Strength by Design: Unlocking Your Potential through Program Planning

A good starting point is to do one full body strength training session twice a week and one or two cardio sessions.

If you're looking to build muscle, then two full body strength training sessions per week is a good way to start. Your workouts should focus on compound movements like squats, deadlifts, bench press, and overhead presses. You can also add in some isolation exercises like bicep curls, triceps extensions, and lateral raises. Make sure to focus on proper form and progressive overload (increasing the weight as you get stronger).

For cardio, you can try doing one or two HIIT sessions per week. This could involve activities like jumping rope, running sprints, burpees, mountain climbers, etc. These types of exercises are great for burning calories and increasing your aerobic fitness.

Finally, remember to give yourself time to rest and recover between workouts. This will help ensure that your body is fully recovered before each workout, so you can perform at your best and reduce your risk of injury.

To ensure that a strength program is effective for the sport, it is important to focus on creating consistent quality of movement and avoiding imbalances in the athletes.

Foundation Training is the most important exercise program for a senior citizen. You can get more information from FoundationTraining.com and EC Fit Strength.com. Both sites will provide instructions on how to build strength through movement patterns before loading.

Olympic lifts, such as the snatch and clean and jerk, are currently being competed in the Olympics. However, many athletes and coaches are now looking to pieces of Olympic lifting to create strength within the athlete. These include front squats, deadlifts, back squats, and even hex bar deadlifts. The jury is still out on whether these lifts provide performance outcomes in sports such as swimming, running, or biking.

A swimming strength program should be tailored to an individual athlete's specific goals and needs, and Olympic lifting and powerlifting can be included for some athletes, but not for all. The health of the athlete must come first in order to ensure they have enough energy to practice.

Strength work can help alleviate lower back pain, but it's important to make sure you're moving in the right ways and that your hips and thoracic spine are mobile.

To improve back exercise performance, it is important to ensure that the low back is in a neutral position and is stable. This can be achieved through hip hinging and strengthening the hamstrings, glutes, and calves. It is also important to ensure that there is mobility in the thoracic spine, hips, and ankles.

The difference between a dumbbell bench press and a barbell chest press is freedom. A straight bar bench press can increase the risk of injury, so I prefer to use other modalities such as dumbbells, cables and kettlebells to improve strength in the chest complex.

To assess ankle flexibility, exercises such as walking with toes up and toe walking on the toes can be done to strengthen both dorsiflexion and plantar flexion. This should help swimmers achieve a more functional foot position and see better results in their races.

Single-arm overhead press with rotation is a great exercise for swimmers because it helps add balance, shoulder function, and strength. It transfers well to the water and has been well received by swimmers.

I like kettlebell style training because it provides more freedom of motion for athletes and allows them to progress in their sport.

When working with female athletes who may be fearful of lifting weights, it is important to recognize their fears and try and shift the mindset towards something instead of away from something. Empathy and compassion are key when trying to help them understand why they are doing what they're doing and how it will serve them in terms of performance.

Strength coaches should stick to traditional strength building exercises with external loads like kettlebells or dumbbells, as opposed to bodyweight exercises like one-arm push-ups and weighted pistol squats. These exercises can be risky for athletes preparing for sports that don't involve weighted pistol squats, so it is important to measure the risk versus reward of each exercise.

Reinforce in the swimmer's mind that the work they are doing in dry land and strength training will help them with their performance in the water. Give them mental triggers to remind them of what they should be doing in the pool.

Deadlifting is an important exercise that should be learned by athletes to improve their performance and longevity. One of the most important aspects of deadlifting is learning to hip hinge and having the core strength to support the lift. If you are not strong enough, there are alternative exercises such as leg presses and step-ups that can help build up lower body strength before attempting a deadlift. There are also lighter versions of deadlifts such as straight leg deadlifts.

Find an expert in your area that can help you with fundamentals of squat patterns, lunge patterns, pulling patterns, and pushing patterns to help you become a better athlete and improve your swimming.

Aaron should do deep squats to get out of a full squatting position, but avoid externally loading below parallel. He should also do dumbbell instead of bench press and single arm exercises to help with the cross pattern needed for swimming.

The best shoulder exercises and strength exercises for swimmers to increase shoulder strength are unilateral pushing and pulling exercises, overhead presses with single arms, and cross pattern exercises which involve working the left shoulder while also working the right hip. These exercises create scapular stability and freedom in the body to move in a nice rotation.

Acute training variables depend on the intended outcome. For endurance, use a load of 70-80% of your one rep max, do 12-20 reps with a rest period of 20-30 seconds between sets. For hypertrophy use 70-80% of your one rep max, 8-12 reps and a rest period of 60-90 seconds. For pure strength use 90% of your one rep max, with 2-6 reps and a rest period of up to 2.5 minutes. For power, use 1-4 reps but save it for experienced athletes as it carries a risk.

To maintain muscle strength and muscle mass, two to two and a half lifting workouts per week is recommended. This should be done in an alternating pattern of two weeks of building up followed by one week of backing off.

Foundation training is a great way to help bring an athlete back into their well-known athletic form. It helps with balance, decompression of the spine, expansion of the rib cage and overall activation of the posterior chain and postural elements. It is easy to find, you can go to my website - seefitstrength.com or Goodman's website.

Strength training has a lot of research done around it, and depending on your desired outcome, there are different strategies to consider. When it comes to separating body parts, it allows you to train more often and potentially grow that muscle. However, for runners and triathletes, it is best to look at movements push-pull legs and incorporate it into their other training.

It depends on your goals, but generally including strength and conditioning in your weekly program is beneficial for health and balance. Sessions should be kept short, between 20-40 minutes, and this can lead to improved performance outcomes.

Melanie, a strength coach, discussed mobility and how it relates to strength and performance. She advised not to lead with the neck and instead to push back and align the cervical spine in order to isolate the core. She then defined the core as all muscles from the armpits to mid-thigh, and explained that the core does not function in isolation and that a global picture needs to be taken when strengthening the core.

The most important thing for an amateur athlete to recognize is where their opportunity to improve lies. We want to break down training into five areas: Preparation for training, Strength and Mobility, General Strength, Speed and Power, and Recovery from Sessions. It's important to recognize opportunities and fill in the training objectives around those opportunities. Additionally, it's important to keep hard days hard and easy days easy. Depending on the athlete, different objectives may be needed such as pre-flight or mobility sessions, strength endurance, strength, power, speed and rate of force production.