Plan it, follow it and keep it slow and steady. Keep this expert advice in mind as you head back into the gym and begin the work towards rebuilding your strength and muscle mass. 

a solid plan to build strength.

A structured roadmap, that has 3 components: (1) major muscle groups (2) supportive muscle groups and (3) muscles that will help prevent injuries. This plan should focus on old school basic lifts, and the mastery of those lifts. I’m talking about the squat, deadlift, overhead press, incline press, flat press, front squat, dips and chin ups. Once that base is developed, the plan shifts and more advanced rep schemes are applied and the client begins to develop solid strength and confidence in their training.

Changing the program from workout to workout might be entertaining and engaging for the mind, but is not an effective way to building strength. In order for muscle fibers to grow and develop more capacity, they need repetition with effective exercises – again, I’m talking about those old school basic lifts. I’ve been training clients for 20 years and had the opportunity to try consistent programming as well as diverse programs. This experience has shown me consistent programming is more powerful. Think of it as training for a sport. If your goal is to become an elite basketball player, you’ve got to do all the basketball moves and only basketball moves if you want to really see  progress. But if you train soccer the next day and tennis the day after that, your body won’t get the exposure needed to truly master basketball.

slow it down.

Too often I see individuals working with too heavy of weight. I know training can be driven by the ego and the need to lift heavy, but by lowering the load and slowing down the tempo, you give the body the  opportunity to coordinate the movement is such a way that you develop not only the muscles, but the joints, tendons and  ligaments. This optimizes the training for years to come  and decreases the possibility of getting injured. The  concept of tempo focuses on the speed of the movement,  the eccentric part of the lift is the lowering phase – this part of the lift that challenges your muscles the most. For example, in a squat, this is the portion of the lift when you are moving towards the floor. Try using a 4 second down movement and come up fast! This can be applied to all of your lifts. If you’re doing a bench press, try 4 seconds on the lowering phase then drive the barbell up fast! Make sure you reduce your weights appropriately so you can master that time under tension. Then before you know it, the weights are increasing and so is your strength!

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