Article By: John Fontana
The third part of “Not Getting Any Stronger” helps to further put together the solution to your plateau. In part one I talked about micro-cycles and how they affect your body’s ability to respond to the exercises you are throwing at it, week in and out. In part two I spoke on the importance of selecting the correct exercise to reap maximum benefits. This part will explain where to put those exercises while creating an exercise program. The exercise order is extremely important when creating a workout routine. If the exercises are done in an incorrect order you may be sabotaging your workout because your body will not be able to respond optimally. Each workout should have a precise purpose and be properly planned in order to continually make strength gains.
Stability = Strength
When focusing on making absolute strength gains, you have to make sure your body is correctly warmed up before you get into your intense lifts. By warm up, I am talking about doing some prehabilitative exercises and some pillar strengthening exercises. A lot of the time “prehab” and pillar exercises can be one in the same and mainly consist of firing up the stabilizer muscles in the shoulders and hips. Along with those exercises should be some pillar strengthening exercises that incorporate the core. Your stabilizers and core will be essential in allowing you to reach new personal records (PR) with your lifts. These exercises should be planks, glute bridges, mini band walk, Y’s, and T’s. You should perform 2-3 sets of around 10 reps each, so that your muscles begin to activate correctly.
Explode For Strength Gains
The next progression in your workout would be to perform some explosive power exercises. If you are planning on benching that day, some plyometric push-ups or medicine ball chest pass are great exercises to get the muscles ready to go. If you are planning on squatting you can do some squat jumps. These will excite your nervous system and get your muscles ready for heavy weights. Again, 2-3 sets of these exercises are enough and between 4-10 reps should be used depending on the weight and exercise.
Go Big Or Go Home
After the prehab, pillar, and power exercises, you can finally get into your primary lifts. These exercises such as squat’s, dead lift’s, pull up’s, row’s, bench and shoulder press provide the biggest stimulus on your body. They take maximum effort from your muscles and your nervous system in order to complete each set. Sets should be in the 4-6 range and reps should be no more than 8. Do not do any more than 3 of these exercises per workout. Any more will exhaust your body too much.
Compliment Your Gains
Finally, when your primary lifts are complete you can perform your auxiliary exercises. This is when you can do your dips, bicep curls, tricep extensions and focus on your abs if you find it necessary. They aren’t as demanding to your body or nervous system, so being fatigued during these is not a big deal.
Your workouts should typically consist of a prehab, pillar strength, power, primary and auxiliary phase as I described earlier. This will be optimal for your body to warm up, go hard and then cool off. Although this is not set in stone, unless you can think of a valid reason to argue this method it should be used. It will allow your body to perform best when it needs to and you will continuously make big gains in the gym.
Here are some of the exercises listed above:
Prehab:
Stability Ball Y’s
Stability Ball T’s
Pillar Strength:
Plank
Glute Bridge
Power Exercises:
Squat Jump
Plyometric Push Up
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