I wanted to share a great article Eric Cressey wrote about the things that almost always are the reasons people don’t get stronger.

I also wanted to let you know that Eric just added an additional Bonus for you if you buy during his World Series Sale for his best selling product, Show & Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and
Move Better.

This new Bonus is called ‘Warm Ups 2011′ and it goes behind the scenes in his gym Cressey Performance and shows you how he prepares some of the top athletes in the world to prevent injuries and maximize performance.  One of his professional baseball players even demonstrates it.

If you order Show and Go before at midnight on Thursday you can get this bonus along with all the other great components of the Show and Go System for 50% off the normal price.

You can check it out here:

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And here’s the article that I mentioned from Eric:

5 Reasons You Aren’t Getting Stronger

By: Eric Cressey
Like just about all lifters, I got a lot bigger and stronger in my first 1-2 years of training in spite of the moronic stuff that I did.  In hindsight, I was about as informed as a chimp with a barbell – but things worked out nonetheless.  That is, at least, until I hit a big fat plateau where things didn’t budge.

Think I’m joking?  Sadly, I’m not; otherwise, I wouldn’t have spent about 14 months trying to go from a 225-pound bench to 230.  When you’re finished laughing at my past futility (or about how similar it sounds to your own plight), we’ll continue.

Ready?  Good – because self-deprecating writing was never a strong suit of mine.  I have, however, become quite good at picking heavy stuff off the floor – to the tune of a personal-best 660-pound deadlift at a body weight of 188.

My other numbers aren’t too shabby, either, but this article isn’t about me; it’s about why YOU aren’t necessarily getting strong as fast as you’d like.  Let’s look at a few mistakes many people make in their quest to get stronger.  Sadly, I made most of these myself along the way, so hopefully I can save you some frustration.

Mistake #1: Only doing what’s fun and not what you need.

As you could probably tell, deadlifting is a strength of mine – and I enjoy it.  Squatting, on the other hand, never came naturally to me.  I always squatted, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it took the back seat to pulling heavy.

Eventually, though, I smartened up and took care of the issue – by always putting squatting before deadlifting in all my lower-body training sessions (twice a week).

In addition to me dramatically improving my squat, a funny thing happened: I actually started to love to squat.  Whoever said that you can’t teach an old dog (or deadlifter) new tricks didn’t have the real scoop.

Mistake #2: Not taking deload periods.

One phrase of which I’ve grown quite fond is “fatigue masks fitness.”  As a little frame of reference, my best vertical jump is 36” – but on most days, I won’t give you anything over 34.5” or so.  The reason is very simple: most of your training career is going to be spent in some degree of fatigue.  How you manage that fatigue is what’s going to dictate your adaptation over the long-term.

On one hand, you want to impose enough fatigue to create supercompensation – so that you’ll adapt and come back at a higher level of fitness.  On the other hand, you don’t want to impose so much fatigue that you dig yourself a hole you can’t get out of without a significant amount of time off.

Good programs implement strategic overreaching follows by periods of lower training stress to allow for adaptation to occur.  You can’t just go in and hit personal bests in every single training session.

Mistake #3: Not rotating movements.

It never ceases to amaze me when a guy claims that he just can’t seem to add to his bench press (or any lift, for that matter), and when you ask him what he’s done to work on it of late, and he tells you “bench press.” Specificity is important, folks, but if you aren’t rotating exercises, you’re missing out on a wildly valuable training stimulus: rotating exercises.

While there is certainly a place for extended periods of specificity (Smolov squat cycles, for instance), you can’t push this approach indefinitely.  Rotating my heaviest movements was one of the most important lessons I learned along my journey.  In addition to helping to create adaptation, you’re also expanding your “motor program” and avoiding overuse injuries via pattern overload.

I’m not saying that you have to overhaul your entire program each time you walk into the gym, but there should be some semi-regular fluctuation in exercise selection.  The more experienced you get, the more often you’ll want to rotate your exercises (I do it weekly).  We generally rotate assistance exercises every four weeks, though.

Mistake #4: Inconsistency in training.

I always tell our clients from all walks of life that the best strength and conditioning programs are ones that are sustainable.  I’ll take a crappy program executed with consistency over a great program that’s only done sporadically.  In my daily practice, this is absolutely huge for professional athletes who need to maximize progress in the off-season; they just can’t afford to have unplanned breaks in training if they want to improve from year to year.

If a program isn’t conducive to your goals and lifestyle, then it isn’t a good program.  That’s why I went out of my way to create 2x/week, 3x/week, and 4x/week strength training options – plus five supplemental conditioning options and a host of exercise modifications – when I pulled Show and Go together; I wanted it to be a very versatile resource.

Likewise, I wanted it to be safe; a program isn’t good if it injures you and prevents you from exercising.  Solid programs include targeted efforts to reduce the likelihood of injury via means like mobility warm-ups, supplemental stretching recommendations, specific progressions, fluctuations in training stress, and alternative exercises (“plan B”) in case you aren’t quite ready to execute “Plan A.”

For me personally, I attribute a lot of my progress to the fact that at one point, I actually went over eight years without missing a planned lift.  It’s a bit extreme, I know, but there’s a lesson to be learned.

Mistake #5: Wrong rep schemes.

Beginners can make strength gains on as little as 40% of their one-rep max.  Past that initial period, the number moves to 70% – which is roughly a 12-rep max for most folks.  Later, I’d say that the number creeps up to about 85% – which would be about a 5-rep max for an intermediate lifter.  This last range is where you’ll find most people who head to the internet for strength training information.

What they don’t realize is that 85% isn’t going to get the job done for very long, either.  My experience is that in advanced lifters, the fastest way to build strength is to perform singles at or above 90% of one-rep max with regularity.  As long as exercises are rotated and deloading periods are included, this is a strategy that can be employed for an extended period of time.  In fact, it was probably the single (no pun intended) most valuable discovery I made in my quest to get stronger.

I’m not saying that you should be attempting one-rep maxes each time you enter the gym, but I do think they’ll “just happen” if you employ this technique.

To take the guesswork out of all this and try some programming that considers all these crucial factors (and a whole lot more), check out Eric’s new resource, Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better.

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tonight (Friday) at midnight:

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Youth Strength and Conditioning: Systems, not just Sets and Reps
By: Eric Cressey

Back in November of 2010, a good buddy of mine who is a very accomplished college strength coach came up to Boston for a seminar we were holding at Cressey Performance. The seminar was on a Sunday, but he actually flew up Friday night so that he could observe on Saturday while we trained our clients – which was a nice blend of high school, college, and professional athletes, plus our adult clientele. All told, I’d say that high school athletes are 70% of our clientele.

That Tuesday morning, I woke up to this email from him:

“I just wanted to say thanks for everything. I had a great time. Your staff was outstanding and I really enjoyed watching you guys work on Saturday. I realize you are managers, but certainly technicians as well. Perfect form, I told Tony I saw two bad reps all weekend and someone was on the athlete before he had a chance to do another rep!!! Thanks so much and come visit anytime, we would love to have you.”

This isn’t an email to toot our own horn; it’s to make a very valuable point. If this coach had walked into every single private training facility and high school weight room in the country, in what percentage of cases do you think he would have come out with a favorable impression of the technique he witnessed in these strength and conditioning programs? If I had to venture an extremely conservative guess, I’d say less than 10%.

Simply stated, both in the public and private sectors, some coaches are letting kids get away with murder with respect to technique, not warming up, poor load selection in weight training programs, and a host of other factors.

What happens, then, when the s**t hits the fan and a kid gets hurt? I’ll tell you: certain exercises get “condemned” and strength and conditioning programs become more and more foo-foo; external loading is eliminated and kids wind up doing agility ladders and “speed training” for 60-90 minutes at a time in what can only be described as glorified babysitting. Or, worse yet, weight rooms get closed altogether. The door of opportunity gets slammed in the faces of a lot of kids who desperately need to get strong to stay healthy, improve performance, and build confidence.

That’s the reactive model, but what about a proactive model to prevent these issues in the first place? Again, I’ll tell you: assess kids up-front. Find out what is in their health history and evaluate how well they move. Actually learn their names and backgrounds. Then, program individually for them. Coach intensely in their initial sessions and get things right from the start. And, if an exercise doesn’t work for them, give them an alternative. As an example, take the squat. Some kids may not have sufficient ankle or hip mobility to squat deep in an Olympic style squat, so they’ll benefit more (and stay healthier) with box squat variations while you improve their mobility. Others may even be too immobile (or possess structural issues like femoroacetabular impingement) to even box squat safely, so you give them more single-leg work and deadlift variations. Regardless, you “coach ‘em up” well from the get-go – and they learn along the way.

In other words, the exercises aren’t the problem because exercises can be quickly and easily changed on the fly to match the athlete’s level of abilities. It’s the system in which they are placed that can be the stubborn, tough-to-change problem.

This is one reason why I’m super excited to be involved with the International Youth Conditioning Association. In my role on the IYCA’s Advisory Committee, I want to emphasize that you can have all the book smarts and coaching ability in the world, but if you aren’t put in a good system and business model, it simply won’t matter.

If you’re struggling to get results with your youth strength and conditioning programs – or your business itself is struggling – be sure to look at your business model and overall systems before you start tinkering with the individual exercises. Chances are that you need to rededicate yourself to relationship building and individualization more than you need to worry about sets and reps.

Eric Cressey is the president and co-founder of Cressey Performance, based just west of Boston. For more information on his training go to Show and Go Training today.

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