Does the body function as isolated individual parts or as a whole?
The focus of these parts as stated in Part 1 is strength. In order to get above average strong for your height/weight so you can enjoy the activities that you do outside the gym, you have to get the most bang for your buck in the gym. Get in, workout, and get out.
Thinking about the body and your daily movements like moving furniture, picking up things in the garage etc do your arms or your legs function separately from the body or do they all work together as a system? System of course. Whatever you do, each limb and its relative muscle groups function each in their own proportion to complete the task.
If your body works as a system, why not train it that way so the whole system gets stronger? Every muscle, big or small, will contribute its share to complete whatever movement the system is doing
What constraints are imposed on the body in how it can move?
When you choose which movements to do to get strong you have to consider the body’s joints and how they move. The knee is a good example. It’s a hinge joint. It doesn’t like to be twisted in other directions. It likes to move in the only movement it’s designed. So you’re constrained in how you can use it: bending it and straightening it.
The shoulder is a ball and socket joint with lots of possible movements. Same goes for your hip but with a little less range of motion than your shoulder (except for gymnasts). Point is, your body is made up of different types of joints and they have constraints in how they can move.
If it works as a system and is constrained by joint movements, which movements should I use?
This should start to give you hints as to what movements you can do with these constraints. Daily, you sit down, reach overhead, bend over to pick something up, and push against something. So the question is, how do I get strong and what do I do? As shocking as this will be to you, the answer is simple. You need to do the movements you already do, and just get stronger doing them. That’s right, just do the movements you do now and progressively load them over time.
The movements if you haven’t already figured it out is squat, bench press, deadlift and overhead press. These are considered the core compound movements that will translate the closest to your daily movements and getting stronger doing them will make your daily activities easier. That’s all there is to it. The kicker here is that anybody can do this regardless of age or sex. These movements can be modified to accommodate almost anyone.
Should I use barbells, dumbbells or machines?
This is an endless debate in the “fit-sphere”. I won’t spend too much time trying to convince you why I choose barbells but I’ll give my opinion on each.
Machines
The problem with machines is they only move in a certain plane that is not adjustable. Think of a smith machine. The bar only goes up and down and not horizontal at all. But when you squat with a bar on your back there is a bit of horizontal movement as your back angle starts to close on the way down. The bar will also not be right over the middle of your foot because the weight of the bar plus weights on your back will change the center of mass (CoM) which will change your movement slightly.
By forcing you to move only up and down with regards to the bar movement you’re placing an artificial constraint on your “free-movement”.
Dumbbells
They have their place but more so in bodybuilding routines when you more or less isolate a muscle. The problem with dumbbells is you can’t progressively add more weight beyond the range of weight variations on the dumbbell rack. Yes you can try to do fly’s with the 50s then 70s etc but we’re not interested in that here. We want strength. And to get strong you need to have the ability to progressively add weight over weeks, months and years.
You can’t get really strong doing goblet squats holding a dumbbell. Or get really strong doing a dumbbell deadlift. The limitation of not being able to add more and more weight over time eliminates them from a strength routine apart from accessory work when you feel ambitious.
Barbells
Barbells are what we use to get strong. When you squat for example, your body moves according to your anthropometry. The body/barbell system can move freely. The CoM changes as the weight on the bar gets heavier so your body and it’s angles will change how it’s supposed to. The barbell has the ability to be loaded with a wide range of varying weight amounts to make continuous progress over years and years. You will never run out of space to add weight to the sleeves of a barbell.
One of the biggest advantages that is often misunderstood is balance. People think balance is something you’re supposed to train by stimulating some magical “stabilisation muscles”. There is zero logical sense in that. Your brain takes care of balance for you already. Ever seen a 90yr old lady just walking and all of a sudden, with no tripping or funny business, just fall over? No. She can balance. What the problem is, is the counter force needed to stop the off-balance component. In other words, she’s too weak to stop herself from falling.
Let’s say you start with just the bar during squats. So 20kgs(45lbs). You do your sets and you go home. After a few months your squat shot up to 100kg(225lbs). What happened? You still have the bar on your back, it’s heavier, and you’re not falling on your face as the movement changes slightly due to the change in CoM as you move up and down. Did you fall on your face? No you didn’t. So what the hell am I getting at? Well you just trained your balance! By getting stronger your body automagically solved the balance equation by recruiting the muscles in their own proportions to keep you balanced and from falling on your face. This happened as the weight got heavier. You didn’t think to yourself “Oh I need to train my balance as I squat”. You just squatted. So to improve balance, you get stronger. 90yr old ladies can regain their balance when they get strong. Don’t believe me? Take a look below.
Conclusion
The body works as a system so the best way to make it strong is to use it as a system. It’s made up of different limb lengths each constrained by a certain joint that can move in a certain way. In order to find the movements we use to get strong we look at what movements we use on a daily basis and we can move within the constraints posed on the body as a whole (the joints). We find that the squat, bench press, deadlift and the overhead press mimics our daily movements the closest.
The tool we’ll be using is the barbell because its ability to be loaded up to very small amounts like 0.2kg(0.5lbs) or 50kg olympic plates. With this ability you can progressively overload your strength training for years and even decades. A secondary effect of getting stronger with barbells also trains your balance which makes them perfect for older populations as well.
I will add here that my bias is strength with barbells and later in a program supplemental movements get added in. Overall health is what matters and if someone doesn’t want to train for strength that is 100% fine. You can still make progress in strength to a degree and you will still get healthier with a good relationship with food. Merely exercising to get a sweat on with machines or dumbbells is perfectly fine if you don’t have specific interests in becoming very strong.
I’m adding this here for the spergs who will sperg out and yell “YoU CaN Make pRoGrEsS wItH aNy TyPe oF eXeRcIsE HuRrR DuRrR!!”.
Strength can be gained at any age
You can get stronger at any age. When the below video was made Gus was 91 years old. I believe she passed since unfortunately. No more falls, putting the cane and walker back in the closet and feeling stronger overall. This is just an idea of what’s possible when you view the body as a system and you train it like a system to get stronger.
