The first thing to understand is that adding muscle mass is by far the most challenging and time-consuming change you can make to your body. It is virtually impossible to put on “too much” muscle quickly. Mass will always be the last thing that happens.
You get strong much faster than you get big. And you get lean much faster than either. With a significant amount of effort, you can lose 10 pounds of fat in a month. With a tremendous amount of effort, it would take you a year to add 10 pounds of muscle. Out of all the things you can change about your body, adding muscle requires the most patience, and the most effort.
The bulky myth comes from the world of body building. Body building competitions don’t require drug tests, so 100% of the athletes in those competitions use steroids. One hundred percent. They have to. They wouldn’t be competitive otherwise. And the tremendous muscle mass they are able to build is only possible with steroids.
Also, that field has nothing to do with strength. A body building competition is entirely visual - how do the contestants look? The goal of a body builder is to create large muscles, and they train in a very specific way to accomplish that. They do not care about how strong they are. Strength has no impact on how successful they are. Strength might be a bi-product of their work, but it is not the goal.
Likewise, strength training has very little to do with muscle mass. Effective strength programs are built around complex, multi-joint movements, like a barbell squat. The goal is to learn how to use as much of your body as possible during any given movement.
Whereas, body building is focused on isolation. A body builder uses movements that put as much stress as possible on a single muscle. These tend to be single-joint movements, like a biceps curl. A body builder doesn’t do a lot of squats, because it distributes the work throughout the body. Instead, a body builder will use a machine, like a leg extension, because it puts the entirety of the work into the quads, thus increasing the size.
The goal of a strength program is to create strength that serves you through your day. In the end, the only reason we care about how beautifully you can deadlift, is because it is exactly the kind of strength you will need to lift that heavy box in your attic. Gym strength and functional strength are 2 very different things. At Lift, you can do either, or both. We design your training program around your priorities.
HOW OFTEN SHOULD I STRENGTH TRAIN?
It depends entirely on your goals. If you're trying to maintain your current shape, once a week is plenty. If you're trying to make improvements, you may need more. Here's a nutrition analogy: if you want to drop 5 pounds, you can cut 200 calories per day and reach your goal in 3 months; or you can cut 600 calories per day, and reach your goal in 1 month. In other words, the more you do, the quicker you get there.
WHAT IF I HAVE LOWER BACK PAIN?
The lower back is by far the most misunderstood and under-appreciated part of our bodies. There is a persistent myth that the lower back is an inherently weak muscle group. We are told that it is problematic, so we should be careful. We are advised to move in very specific ways to protect it from too much work. All of this is blatantly false. In fact, avoiding letting your lower back work is the best way to get weaker and weaker, until you finally do hurt yourself…
Diet will always account for around 50% of any successful program. There is no way to out-train a bad diet. Shifting the way you eat can often be more challenging than training, so do yourself a favor and don’t buy into the myth that cutting body fat is complicated. It’s not. It’s very, very simple. People like to pretend it's complicated because it gives them an excuse not to do it. You can certainly make it complicated, but it absolutely isn’t...
It depends on the severity of the injury, obviously. But in most cases, the answer is yes. In fact, our goal is not just to speed up your recovery, but to adjust your mechanics so that you avoid further injuries. We consider this the most important, and most interesting part of our work. We study your mechanics well enough to understand what’s contributing to the injury, and shift the way you move, so that whatever stresses are being put on your body, the load will land in the right place - your glutes, for instance, instead of low back…
