Workout Mistake - The Big FAT Strength Lie!

Have you been told that strength is everything when it comes to seeing gains from your workouts? If so, you are making the biggest workout mistake you can be making and you’re definitely going to want to watch this video. Here I am going to address the big fat strength lie that is more rampant now

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. Today we’re going to talk about strength. As we always do here, putting the science back in strength.

As a matter of fact, in this case, dendrology. The science of trees. I just looked it up on Google five minutes ago. The fact is, I’m going to teach you to become tree experts. We’re going to start here by looking at a couple of pictures.

Tell which of these two trees is stronger. Is it the first tree or the second tree? I’m going to give you a minute her because this one’s a little tough. Is it Tree A or Tree B? Which tree is stronger?

Here’s the thing, I kind of tricked you because you really can’t give me answer because you can’t comment on the strength of the tree unless you know its root system. The real strength of the tree is the strength of the root system. I could take that big, giant tree and have it lying on the ground real fast if I cut all the roots beneath it. The same thing happens here when we talk about strength. A lot of people will have you focusing on the size of the tree without ever focusing on what really matters.

That is the root system. What is underneath it? What is the real pillar holding everything up? When you look at this, which is a common demonstration of what people like to depict when they talk about training and strength, you look at strength at the bottom. It’s the biggest, most important, most critical area of this pyramid holding everything else up with everything else built off it.

Look, as a strength coach I’ll tell you that strength is a really important component of all your abilities. We can argue for all of these. We know hypertrophy is something that could benefit from strength. The stronger you are. Some of the easiest ways to build muscle, especially early on in your training, is to build your strength.

We know that strength gains will precede size gains. So, we know that. We know a little more now that eccentric stress and metabolic stress are other ways we can do this without having to be so strong, but we know that’s one of the fastest ways to get there. Progressively overloading more weight to the bar or dumbbells when you lift them. We know power is something that will benefit from being stronger because it’s not just about the application of acceleration and speed to the movement that you’re doing, but it’s also dependent upon how much force you can generate.

So, we know that being stronger her is going to benefit your power. Likewise, as we become more specialized here – speed, agility, quickness – all those athletic skills are improved with strength. If I have to cut to move in a direction quickly, or if I have to accelerate off the line quickly a lot of that is going to be impacted by my ability to generate force through my legs, into the ground to do so. So, we know the stronger my legs are, the better this is going to be. Then we get all the way to the top here with the really specialized skill work.

Let’s say, hitting a baseball. We can’t all just hit a baseball. But we know if we’re stronger we can hit one farther. If we’re kicking a football for a living, we know we can kick it farther and harder if you have more strength. But the problem is this: this, while being so critical, is not the root system.

If I can do something to this to negatively impact it then I haven’t gotten to the true roots. What we need to do is – I need to get you guys there; the roots. That’s where your long-term gains are going to lie. Your ability to realize your true strength and all the things that are built off it are going to depend upon you uncovering the real root system that’s undercutting what you’re doing right now because it does. Often.

People are going to say right off the bat – I’m looking at this list. Mobility, flexibility, stability – “There goes Jeff again, PT. He can’t stop being a PT. ” No, I can’t because I realize just how important it is to the full picture. I realize, as a strength coach, this matters.

The sooner you realize this, the less likely you are to get hurt along the way to trying to build your big tree and grow your tree so everyone can be impressed with how big your tree is. And the more likely you are to do it without having to have – maybe to even realize true strength capacity, as we’ve talked about many times before. Not built on a cracked foundation. So why does this matter more? Why is this supporting strength?

All you’ve got to do is look at them. First of all, mobility and flexibility kind of go together, but they’re slightly different. For those that don’t really know, flexibility is really about the capacity of your muscles to lengthen across the joint. So, we know when muscles are tight you can’t really experience true range of motion or full range of motion because of the tightness of those muscles. Likewise, mobility is really more talking about the quality of the joint and how much of the available range of motion your body can experience or go through, depending upon the integrity of that joint, or even the structures around it.

But they’re both going to impact your range of motion. So, we know one of the easy ways to determine this is, if you have limited range of motion from a length-tension relationship standpoint, you can’t really experience the full-strength capacity on a lift. If I’m quarter-squatting I’m never loading my quads up or my glutes up at the bottom of a lift, or as I approach parallel. I’m not getting far enough. But it’s more important than that.

I want you guys to try this with me. We know that we can influence muscle activation capabilities by impairing one’s joint motion via either flexibility impairments, or limitations in mobility. So, if I said, “Stand up, turn your feet out, and then squeeze your glutes as hard as you can”, you should feel your glutes tighten a lot. Now, relax, take your toes, and just point them in a little bit. Now try that again.

What happened? You can’t tighten your glutes nearly as much. You can’t generate as much force and tension through your glutes as you did just five seconds ago. Nothing changed. The strength in your glutes didn’t change.

You didn’t get weak five seconds later. What happened is the available range of motion at the joint changed. The joint positioning changed. We know that joint positioning influences muscle activation capabilities and force generating capabilities. This is a micro chasm of what happens.

If you don’t focus on maximizing the available mobility and flexibility with the joints involved in, let’s say, a squat – I’m not saying your toes are pointed in. I’m saying that’s a representation that altered mechanics at a joint in the hip are going to influence the output of the glutes. It matters. I just took your strength and cut it out from underneath you. It wasn’t the root system.

It was the tree, but it wasn’t the roots. These are the roots. But before you do what I think you might do – a lot of us say, “Jeff, I know. But that’s why I go and foam roll, and I put a cross ball on my ass for 45 minutes before every workout”. Which I’ve talked about before, guys.

It’s a waste of time. You don’t need all that. A little more specific is good. But the fact is, that’s not going to fix your problem either because what happens there is you add more range of motion to a system that’s lacking the most important thing. That is stability.

You’re probably thinking, “Well, what is stability? Isn’t that strength? ” Stability is different than strength, guys. Stability is something you can feel. If you are – let’s keep it going with the example of the squat.

If you’re at the bottom of the squat,