The basics of getting strong

Strong people are harder to kill and more useful in general. This is paraphrased from Mark Rippetoe and I fully agree. My buddy John fell off a ladder at work and wound up hurting his shoulder, it took a few weeks and he was back to full range of motion, and within a couple months back to normal. A weaker individual would have required surgery to fix it and probably would never have been back to 100%.

Even at work I hear complaints about back pain, see people who can't replace the jug on the water cooler without sustaining serious injury (or just plain can't do it at all). Hobbling around for the weekend with a cane because he had to make several trips up and down the stairs... This is unacceptable. These people are barely middle aged... WTF is life going to like for them when they are 60? 80?

Getting strong is where everyone will see an immediate improvement in quality of life, and it will also help you get better oomph out of your conditioning workouts. Here are the basics for getting strong.

Lift heavy things, eat more than you think you should, sleep as much as you can. Now obviously that is over simplified, but basically that's the jist.

If you're a newby to it, and still considered a novice (has nothing to do with time/experience lifting, but your ability to adapt) then you can just do something like 3 sets of 5 reps on the big lifts, increase the weight you use every workout. After a while you won't be able to adapt workout to workout like that and need to get into a program designed for weekly adaptations, but the overall premise is the same.

We dedicate a large portion of our class time to this, so don't dog it. This is where you make your money and will see the best return on your effort. Hit the barbell hard, it'll pay off big time.

 

185lbsx10 reps, notice how despite lifting heavy and being strong she isn't "big and bulky"?