
3-Tips to Programming Strength Training
Strength training can be a powerful tool to daily living. Strength training helps improve respiratory function, muscular strength and endurance and it supports your ability to live with using less effort. The musculoskeletal system moves the body’s joints so that you can breathe easier, get up and walk around each day, play sports, as well as participate in more general/basic tasks like hanging out with friends. The muscles move the body and the respiratory system fuels the system. If you can optimize your strength training in the gym, or at home, you can increase your potential to improving your strength. The key is to be strategic with how you pair your exercises together. Here are 3-tips that have helped our clients improve their overall strength.
1. Pair a Heavier Strength Exercise with a Lower Intensity Exercise.
Upper Body Strength and Lower Body Activation
For example: 1-Arm Dumbbell Row with Mini Band Lateral Steps
Lower Body Strength and Upper Body Mobility
For example: Lunges and 90 Degree Pec. Stretch
Pairing an upper body strength exercise like a 1-arm dumbbell row with a lower intensity lower body drill like mini band lateral steps, allows the upper body time to recover and get ready for the next set. Your body only has so much energy it could burn at one time. This also goes for pairing a heavier lower body strength exercise with a lower intensity upper body exercise. You want to make sure you have enough in the tank for the next strength set. The recovery is going to help you increase the weight and repetitions overtime. It also adds density to your training, so that you do not have to spend 2-hours in the gym.
2. Pair Heavier Compound Lifts with Lower Intensity Breathing Drills
Compound strength exercises such as deadlifts, squats, pull-ups, push-ups and loaded carries use multi-joints, which allow you to utilize more weight, causing a higher demand on your neuromuscular system. Recovery is very important after a heavy compound exercise. Your energy expenditure is high, and your body is looking to recover. Integrating an energy system recovery exercise, such as the side-lying lateral ribcage expansion, allows your body time to recover and recharge. Your body thrives off of oxygen and if you put it in a good place after a heavy lift, your body’s ability to optimally recover will increase.
3. High Quality Reps Under Control
When you perform a heavy resistance training exercise, it will challenge you to keep your technique. As the weight goes up, your brain will recruit more muscles to help and will change your body’s position as additional help. If your form is breaking down, the targeted muscles are reaching their limit. We have all been there at some point. Keep true to your form and control the movement. Your muscles do not know a dumbbell from a barbell. All they know is the length, tension, and effort required to perform that exercise. Going slower and keeping the strength movement controlled will increase the stress on the muscle tissue and increase quality strength. Keep the quality reps high and throw out the bad reps. Stay within your means and push the limits under control.
Strength training can get hard and it also can get confusing. The key is to stay within your means. Pair your heavier strength exercises with lower intensity mobility exercise. Progress the weight of the exercise based on your quality reps and not your bad ones and integrate compound strength exercises into your workout. Increasing muscular strength gives you the ability to exert less effort during daily tasks. That is, if you are also stretching and balancing out your strength training with mobility or flexibility training. It may just be the missing link you are looking for.
Keep it simple and have fun with it.
More From THE Blog
Improving Lung Function Through Strength Training
The diaphragm is an essential skeletal muscle that is chronically active and is among the most aerobically adapted muscles (Ottenheijm et al., 2008). During inspiration, the diaphragm and external intercostal muscles contract, causing the rib cage to expand, moving...
High Intensity Interval Training: Thinking Beyond Speed
Training in short bouts with limited recovery between exercises has shown to produce positive net gains to improvement in overall exercise capacity. The harder you work and the less recovery you have between sets, creates a formula that will push the limits of the...
Muscle Soreness Doesn’t Predict Future Muscle Strength
Exercise training can cause soreness to the muscles, especially when you partake in strenuous exercise. The feeling of muscle soreness that you get when we roll out of bed, can often bring a sense of accomplishment. The muscles were pushed to their...
Stay Away From Foggy Goals
The journey to finding the best training method or philosophy, without first clearly establishing your goal, has the potential to lead to a lifetime of shortcomings. One of the most important you can ever accomplish is clearly defining a measurable and concise goal....
Breaking the Pattern
Human beings are routine and patterned based species. We like things that are predictable and stable. This is because the more routine-based our lives our, the less cognitive activity it takes to complete a task and we preserve more energy as a result. This natural...
The Importance of Key Receptors in the Control of Breathing During Exercise
The primary function of the respiratory system is to provide gas exchange between the atmosphere and cells within the body. This occurs in four continuous and concurrent processes. The first process is pulmonary respiration (ventilation). Pulmonary...
Building Your Cores Foundation is Essential in Pulmonary Conditions
During the inspiration of air, the thoracic cavity expands and there is a decrease in the intrapleural pressure around the lungs in order to allow the lungs to expand. As the lungs expand, the diaphragm contracts, due to the increased transabdominal pressure and...
Neuromuscular Strength in Pulmonary Conditions
There is no mystical aura that engulfs the gym that gives individuals the gift of brute strength, or gives individual’s cardiovascular capacity like Secretariat, the triple crown record-breaking stallion at Belmont Stakes. There are numerous variables that...
Building the Armor: Sit-Ups May Not Be the Answer
Sit-ups and crunches have been the staple-mark core exercises used to build core strength and endurance. They are easy to implement; you don’t need equipment or a lot of space to perform them. But, are they really the most efficient exercises to target core...
Pulmonary Exercise Testing Should Be Goal Oriented
Performance testing can take on many different looks depending on what you are wanting to measure. For example, if you are looking to improve cardiorespiratory efficiency, VO2max testing is typically used. If you are looking to measure speed, you may use a...
Your Exercise Training Should Fit Your Goal
There are many approaches to exercise.; a buffet of options to pick from these days. You have the option of focusing on mobility and range of motion by participating in yoga classes. You can test your exercise capacity by joining a cycling class or by...
High-Intensity Interval Training: Is It Really Worth It?
It was about a year ago when I watched an exercise video a colleague had sent me. The fitness enthusiast filmed a HIIT training workout for their followers. The workout consisted of various lower body weight plyometric based exercises. It had only been a...
The Importance of Cardiopulmonary Testing in Pulmonary Diseases
The primary aim of exercising is to improve quality of life, strength, endurance, and/or movement capabilities. Integrating a resistance and cardiovascular training program into a client’s lifestyle can improve posture, respiration, musculoskeletal strength...
Tips to Build Home Exercise Equipment and Workouts
There has been a flood of exercise content these last few weeks. It is great to see trainers, coaches, and experts in the field of science giving back to the community. There are many ways to exercise and we have seen many different approaches to training. We believe...
Motivating Youth to Workout at Home
Let’s be honest. Motivating youth to do workouts after school or on the weekends can be hard enough, and now not only are doing their workouts at home, but they are also taking their classes online at home! With so much times at home, how do you keep your...
Protect Your Vocal Folds: The Little Muscles That Give you a Voice!
As a Speech Language Pathologist, I have been curious about the impact’s cystic fibrosis, COPD, and other respiratory illnesses have on vocal quality. Having been around the CF community for a couple of years, I know that CF can impact numerous organ systems that...
Cystic Fibrosis at the Playground
Your child has a right to be a kid! Of course, having a child with cystic fibrosis brings on more challenges and worries. It requires being more alert to surroundings, your child, and others. But, your child still deserves to play and you still deserve to watch your...
Complementary Approaches to Clearing Mucus
The clearance of mucus is very important for individuals fighting pulmonary conditions. In cystic fibrosis (CF) and COPD the clearance of mucus is crucial to clearing bacteria pathogens to reduce the decline in lung function. To understand how we can attack the...
Motivating Children/Teens to Exercise
Intrinsic motivation is something that develops over time. Kids don’t yet have the cognitive abilities to grasp the concept that, “exercising is good for physical and mental health.” The understanding that by “doing something good for your body now, your future self...
Reduce Your Stress By Scheduling Your Workouts Through A Bigger Lens
One of the ways people measure their success in the gym each week is by counting how many times they showed up to the gym. For example, 5 days in the gym equals 5 workouts. That is assuming you are only working out once a day. When planning out our weekly schedule,...
Are You Apart of the Morning Crew or Night Crew?
Exercising is important for everyone. Exercising has many benefits from improving cardiovascular health, decreasing stress, to even improving lung function in cystic fibrosis and COPD. However, what is good for us doesn’t mean we will always want to partake in...
Optimizing Recovery for CF and COPD
The body is a remarkable system that takes time to recover. When you have chronic illness, such as CF or COPD, the recovery time the body needs will be a little different than for a healthier individual. This is due to decreased oxygen consumption and...