Actual photo of Ben and Damon after last Wednesday’s strength day. *That announcer is NOT Jay.
Tomorrow is Wednesday. You know what Wednesday has traditionally been at 306? Strength day. Not always, but in our latest training block it has been. Here’s a little preview for you; tomorrow is going to continue that trend. Wednesday also happens got be a slower day in attendance numbers at the gym. Maybe it’s just a convenient day for you to take as a rest day and we can’t fault you for that. “Life” has to happen. Maybe you’re dodging Wednesday’s because you know it’s going to be lifting. I have some news for you.
Regardless of who you are and regardless of what your fitness goals are, strength training is going to benefit you. The stronger you are, the better. That’s a simple fact in being functional in life and in our sport of CrossFit. The stronger you are at whatever you are doing, the easier it will be to perform that task. Whether it is deadlifting a barbell (or carrying in groceries), performing 10 minutes for max calories on an Assault Bike (or playing with your children or grandchildren) or performing a muscle-up (or moving your body through space; think getting up after a fall or having the balance to prevent it in the first place).
Strength is simply how much force your muscles can create. Strength shouldn’t be confused with size. While size is definitely associated with strength, it’s not a direct correlate. We want to focus on why increasing strength is important to us. Both in life and in the gym. An obvious example of why strength will help us is in the weightlifting and powerlifting movements we do. Snatch, clean and jerk, deadlift, squats and bench press. It’s fairly apparent an athlete has gotten stronger if their deadlift goes from 300 pounds to 400 pounds. Now, if that athlete needs to lift 225 pounds repeatedly in a metabolic conditioning workout, it represents a much lower percentage of their one rep max and takes a relative less amount of effort.
It is easy to see that an athlete has gotten stronger when they used to deadlift. Similarly, we can apply strength to the machines in the gym. Everything else being equal, the stronger you are, the more power we can put out. This increases our “wattage” (power output measured on the machines) and gets us through the meters or calories faster.
In gymnastics, strength is also important. There are two different kinds of strength and in the deadlift and machine example above, i was referring to “absolute strength”. Absolute strength simply means how much strength a person has. Period. If a 150 pound athlete and a 300 pound athlete both have a one rep max deadlift of 400 pounds, they have the same absolute strength. Gymnastics however, is more based on “relative strength”. To finish the example of the deadlift above, the 150 pound athlete has a higher relative strength. It is a “power to weight ratio”. If we increase the power but keep the weight the same, we’ve increased the absolute strength while keeping the same weight so relative strength also goes up.
So, strength matters. No matter what we want to be better at. Clean and jerk. Rowing. Running. Pull ups. Handstand walking. The stronger we are, the easier the tasks are going to be to complete. This is one big piece of the puzzle. While we all enjoy coming in to the gym and getting a really good sweat on and breathing really heavy, we can’t complete the puzzle without that strength piece. Instead of always dodging the lifting days, come on in and increase that strength.
All of your other movements the other six days of the week will thank you!