Mistake Number 2:  Unbalanced Strength Training Programs

An “unbalanced strength training program” is a weight or resistance training program that concentrates on only 1 or 2 areas of the body and ignores the rest.  It’s only natural, I guess, that most people tend to focus their training on the muscles that they think will make them look younger, leaner, stronger, or sexier.  These muscles most often include the biceps, abs, and legs.

Do a quick Internet search and you’ll find all kinds of “miracle-get-fit-quick” programs that supposedly “target” these specific areas.  Take a close look around the gym and you’ll find people spending the majority of their time primarily working these muscles -  guys trying to do 200-pound-bicep-curls and women working nothing but the leg-press and the “butt-buster.”

The results, like the guy in the picture, can sometimes look unnatural and downright freaky.  However, how things look is pretty subjective (some people think looking like Popeye is cool – whatever) so let’s put looks aside for a moment and only talk about whole body health effects.

The muscles of your body are designed to work in unison, with each muscle playing an important part of whatever motion you’re engaged in. Whether it’s shooting hoops or lifting weights, for any type of movement, your muscles create the movement together by playing one or more of the following roles:

• Agonist or “Prime Mover”:  This is the muscle that acts directly to bring about a desired movement through contraction.  If you’re performing a dumbbell bench press, for example, the agonist is the Pectoralis Major (or “pecs”) which contract (shorten) to raise the arms as you press the weights upward.
• Synergist or “Assistant Mover”:  As the name implies, this is the muscle (or muscles) that indirectly assists in creating the desired movement.  In the dumbbell bench press, the synergist is the Anterior Deltoid (or “front delt”).
• Antagonist:  The antagonist is the opposite partner of the agonist.  It’s job is to return the limb to the starting position by creating  a force that’s directly opposite to the Prime Mover.  In our bench press example, the antagonist is the Posterior Deltoid (“rear delt”).
• Stabilizer:  This muscle (or muscles) are responsible for stabilizing and supporting the muscle next to it.  In a dumbbell bench press, the stabilizers are the Rotator Cuff muscles.
• Neutralizer:  Similar to the stabilizer, the neutralizer is a muscle (or muscles) responsible for eliminating or canceling out an undesired movement.  In our example, the Rotator Cuff muscles also act as neutralizers acting to cancel out any sideways or unstable movement as the arms press up.

Developing one muscle to the exclusion of the other creates an imbalance between that muscle and it’s paired antagonist frequently leading to injury.  For example, overdeveloping the pecs by doing dumbbell bench presses all day long can lead to muscle stain or tearing of the Posterior Deltoid, the antagonist muscle.

Why does that happen?  Interesting story that most people don’t consider.  When you’re doing a bench press, for example, most people are surprised to learn that the Posterior Deltoid is the muscle most susceptible to injury, not the Pecs.  Why is that?  Because when you press up (using the Pecs), you’re lifting a weight against gravity and your movement tends to be slow, measured, and controlled.  However, when you go back to the start position, most people tend to simply let the weights drop back down to chest level without taking into account that gravity is now pulling in the same direction as the weights.  Unless you’re careful, the movement back down tends to be faster, less controlled, and end with an abrupt stop.  That puts a lot of strain on the Rear Delts.  If you’re going to get injured doing this exercise, that’s where it’s going to happen.

Same scenario applies to your legs.  If you spend enough time in a gym, you might have heard the advice, “strengthen the glutes and stretch the quads.”  The reason is that most people are “quad dominant.”  In other words, their quads are already much stronger than their glutes making it much easier to strain or tear the glutes when they try to develop their quads even further.  If you’ve ever injured your legs doing a leg press, it’s almost always on the return when your glutes are straining to slow the weights quickly.

The key to building a stronger body is to make sure that your weight or resistance training program is balanced and incorporates ALL major muscles groups, not just the “sexy” ones.  That means following a workout that includes the chest, the back (upper and lower) and shoulders, the arms (biceps, forearms, and hands), the core (upper and lower abs, obliques), as well as your legs and hips.  It’s important to strengthen not only the big muscles, but the supporting ones as well in order to prevent injuries.

The end result is that you’ll not only look and feel better, you’ll move better with increased coordination and balance.  Isn’t that why you work out in the first place?

Certified Fitness Nutrition Coach and
Personal Fitness Trainer (NESTA)

P.S.  Be sure to get my latest Fitness Blueprint called “Little Things That Improve Your Health.”  This ebook is packed with loads of helpful information on how to build a better body and you can get it FREE – for a limited time.  Just click on the title to be taken to the download page.  Enjoy!

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I was pretty busy last week.  I had ordered a brand new weight bench from Amazon.com and it finally arrived at my front door.  I opened the box and quickly found that this was going to be a “some assembly required” type of project.  No problem.  I took out my tools and got to work.

After about 40 minutes, I finally had it all put together.  I set it up in the spare bedroom and it looked great.  Now I needed some barbells to use it with.

I did some comparison shopping between The Sports Authority and Academy Sports and Outdoors and settled on a basic set from Academy.  Once I got them home, I realized I would need some sort of mat to lay the weights on so they wouldn’t mark up the floor.  Back to Academy.

With all the required equipment in hand, I was finally ready to start my new strength training program, or was I?

After a couple of weeks, I still hadn’t started my new program.  Something always seemed to come up or there was always something else I needed to get (you need a rack to put the barbells on, right?).  It was about then that I realized that I had been spending most of my time planning instead of doing.

Has that ever happened to you?  For some of us, the real enjoyment seems to be in the planning instead of the doing.  Maybe it’s the engineer in me but I love planning, strategy, design.  Unfortunately, that’s not how you get results.

Sure, you need a plan.  However, putting a plan together is not the goal.  It’s only an intermediate step.  You don’t get rewarded for a great plan.  You get rewarded for actually producing results.

You can’t find a better example of this than in fitness and nutrition.  Instead of just exercising, many of us will buy a book on exercise.  Instead of making better food choices at the dinner table or the buffet line, we’ll attend a seminar on nutrition.

I watched a lecture series by John Bradshaw,  a noted Houston psychologist, on the PBS channel several years back.  He showed a cartoon that really brought home the same point.  In the cartoon, there was a lobby similar to a hotel lobby with an escalator going up.  A sign at the bottom of the escalator pointed up and said “to Heaven.”  Another sign pointed down the hall and said “to Seminar on Heaven.”  All of the “Doers” were on the escalator going up to Heaven and all of the “Planners” were headed towards the seminar.

So which are you, a Doer or a Planner?  Are you hard at work on some grand plan to improve your health and fitness or are you out there actually exercising?  Are you spending all your time researching that new exercise gizmo you saw advertised on TV or are you actually at the gym working out?

There is ALWAYS going to be another new book on exercise, fitness, and nutrition.  There is always going to be a new Ab-This or a Butt-That promising to get you in shape in less time, or with little or no effort.  There is always going to be some detail to add to your plan and if you’re not careful, you end up spending all your time planning instead of doing – and nothing ever gets done.

Don’t fall for the “planning trap.”  Once you decide on your fitness goals, get busy on them.  Don’t plan them, work on them.  While you’re working on your goals, periodically check to make sure you’re still moving in your intended direction – but don’t stop and fall back into planning mode.  If you do, you’ll lose all of your progress, all of your momemtum, and you’ll always be starting over at the beginning.

Doing this means getting comfortable with starting something before you know all of the details.  It’s kind of scary at first but you do have a sense of the general direction you want to go so you’re not totally in the dark.  And of course, you can make adjustments as you go along.  The point is to get moving, build some momentum, and start doing.

The perfect plan for your good health and fitness is worthless if you never get around to putting it into action.

So get on that escalator to good health.  Do just enough planning to set a general direction, then spend the majority of your time taking action.  You’ll be happy with the results.

Hiram
The Balanced Health Guy

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