Dr. Mark Force on Exercise

Strength Training: Simple and Real

“Exercise, exercise, exercise. It’s the only wonder drug we have.”
~Dr. Rosanne Leipzig, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine

Why Strength?
Strength makes use more capable, able to meet our physical demands, protects our bodies from “wear and tear” and injury, maintains joint health and function, and promotes fluid, symmetrical, and pain free posture and movement. Strength training improves circulation, increases metabolic rate, stimulates hormone production, increases oxygen saturation of your body, stimulates the lymphatic system, restores insulin sensitivity and blood sugar regulation. Strength training also increases tendon and ligament strength and bone density.

Many of the infirmities associated with typical aging relate to a loss of strength.

Growth hormone levels typically decline with age, closely correlated with other signs associated with aging such as muscle wasting, osteoporosis, thinning of skin, hair and nails, decreased vision, loss of vitality, and slower rates of healing from injuries or overtraining. Anaerobic exercise, especially heavy weight training, is the most powerful tool you have to keep growth hormone levels high as you age.

Testosterone increases with strength training, particularly during exercise with a heavy barbell and dumbbells for less than 30 minutes. Testosterone is important for men and women. Women produce and need less testosterone than men, but the presence of testosterone maintains bone density, muscle mass, rate of metabolism, sex drive, mental focus, and vitality in both men and women.

Insulin is your body’s most anabolic hormone and has a huge effect on your metabolic rate. Exercise and low carbohydrate diets increase insulin sensitivity so that it works more effectively in your body, increasing your metabolism, muscle mass, bone density, and energy and decreasing body fat.

I’ve observed over the years that people who exercise with heavy free weights for many years tend to look much younger than their age. If you’re older, you have a lot to look forward to from weight training. The gains from weight training, in terms of increased percentage of strength, are usually greater for people older than 60 than for people in their 20s.

Unfortunately, most of the information about how to train for strength, whether it comes from articles, books, video, or trainers, is misinformation.

Strength Training Versus Body Building
There is a vast difference between body building and strength training. Traditionally, calisthenics, gymnastics, and weightlifting were done to improve strength, coordination, and health. Period. Those who used strength training to improve their health would typically use Olympic lifting and other whole body lifts, hand balancing, ring training, rope climbing, and calisthenics to build their strength.
No machines like those used in most gyms today were used yet the focus on building muscle (and tendon and ligament) strength produced awe-inspiring results. Arthur Saxon is arguably the strongest man who has ever lived and was able to lift overhead with one arm 370 pounds at a body weight of 200 pounds.

Although Eugene Sandow would pose to display his muscular development and some form of body posing competitions were known as early as around 1901, body building didn’t become popular as a singular pursuit until the 1950s. Body building as a sport has certainly produces impressive muscle size; it has little do do, however, with building strength or health. Looking doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with actually being strong.

Myths of Body Building
There are a number of practices common to body building that may increase muscle size, but have little to do with improving functional strength, coordination, athleticism, or health. These have become so confused with strength training that I consider them to be myths that people commonly believe are part of the practice of strength training.

Overview: Myths of Body Building
It’s best to work one muscle at a time (isolation training)
Machines generally isolate muscles better than free weights
Work only certain parts of your body on a given day (split training)
Use 8-12 repetitions of each exercise for the greatest muscle size and strength
Train your muscles to failure for the best gains in strength and size
Use a lot of supplements to recover faster and get bigger and stronger

Isolation Training
This is the idea of training one muscle at a time. A good example here would be a biceps curl to train biceps strength. While it is true that a biceps curl will increase biceps strength and, more importantly for the body builder, biceps size, this type of training has little to do with real world, or functional, strength.

Functional strength requires that coordination of multiple muscles in unified effort. To produce actual strength, as opposed to the impression of strength, the body as a whole must work as a whole. There must be complete synergy of the muscles, bone, joints, ligaments, tendons, and nerves to produce actual strength. This whole and real world strength requires training the body as a whole.

Isolation training results in disproportion in muscular development, poor coordination between body parts, diminished athleticism, and increased risk of injury.

Machines
Gyms have sold us on the idea that exercise machines are better than free weights or calisthenics for developing strength. They are not. Machine training can be useful for body builders to isolate muscles during training and under limited circumstances for rehabilitation of individual muscles after injury.

Machine training does allow people with little knowledge of strength training get exercise relatively safely and with little supervision. This is the real impetus to machine training in gyms as it allows for greater numbers of people train in a given amount of space in less time and with less supervision. Machine training is good for the gym business.

Strength training on machines doesn’t make demands on your stabilizing and synergistic muscles, nor on your trunk and spine, or core muscles. Since training on machines doesn’t force your body to train as a whole, you don’t develop the ability to use your body as a whole – the key to efficiency in movement and strength.

Training on machines also doesn’t develop strength and thickness of the tendons and ligaments, both key to joint stability and the ability to fully recruit the fibers of a muscle, whereas free weight and body weight strength training does.

Split Routines
Training body parts on separate days (i.e. back and biceps on one day and legs and triceps on another) is the use of split routines. Again here the problem is one of function. With split routines you develop strength in the muscles you’re working on, but you don’t develop the ability to use your body as a functional and harmonious whole.

Exercise Repetitions
The standard format for the number of repetitions for each exercise for the greatest muscular development according to body building principles is 8-12 reps of each exercise for eight to twelve reps. This format is actually true for developing the greatest muscle size, but it is not true for developing the greatest strength, tendon, ligament, and bone strength, greatest muscle endurance, or full contraction of the muscle neurologically.

Training to Failure
Training to muscle failure is useful for making muscles bigger (muscle hypertrophy), but not for making muscles stronger. This concept has forms such as forced reps, partial reps, pre-exhaustion, cheating (using poor form to get more reps), and drop sets.

Supplements
Body building culture uses complex and extensive regimens of supplements to increase recovery, focus, strength, and muscle growth. While there is some science and practical experience to justify the use of some supplements to aid strength training, most of the huge amount of money spent on “body building” supplements is justified by the marketing that sells it and the money made from it.

Talk with serious strength athletes such as Olympic and power lifters, gymnasts, and Scottish Highland Games and strongman competitors and you will find the will be taking the basics – whole food diet, lots of protein, extra oils, and some basic vitamins and minerals. They generally don’t get fooled by the hype from the body building world.

Principles of Strength Training
If you have a clear understanding of the principles of strength training, you can get excellent results from your training anywhere, anytime, with anything, or with nothing. You can use barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, ropes, rings, sandbags, medicine balls, Swiss (exercise) balls, tires, logs, or rocks. Or, you can use nothing but your body weight.

When you know this well it frees you to focus on getting stronger and more physically capable; you won’t be fooled by marketers selling you expensive toys that you don’t need and just get in the way of good training. By owning the principles of exercise you can immediately know whether an exercise or exercise regimen makes sense or not. You will also be able to be able to use and/or modify any exercise to your advantage and to meet your goals.

Overview: Principles of Strength Training
Use body weight or free weights
Use compound movements
Train hard and short
Use 1-5 reps per set for each exercise for optimal strength
Keep your routine simple for greater training effect
Use progressive resistance
Know when to be tight and when to be loose
Eat a nutrient dense diet and get enough rest
Mix it up and experiment
Have fun

Use Body Weight and/or Free Weights
More demands are put on your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and nervous system when using body weight and free weights.
This style of strength training results in smaller, stronger, and more efficient muscles.

Use Compound Movements
Using more than one joint and muscle at one time while training is using compound movement. Compound movement represents the way your body actually moves in sport and in daily life and training using compound movement makes you more functional.

Isolation training, which uses only one joint and one muscle at a time, is less functional and results in less functional strength and integration and coordination throughout the body. Compound movement training results in less injury and joint and muscle inflammation than isolation training. Isolation training has some limited usefulness for some stages of muscle rehabilitation after injury.

To make your exercise more efficient, use as much of your body at one time when training; train your body as a whole system. This is how your body actually functions and training in this way improves your function more effectively than training body parts.

Train Hard and Short
Most people don’t work out hard enough to make a significant difference in their health. To get more conditioned, stronger, flexible, coordinated, and internally more robust, you have to put in the effort required and, within reason, the more you put in the more you get out of the endeavor.

Training briefly allows you to focus on the quality and intensity of your exercise. Training for 30 minutes or less will result in you feeling more energized from your exercise and you will tend to feel less soreness and recover faster. The hormonal and metabolic responses are more positive with shorter, harder training, as well.

Less Reps For Strength; More Reps For Endurance
Use one to five reps of each exercise to maximally develop strength. This rep range best develops pure muscle, tendon, ligament, and bone strength and most powerfully trains the nervous system for maximal muscle contraction.

Use ten (better twenty) or more reps to develop muscular endurance. It has been shown in research that high rep training, especially when using forty or more reps per set, increases the development of more capillaries and more efficient production of energy in muscles.

Keep It Simple
Use simple tools. Your body weight a few free weights; maybe a sandbag…using simple tools keeps you focused on the truth that the training, not the tools, makes you stronger.

Use your time wisely. Gyms get in the way of a good workout; train at home. Training at home means you can be done with a great training session in less than half an hour with no transit time to a crowded and noisy gym. Make the time count by using supersets or circuits.

Use Progressive Resistance
Increase the demands you put on your body as you become stronger over time. Lift a little more weight or progress to a little more difficult exercise. Using this approach causes your exercise to lead to more ability.

Pushing the envelope through progressive resistance is not about overtraining and injuring yourself. It is about discovering your limitations and very slowly, patiently, and deliberately overcoming them and discovering new territory to explore and master.

Know When To Be Tight and When To Be Loose
To transmit force, train your body as a whole, teach your muscles and nervous system to protect you from injury, and to learn how to stabilize for moving heavy and awkward objects through space, whether your body or some other object in relation to your body, you have to know where and when to be tight.

Linkage is the integration of the muscles and joints throughout your body so that the force of your muscular contraction is transmitted through your body to be focused on the work (lift or body movement) you are undertaking. If you don’t coordinate body movement, you will experience leakage and you won’t be transmitting your strength effectively to work.

Irradiation is the phenomenon of increased muscle tension focused on a lift or body movement through focused muscle tension throughout the body. Through irradiation you will find that you will move more powerfully and experience more strength by contracting muscles throughout your body when exercising.

Effective, fluid, and athletic movement requires that you know where and when to be loose. Knowing this allows your movement to be more dynamic, flexible, fluid, energy efficient, fast, and forceful.

Since force equals mass times acceleration (F=MxA), increasing acceleration (speed) increases force. Athletes and athletic people are capable of powerful acceleration.

Eat A Nutrient Dense Diet And Get Enough Rest
Muscles don’t become directly stronger from your training; your muscles become stronger during the rest phase between training. You need to get enough sleep and rest for your body to rebuild and become stronger through the adaptation that has been triggered from your training.

You also need to have all the nutrients necessary for the recovering and rebuilding process.

Mix It Up & Experiment
Experimenting allows you to know what you like and what works. It is fun to experiment and become more aware of your natural and innate physicality.

Have Fun
Look at your training as playing as opposed to working (out). You will enjoy the process more, stay with it, and get better results.

Tools For Strength Training
Some tools are useful in your training. Keep your tools simple and learn how to use them well before you add more. The most important thing in strength training is to actually do it regularly and with focus.

Knowledge
Knowing what to do is more important than any equipment you have. With knowledge you can use any training equipment and get strong; without knowledge, no equipment will produce results for you. What follows will give you a guide to training.

Body Weight Tools
These are tools that allow you to use the resistance of your body weight for training. Body weight training tools include swiss (exercise) balls, chin-up bars, ropes for climbing, and suspension training systems utilizing straps hung from a fixed point to rings and handles or straps for your feet.

Exercise balls and suspension training systems are inexpensive and are useful for both those beginning a strength training program and those who are extremely strong. The instability and changes in leverage allow for infinite variation in difficulty.

Chin-up bars, gymnastic rings, and ropes for climbing are the gold standard tools for upper body strength. Chin-up bars can be used by most people, women included. Almost anyone can do some chin-ups with some dedication.
Gymnastic rings are not for everyone, but they can be a very effective tool for serious strength training and they add instability and leverage to chin-ups, dips, pushups, and rows.
Chin-up bars are an excellent tool to have for strength training. A good chin-up bar will give many years of service and can also serve as an anchor point for suspension systems, rings, and ropes.

Dumbbells
Taking up little space and costing relatively little, adjustable dumbbells are a versatile tool. Fixed weight dumbbells are less useful as they don’t allow you to practice progressive resistance.

Barbells
A very effective strength training regimen can be developed from a barbell alone. Being able to load the bar to a very specific weight allows you to practice progressive resistance.

Olympic Barbells
These barbells are designed for high-velocity lifting and being able to drop the weight from overhead. The bar has considerable flex and the plates are either made from rubber (bumpers) or rubber-covered metal plates (discs).

Kettlebells
These are simple fixed weights that are shaped like a cannonball with a thick handle. The shape allows for high-velocity lifting and swinging movements. Kettlebells are the single most effective weight I have found in strength training. If I had to choose one piece of equipment, this would be it.

Sandbags
These sandbags have been designed specifically for strength training. Sandbag training is a versatile and demanding form of training, in part because of the unstable nature of the object.

Fundamental Movements For Strength Training
General strength training requires only a few basic movements to strengthen your whole body and takes relatively little time (thirty minutes or less). You can use any combination of the exercises below to develop an exercise regimen. The difficulty for each movement increases as the are listed (exercises in each category are listed from the easiest to the most difficult. You need very little equipment or even none; a whole body strength training program can be developed using body weight exercises only.

Full Body Lifting
These lifts train the legs, hips, pelvis, back, trunk, shoulders, arms, and hands at one time. These are the most complex and the most productive of all the strength training lifts. The benefits are increased muscle and bone density and strength, improved ability to fully contract muscles, greater speed and power, and denser and stronger ligaments, tendons, and cartilage.

These lifts put the greatest overall demand on the nervous system and metabolism and train them to be more efficient. Exercise-induced stimulation of the hormones insulin, growth hormone, and testosterone is the strongest with these exercises.

Swing
This movement requires swinging a weight with the hands forward from between the legs to approximately 45 degrees to 180 degrees (fully overhead); there is no body weight version.

Two-hand single weight, one-hand single weight, two-hand double weight

Dead Lift
This movement requires lifting a weight with the hands; there is no body weight version.

Standard dead lift, wide stance dead lift, back dead lift, one-legged dead lift (one handed version)

Clean
This movement requires lifting a weight with the hands to the shoulders; there is no body weight version.

Power clean, full standing clean full squat clean (one handed versions)

Snatch
This movement requires lifting a weight with the hands to fully overhead; there is no body weight version.

Power snatch, full standing snatch, full squat snatch (one handed versions), split snatch

Leg Pushing
All fundamental leg training is a form of leg pushing.

Squat
Body Weight: standard squat, jump squat, one-legged squat

Resistance: back squat, front squat, shoulder squat, overhead squat, one-armed overhead squat

Lunge
Body Weight: standard lunge, jump lunge, one leg suspended lunge, one leg suspended jump lunge

Resistance: back lunge, front lunge, shoulder lunge, overhead lunge

Arm Upward Pushing
This movement requires lifting a weight with the hands to fully overhead from the clean position; there is no body weight version, though handstand pushups are the equivalent movement.

Press
Two-arm pressing overhead, one-arm pressing overhead, side press, bent press

Jerk
Two-arm jerk overhead, one-arm jerk overhead, split jerk overhead

Arm Forward Pushing
Bench pressing is the most commonly used form of arm forward pushing besides pushups. Bench pressing, however, has almost no functional strength value and is an extremely common reason for debilitating shoulder injuries that result in surgery; if you like your shoulders and want them to work well for you in the future, don’t bench press!

Use pushup variations for increasing pushup intensity and upright pressing with weights, or handstand pushups, for functional pressing strength.

Pushup
Pushups are bodyweight only, but the variations are almost infinite along with the ability to fine tune the difficulty from trivial to nearly superhuman.

Incline pushup, standard pushup, decline pushup, handstand pushup, one-hand pushup, one-hand handstand pushup (suspension of hands and/or feet adds difficulty)

Floor Pressing
Pressing weights while lying on your back is useful and the natural limitation of movement when pressing from the floor prevents injury.

Arm Downward Pushing
This movement is a bodyweight exercise only, though they can be done weighted.

Dip
Bench dip, two chair dip, standard dip (weighted), ring dip (weighted)

Arm Backward Pulling
Rows are a very important movement to upper back, shoulder, and neck integrity and strength, yet often neglected.

Row
Bodyweight: This is accomplished by pulling upward with your body from or parallel to the floor using rings, ropes, or some other suspension system. Free hanging rows with your body held parallel to the ground using a chin-up bar, V-grip, rope, or rings is very intense and functional upper back, shoulder, and arm exercise.

Resistance: Bent over row, “renegade” row

Note: Bent over rows are done facing downward, standing and bent forward, in a two and handed version. Renegade rows are be done while in a pushup position with each hand on the handle of a dumbbell or kettlebell and rowing one arm at a time.

Arm Downward Pulling
This movement is very difficult for many people to do with their bodyweight. A partner can assist accomplishing the lift by holding your feet or ankles and allowing you to leverage from that point, slowly decreasing your leverage over time so that you can eventually do pull-ups with bodyweight only.

Chin Up/Pull Up
Two arm Chin-up/pull-up (varying grips), rope or towel chin-up/pull-up, uneven chin-up/pull-up, one-arm chin-up/pull-up

Note: Chin-ups are done with your palms facing toward you and pull-ups are done with your palms facing away from you.

Rope Climbing
Rope climbing is an advanced, but very productive downward pulling movement. At one time rope training was common, but it has fallen out of favor, most likely because it is humbling and requires effort, discipline, and time.

Leg-assisted rope climbing, leg-free rope climbing

Core Anterior Stability
Most bodyweight and free-weight compound lifts require extensive stabilization of your trunk (core) muscles to accomplish and, thereby, strengthen the abdominal, rib, and back muscles. However, targeted training of trunk (core) muscles can insure complete development and symmetry of strength.

Plank
Hand planks, forearm planks

Knee Ups / Pikes
These are done while suspended from your feet/ankles (easier) or hands (harder).

Foot/ankle suspended knee up/pikes: exercise ball knee ups, suspension knee ups, exercise ball pikes, suspension pikes

Hand suspended knee up/pike: Knee ups, pikes, upward projected pikes, swinging front lever, dragon flag, front lever

Core Lateral Stability

Side Planks
Hand planks, forearm planks

Side Bends
Windmill, side press, bent press

Lateral Lifting
Suitcase dead lift, body flag

Core Rotary Stability

Turkish Get Up (TGU)
Holding a weight directly overhead while lying on your back and getting into a full standing position while continuing to hold the weight overhead; then reverse

One-hand lunge-style TGU, one-hand squat style TGU, two-hand lunge-style TGU, two-hand squat-style TGU

Rotary Swings
Bodyweight: hanging knee up rotation, hanging pike rotation

Resistance: Standing twist swing, standing “Russian twist” swing, standing barbell twist, standing overhead arc swing, one-hand backhand casting swing, overhead “hammer” swing

Scaling Strength Training Intensity
The key to strength training is to train a muscle hard enough to force it to adapt and become stronger and not so hard that you cause excessive strain, inflammation and injury. There are almost infinite ways to scale the intensity of a given exercise once you know some basic strategies.

Scaling Bodyweight Exercises
As an example, we can use the basic pushup as a starting point.

Strategies For Scaling Bodyweight Exercises
Increasing body angle
Decreasing body angle
Increasing leverage
Decreasing leverage
Increasing stability
Decreasing stability

Decreasing Resistance Through Changing Angle
Pushups against a wall (decrease resistance by increasing angle relative to floor)
Pushups against a counter, table, chair, stool, or step (higher hands equal lower effort)

Increasing Resistance Through Changing Angle
Pushups with feet elevated on a step, stool, chair, table, counter, or wall (the higher your feet, the harder the exercise)

Decreasing Resistance Through Changing Leverage
Pushups from your knees, pushups while bending from the waist

Increasing Resistance Through Changing Leverage
Move hands further away from your point of ideal leverage (standard pushup position) – overhead, outward, inward
Have hands at different heights

Increasing Resistance Through Changing Stability of Points of Contact
Hands on unstable points of contact – foam, bosu ball, medicine ball, exercise ball, suspension handles or rings
Feet on unstable points of contact – foam, bosu ball, medicine ball, exercise ball, suspension handles or rings

Increasing Resistance Through Decreasing Points of Contact
One-legged pushup
One-armed pushup

Scaling Weight Training Exercises
Weight training movements have an optimal pattern of movement that should be performed with precision for optimal results and to prevent injury. Strategies other than changes in leverage, angle, and point of contact stability are used to control training intensity.

Increasing vs. decreasing weight
Strength training with weights is built on the concept of progressive resistance through lifting more weight with a given exercise movement over time. Adjustable barbells, dumbbells, and sandbags can be used to adjust the weight you’re lifting.

With fixed weights, such as kettlebells, you can adjust the muscle effort required to lift a given weight by using more or less body movement to provide momentum in order to complete of a given exercise.

A good example for would be one arm pressing overhead with a kettlebell that is too heavy to use a slow standing press. Here an push with the legs at the beginning of the lift will provide an initial momentum that helps complete the lift. As you become stronger, less and less of the initial momentum can be used.

Two-hand vs. One-handed Weights
Performing an given exercise with a barbell is more stable than performing the same exercise lifting two kettlebells or dumbbells (one in each hand) of the same total weight.

One-handed lifts provide added benefits through the increased demands on the muscles and nervous system due to greater range of motion and the unique trunk and limb stabilization that unilateral (one-sided) lifts require.

Stable vs. Unstable Weights
A weight is generally easier to lift as it is easier to hold, more stable, smaller, and balanced. With these principles in mind, a dumbbell is easier to press overhead with one hand than a barbell or sandbag.

Kettlebells are useful for being out of balance in your hand. One-handed barbell lifts are useful because of the fine motor control and stabilization required to keep the barbell balanced and controlled. Sandbags are useful for the unpredictability of forces created by shifting of the sand in the bag as you lift it and the difficulty grasping it.

Quick Lifting
Lifting a heavy weight quickly and stopping and stabilizing it’s movement at the top of the lift requires generation of tremendous force in muscles and very precise neuromuscular control of muscles at the same time. Quick lifting is an excellent way for someone with a good foundation in strength training to transition their strength to athletic applications.

Using Trainers
Consider using a trainer if you’ve never weight-trained before. Only use trainers that feel comfortable using the recommendations here. Using a trainer will help you get oriented, help you get the results you’re after, and keep you from getting hurt. After you feel comfortable with the weights, you have the option of working out on your own.

Personally, I prefer to work out at home most of the time as it allows me a better workout than at a gym and takes much less time; I can get a workout in as little as five minutes or can workout as long as I want without lines or distractions. I do, however, see a trainer every week or two to learn more skills and different training approaches. In this way, I’m continually learning new skills, being checked for any problems with my technique, and getting feedback from my trainer as to my progress in overall fitness.

Resources
Historical Roots
Sandow Plus
Info on the strong men of the past. If you think modern training along with all the fancy equipment is superior to the past, check out Arthur Saxon’s one hand 350 pound bent press!

Dinosaur Training
A book on old time strong man training methods.

Super Strength Books
A collection of old-style strongman training books.

Bodyweight Training
Ring Training
Gymnastic rings and suspension systems.

Convict Conditioning
Very systematic bodyweight training program.

Combat Conditioning
Drawn from wrestling training, this is a very complete catalog of bodyweight exercises.

Encyclopedia of Bodyweight Conditioning
Steve Cotter shows you how to do it on DVD, from the basic to the incredible.

Sandbags
Ultimate Sandbags
Josh Henkin’s sandbags are the only ones worth having and he has great training manuals and DVDs, too.

Kettlebells
Dragon Door
Still the best kettlebells. I highly recommend Enter The Kettlebell book and DVD for beginning kettlebell training.

Full Kontact
Steve Cotter’s DVD encyclopedias of kettlebell training are excellent resources and a good value.

Trainers
Josh Henkin
Excellent resources on functional strength training (kettlebells, Olympic lifts, sandbags, sledgehammers, tire flipping, etc.); has studio in north Scottsdale, Arizona.

Mark Force, DC
chiropractic physician
The Elements of Health
…natural & functional healthcare

8711 E. Pinnacle Peak
Scottsdale, Arizona 85255
o 480-563-4256
f 480-563-4269
mforce@mac.com