THE 7 KEY ELEMENTS OF A GREAT STRENGTH SESSION

 

When it comes to your training, taking an holistic approach and continuously looking to bring balance to your body is super important - you want to make sure you are taking a full-body approach.

Within your two or three sessions a week, there are 7 key ‘ingredients’ that will help you see results and get you closer to your training and performance goals.

WHAT ARE THE 7 KEY ELEMENTS?

  • Pulling movements

  • Pushing movements

  • Squat movements

  • Lunge movements

  • Hinge movements

  • Rotation (core) movements

  • Gait-based movements

Below we give a brief rationale for each, and an example exercise….

PULLING MOVEMENTS

Using upper body pulling movements, we are trying to engage key muscles within your posterior chain (shoulders, back etc). The majority of us succumb to poor daily positions and postures, which can weaken these muscle and create major imbalances and possible injury. The ability to pull our own body weight and be strong in this area will go a long way to benefit our performance with the ability maintain strong form and power for longer durations.

Exercise Example - Chin Up

 
 
 

PUSHING MOVEMENTS

You may not see how being able to do a push up will benefit your run performance - however, having the ability to hold and support your own body weight is a survival skill as well as a performance one. Think about your catch in the water, maintaining your aero-position on the bike, running tall or scrambling up uneven terrain.

Exercise Example - Single Arm Overhead Press

 
 
 

SQUAT MOVEMENTS

There are so many variations to the squat; simply put, we are looking to actively mobilise and maintain the function of key joints within our lower body - knees, hips and ankles. Optimal movement though these joints will go a long way to preventing injury and developing strength, speed and power through your largest muscle groups.

Exercise Example: Tempo Goblet Squat

 
 
 

Realistically, if you’re not getting enough push or pull, and not working on your single leg work or your core strength enough, you’re not going to be coming at it from a balanced place. As a result, these will become areas of weakness.

 

LUNGE MOVEMENTS

Through our lunge movements (which includes many exercises outside of the conventional lunge exercise) we are aiming to develop and maintain the functional symmetry of our lower body strength. Our daily actions, and the majority of our sports, are bi-pedal (with two feet), so we need to challenge the weaknesses that are present in our left-side compared to our right-side if we want to perform optimally and reduce the risk of injury.

Exercise Example: Split Squat

 
 
 

HINGE MOVEMENTS

The majority of lower back and hamstring issues are down to the inability to engage and load our posterior chain correctly and effectively. Hinge pattern movements look to train our lower body (posterior chain) muscle groups to work in synergy with each other to produce optimal force and power, whilst also protecting our body under heavy loads (think picking up a heavy object).

Exercise Example: Barbell Deadlift

 
 
 

ROTATION MOVEMENTS

When performing your core exercises, don’t forget the importance of including rotational work. Forcing your body to engage your midline whilst resisting external forces gives us the ability to connect our upper and lower body movement, transfer power during performance, protect our spine from injury and maintain form when fatigue sets in.

Exercise Examples: Kneeling Band Woodchop

 
 
 

GAIT-BASED MOVEMENTS

It is essential that we take our static strength and train it in dynamic situations. We have to apply our strength to unstable, uneven and unpredictable environments that we will experience, our on the road, trail or track. Teaching our muscles, ligaments and tendons how to absorb impact, tolerate load and produce power is key to our performance and injury resilience.

Exercise Example: Two to One Loading

 
 
 

Working on all seven elements at once can be challenging; it takes experience and time to find the perfect individualised program for you. But by focusing and challenging these key areas you are going to really start to see some wonderful changes, including alleviating the pressures and the load that training can have on certain parts of your body that you may have been overloading previously.

Are you currently struggling with ongoing injury, and feel like you’ve done everything you can? Book a consultation call with us today and we can look at things in more detail.

 
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