isometric portion. An isometric contraction can be performed at the bottom of the squat, halfway down when descending, or halfway up when ascending. You can add in an isometric wherever you want during the movement. 

Lastly, we now have the concentric phase, seen when you stand back up from the squat. These contractions can be adjusted a variety of ways for different exercises. This way, you can add more variety to your exercise program without the need for more equipment. Change up some of your tempos and spice it up. A little more variety will probably do you some good and get you some more of them gains!

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

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