Create chaos

So often when we think of strength training, we think of traditional weight lifting in the gym. It’s clinical, and often the focus is on training within perfect form. But life doesn’t happen in perfect form.

That’s why I love making sure there is an element of chaos to my strength. Strength-oriented sports like rock climbing, grappling-based martial arts, and watersports like wakeboarding will help you develop the kind of strength you won’t find by just lifting weights in the gym.

Slow down

To improve strength you need to apply the principle of progressive overload, which means needing to apply greater levels of force over time. The most obvious way to create progressive overload is by adding more weight. But it’s not the only way. At some point you will always reach an upper limit of how much weight can be physically moved.

Being smarter in ways to create progressive overload and strength gains, rather than simply adding more plates to a bar, helps mitigate risks while keeping the rewards. One such method is by simply slowing a movement down.

Exercising more control over the weight, particularly during the eccentric (lowering) phase, will create more of a challenge and has been shown to elicit strength gains.

No matter how strong you are, it’s possible to make exercises harder by performing them slower. It’s far better to get a full range of motion with a slow but controlled tempo than cutting short your range of motion by performing half reps quickly.

Performing eccentric-focused weight training is an excellent way to quickly increase strength. Try to lower your weight for four seconds on each repetition.

Alternatively, you could do a week of super slow lowering of ten seconds deceleration per rep – much harder than you think.

Loading the lengthening phase of a movement with intent is a heavily researched area of strength and conditioning. Eccentric muscle action is stronger and expends less energy – a higher force at a lower cost.

If you want to build strength within a movement, pay extra attention to this phase every rep.

Shift the balance

Kettlebells are inherently less stable than dumbbells and barbells. That means they require more proprioceptive control to use them, as well as recruitment of the smaller stabilizer muscles.

Swapping a 20kg dumbbell for a 20kg kettlebell can produce strength gains, without the orthopedic cost of adding extra load.

Feel the force

When the body moves load, it seeks stability. In fact, we are constantly battling to maintain stable positions to allow our body to move.

When it comes to training and lifting weights, the higher the level of external stability, the greater the potential to produce force. Choosing movements that offer the best opportunity to produce force means more time achieving high -quality muscle contractions.

Integrating machinebased work (plateloaded is best in my opinion), alongside exercises that in general have shorter ranges of motion, will allow you to lift more load.

For example, a box squat in place of a barbell back squat, or a floor press instead of a dumbbell bench press, will both offer greater loading potential. If the goal is to build strength, movements with these characteristics should form the majority of your strength exercises.