What is your max deadlift/bench/squat/bicep curl….??
As a trainer and sportsman I’m often expected to meet these questions with responses of mammoth figures. Seriously, my max bicep curl?? Um I don’t know… how much does my cup of coffee weigh in the morning?
My max deadlift could completely vary from around 150-180kg, squat 120-160kg and my bench from 85-100kg all dependant on circumstances. What variation of the lift I use, my mood, daily food intake, hours of sleep and sometimes even what music I listen to.
The truth is I really don’t know and to be honest I don’t care much either.
How often in a day are you expected to push hundreds of kilos away from your chest or pick up an unnecessarily heavy weight from the floor and put it down repeatedly? I bet this happens very few times in a day, year or even a lifetime.
Now I’m not saying that conventional strength training and weight lifting isn’t beneficial at all and by no means am I saying that sportsmen should leave this out of their programming. I just want to talk about what we at TruBe believe true functional strength is.
While training with good form (neutral spine, perfect joint alignment etc) is highly important when grooving basic movement patterns, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that our bodies still have the ability to perform exercises outside of these perfect movements. They can extend, flex and rotate at many joints in many different planes and positions.
Related Post: Get your rugby body without the gym
In daily life your joints will be required to leave their ‘neutral’ positions many times and also during sporting situations whilst taking in large amounts of force. This is why it is not only important to train your neutral positions but to also get comfortable performing multidirectional exercises to help you to improve your strength, power, stability and therefore overall athleticism and functional ability.
You’d be kicking yourself if you picked up an injury in a position that your body should be able to deal with, but you didn’t train it because deadlifting is much more fun and your buddies said ‘do you even lift’ when you tried to include it in your bro workout. Seriously, leave your ego way behind when it comes to training. You will find you excel much more this way.
Try this quick functional legs workout using only your bodyweight:
10 reps on each exercise on each leg, take a 1 min rest then repeat 2 more times.
Side Lunges
Split Squat
Raised Single Leg Squats
Let us know how your legs are feeling after this circuit.
Ben Howard – London Personal Trainer
Book a session with me by downloading the app.