by Troy Edwards
This post is a tie in to our Exercise episode of Foundations of Health
Listen to the episode here
So, I’ve been a personal trainer for decades, and over those years, it’s amazing how much I’ve seen best practices for training evolve. Training methods have become really dialed in for achieving strength goals, hypertrophy, athletics, and endurance training. What hasn’t changed is the basic movement patterns.
Push – A push pattern involves moving an object away from you, or yourself away from an object. This can be straight out like a push-up or bench press, or overhead.
A push-up is where I like to start people, since it involves training stability and “plugging leaks” better. More on that in a second. But for overall strength and size gains, you’re not going to beat a bench press. If you’re having trouble doing a push-up from the floor, I prefer you don’t do one from your knees since it takes so much away from the movement. I’d rather see an elevated push-up, as in from a table or bench
Overhead presses are pretty self explanatory as they’re just that. Pressing something over your head. This move quite often needs modifications, since a lot of people have limited thoracic mobility. In that case, you’ll want to start with a landmine press. For a non-modified version, I like to use dumbbells to do an Arnold press, since it really takes a lot of strain off the rotator cuff, and allows your body to pick the path it likes.
Pull – For this move, think seated row and pull-up. And if you can’t do a pull-up, a lat pulldown works well too. Pulls call for modifications much less frequently due to the mechanics of a pull vs a push. Almost never actually, beyond the strength requirements of a pull-up.
I’m not crazy over using a band to assist in a pull-up due to it helping you less where you are at your weakest. Instead, I like to have you jump up to the bar, and slowly lower yourself. Also, working your core is vital to obtaining a chin-up
Squat – A squat is sometimes referred to as a triple hinge, since you’re bending your ankles, knees, and hips. This can be with two legs or one leg, but either way, it’s still a triple hinge.
I like to start people with a goblet squat to a low target, like a chair or bench, just to get the pattern down. From there, I’ll work on a single leg pattern so that we can get the glute medialis involved. This will add stability to a lot of your daily and athletic activities. For runners, I love the Bulgarian, otherwise known as a rear foot elevated split squat.
Like the bench press, a squat is going to be best of overall strength and size gains. For athletic purposes, I like the front squat, since it involves a big demand on your core stability.
Hip Hinge – This would be a movement like a Deadlift or a Kettlebell Swing. I like to teach this pattern near a wall with a dumbbell or kettlebell. You want to reach your butt towards the wall on the way down, and think of squeezing the glutes and extending your head to the ceiling on the way up. This is a wonderful move to build a healthy back, but if done wrong, it’s a great way to ruin your back.
This is also, in many ways, the simplest of lifts, but it’s the toughest to train to use proper form. Of these basic patterns, it’s the one I most recommend you find a good trainer to show you how to train it properly.
Carry – This is pretty straight forward. Pick up something heavy, and carry it. It will add a lot a strength and muscle gains. It’s actually one of the best moves for overall strength. You may know it as a farmer’s walk.
There are many varieties of this exercise, but for strength, you can just grab a couple of heavy dumbbells. A trap bar will work even better
How many repetitions, sets, and how many times a week are going to depend on things like goals, time and equipment availability, and recovery.
Cardio – If strength is what you need to move yourself or an object through space, cardio is what allows you to keep doing it. It also gives your body a boost in recovery. Not only in blood flow supplying nutrients to the muscles, but also by increasing the count and function of your mitochondria. Cardio, if done right, is all about mitochondrial function.
Right now, the best way we know how to improve that is through an 80/20 split of Zone 2 to Zone 4. That can be dialed in a lot more than that, but you can’t go wrong with those numbers.
What that translates to is about 4 days of 45-75 minutes of “easy” cardio, and a day where you do HIIT training, fairly intensely, for about 10-15 minutes total in Zone 4.
Easy would be about 70% of your maximum heart rate. It’s a pace where you could hold a conversation on the phone, but the person would eventually ask if you were working out.
HIIT should be around 90%. And for that, you’d do about a 10-20 minute warm-up, then go hard for anywhere from 20 seconds to 2 or 3 minutes, then back to a Zone 2 pace for anywhere from 10 seconds to 4 or 5 minutes, then repeat. Do this for a couple of times at first, then work your way up to a total of 10-15 minutes. Finish with a 10-20 minute cool down.
A good cardio should involve big muscles. I really like the elliptical, because it involves so many muscles. It creates what I like to refer to as low perceived exertion. You’ll get your heart rate where you want it, without feeling nearly as much effort as it would take to achieve the same heart rate on a bike.
Of course, the best exercise is the one you’ll do. So if that’s on a bike, then by all means, I know plenty of very fit people that get the majority of their training on a bike
And for both strength and cardio, recovery is key! You’re breaking your body down during a workout. The recovery is where you make the adaptive gains. That said, recovery is going to involve a lot of factors, which we’ll get into in episode 4 of the podcast.
The big factors are things like sleep, age, nutrition, and other stresses in your life.
Foundation 