Another week, another topic, another blog, another chance to improve your life!
Every day we are given is another day we can CHOOSE to be better than the person we were yesterday.
The topic today can honestly revolutionize the way you view any kind of strength training or fitness program. Why might you ask? Well, the truth is many times people don’t differentiate training for muscles and training for movements.
You might be reading this thinking, “Nate, I know the difference between growing muscles and getting better at movements.” And I’m glad you do, that is step one complete! But, I think there is more depth to the concept that I want to share with you, so stay with me and keep reading!
A lot of my strength training programs stems from Jim Wendler’s methodology and writings. The concept I am about to share with you has been impacted by Jim Wendler’s work with strength training. After reading this, I recommend going to his articles for more research at the link below!
Carrying on, let’s get into today’s discussion.
Today’s Topics
- The Concept of Training Movements
- The Concept of Training Muscles
- Primary Lifts, Secondary Lifts, and Tertiary Lifts
- The Journey of Training Muscles and Movements
The Concept of Training Movements
When you are training a movement, the number 1 goal is Good Form. I talk about good form being one of our Steel’s Strength Training Principles in a previous blog and I cannot stress this enough! Good form allows you to strengthen yourself while staying safe and helping you reach your goals faster.
After you have mastered good form with a movement, the goal of training movements shifts to performance and strength.
The idea behind training for performance is making heavyweight feel light. Now, don’t take what I just said so literal–a heavy barbel on your back is not going to feel light lol! I am saying you want to be able to control the weight down and explode up with each rep at that weight during your sets. Overtime you will get stronger, and the weight will feel lighter.
Like I said, the goal of training movements–beyond good form–is performance. Giving one more rep, adding 5 more pounds to the bar, going till you can’t give another rep. Progressive Overload is the name of the game. You always want to do more/add more over time when you are strength training.
This doesn’t mean push yourself further than your body can handle, but it does mean you have to push past your comfort zone.
Of course, once you are training a movement and getting really good at it, you are going to see your strength increase and muscles start to grow. But it all goes back to training movements and really understanding the concept behind them!
The Concept of Training Muscle
Every time you train movements you are training muscles, but the difference between them lies in the goals. Movement is all about strength and performance where muscle focuses on fatigue.
Instead of making heavyweight feel light, you want to make light weight feel heavy.
An example is dumbbell curls. You want to go all the way down–ALWAYS USE FULL RANGE OF MOTION–come up and squeeze, go back down, and repeat. When you are doing this, you are focused on the muscle you are training instead of the movement itself.
The whole focus is on the muscle you are targeting and the fatigue that comes with it.
To sum them both up:
Training Movements: Focusing on having good form, knowing the different aspects of the movement, controlling it down while exploding up, and making heavyweight feel light.
Training Muscles: Focusing on having good form, pushing your muscles to fatigue, controlled movements and squeezing the muscle, and homing in on the specific muscle you are targeting by using full range of motion in each exercise.
Primary Lifts, Secondary Lifts, and Tertiary Lifts
The original idea was “Main Lift” and “Assistance Lift”. Main lifts being squats, deadlift, bench press–mainly used for strength training for performance.
I went a step further and created three categories: Primary Lift (main lift), Secondary Lift (assistance lift), and Tertiary Lift.
Primary Lifts
Bench Press, Squat, Deadlift, Shoulder Press.
These are almost always done with a barbel unless you cannot use a barbell. These lifts are trained as Movements–for strength and performance.
They are mostly trained with a goal of performance and getting stronger. You are wanting to add more weight to the bar and perform more reps overtime.
These movements are extremely beneficial when they are paired with training hard and heavy. They are safe and effective when trained as so as well.
Secondary Lifts
Dumbbell press or pushups instead of bench press, hip thrusts and RDLs instead of deadlift, or lunges and Bulgarian split squats instead of barbell squats.
Typically, these are compound movements where you are training multiple muscles and using multiple joints at one time.
These mimic primary lifts but are not exactly primary lifts.
You can train these hard and heavy, but not as heavy as your primary lifts would be trained.
These lifts are a hybrid of training as movements and muscles. If you are dumbbell pressing you want to control it down, press up and squeeze–a combo of primary and tertiary lifting strategies.
Tertiary Lifts
Curls, Triceps Extensions, Lateral Raises, Abs, Leg Extensions, Leg Curls.
The fun stuff, right?
These lifts are trained as muscles–making light weight feel heavy. Curling the heaviest weight you can find is not the best idea–trust me, my 16-year-old self should have known better lol!
Understanding these concepts and getting specific with your movements will lead to much better results, and you will be utilizing the exercises as they were intended.
So, train your big lifts as movements, small lifts as muscles, and the intermediate lifts as a mixture of both.
The Journey of Training Muscles and Movements
The advice I just gave doesn’t apply to everyone at the same time. Everyone is on a different step of their strength training journey so let me break this down even more.
First 0-3 Months
You need to learn the form. Knowing how to do the movements effectively and correctly is everything. This will take a few months because it is a skill–like riding a bike. You have to practice.
Most exercises will be between training the movement and training the muscle for the first few months until your form is perfected. Try to focus on the target muscle and performance, but let’s really focus on form.
This lays a great foundation for your future training. Trust me, you will start to see results just focusing on form. Being in the gym consistently yields great results!
Next 3-24 Months
You are going to master your form during this season–every rep looks the same.
This is where you get specific with your workout. Primary lifts are trained as movements, tertiary lifts are trained as muscles, and secondary lifts are trained as a combination.
24+ Months
There’s a time and place for everything. With that being said, once you hit this part of your fitness journey, you may can train some main lifts as a muscle or secondary movement. But this is for the more advanced trainee. This is only for times it makes sense to do so as well.
To get the best results, you need to implement these concepts and understand where you are on your fitness journey.
Understanding where you are at on your fitness journey is crucial to implementing the concept of training movements and training muscles.
If you are ready to tackle the concepts of training movements and muscles and to get help seeing where you are at on your fitness journey, we want to work with you!