TLDR
- Step count and resistance training is the base of training and health
- Daily mobility work and weekly locomotion work are probably the missing links in your training
- Conditioning and stretching are significantly overrated (for most folks)
Overview
To get the first obvious point out of the way – resistance training is a key component of training. If there’s any doubts or confusion about this, see why resistance training.
So we understand it’s a crucial part, but is it the only part?
Well if you’re just starting out, the answer is it may well be (see the starter program for example). As your training experience progresses though, a more holistic understanding is required.
You may have seen this often used paradigm:
Training is divided into
- strength (i.e. resistance training)
- cardio
- mobility
That’s not bad or incorrect by any means, but I want to posit a different 5 pillar framework.
- Cardio
- Mobility
- Hypertrophy
- Strength
- Locomotion
Pillars of training
We need to define what these terms mean in this context as not all the terms are the usual definition you’ve heard.
Cardio
This is exactly what it means; everything that increases aerobic or anaerobic work capacity.
Mobility
This is all things to do with mobility and stretching. The key point here is understanding the difference between active and passive range of motion.
Hypertrophy
This is where there may be some confusion between hypertrophy vs strength. Here, we’re defining hypertrophy training as typically an exercise between 3 to 30 reps with a focus on a target muscle taken relatively close to failure. In other words, training for hypertrophy is synonymous with ‘resistance training’. For the purpose of this guide (if you are a non elite athlete with general training goals), this should be the bulk of your focus.
Strength
Where does this leave ‘strength’? First, I would argue a lot of people’s unlikely are confusing strength for skill, in large part due to powerlifting. A 1 rep max for 3 specific lifts done in a specific way is a sport, not a baseline test of ‘strength’. Instead the concept here relates more to tension – breathing and bracing to create tension. Unfortunately if we label this breathing plus bracing plus tension work it’ll probably be more confusing, so strength it is.
Locomotion
The concept is simple; moving your body through space. If hypertrophy and strength involves ‘picking stuff up and putting it back down’, then locomotion is anything where you go for distance, under load (including simply bodyweight), with control.
Tying it all together
As you can hopefully gleam, there’s a certain logical order to this.
Conceptually, the aim is:
- Improve heart health and increase work capacity
- Segmentally capture active range of motion in your joints
- Then strengthen said range of motion
- Now we can train moving the entire body statically -up and down
- And dynamically – forward and backwards through space.
What does this mean in practice?
- For cardio, the building blocks are MIIT, with LISS as a bonus
- For mobility, the building blocks are light mobility work, with intense stretching as a bonus
- For hypertrophy, the building blocks are your resistance training sessions
- For strength, the building blocks are the same resistance training sessions
- For locomotion, the building blocks are locomotion work, either appended to the end of resistance training sessions or its own additional session by itself
Our ‘house style’
Generally speaking if you’re a beginner you should just follow a training program to the letter.
If you’re an intermediate you’ll start to have a better idea of your specific goals and make modest adjustments to training programs.
If you’re an advanced you’ll understand your goals – realise you can have only one or two at a time – and make the choice to either follow a training program, modify it to suit your needs, or write your own.
Having said all that, this training guide does have a ‘house style’ (to borrow a clothing term) which generally assumes an intermediate trainee, probably fairly busy with time constraints, looking for both hypertrophy and general training (health, movement quality, well roundedness) goals.
With that in mind, we can say with a reasonable degree of confidence:
- Step count and resistance training is the base of training and health.
- Daily mobility work and weekly locomotion work are probably the missing links in your training.
- Conditioning is significantly overrated and PNF stretching is moderately overrated (as opposed to light stretching, which shouldn’t even be considered a training variable but a recovery tool).