Simple is always better. Over the past year, I have had the pleasure of understanding that my reasons for exercise, strength and conditioning, and love for movement is not the same as others. Now, I say this with tongue in cheek, because for a short while I struggled with the misunderstanding of why people don’t care about what I care about.
Needless to say, I kept putting a lot of stock, too much information, and a crazy amount of passion into every single moment of the day. As the past year has taught me, it’s not about what I care about, but rather the people we serve. Hence, a reason or “why” we are doing this movement or that exercise matters and specifics are where people can formidably engage in a new mind body connection.
Today, I don’t want to specify why power, strength, and conditioning are important (even though they are and we use them everyday) but rather give metaphors, analogies, and examples of where they may play out in everyday life.
So lets attack each aspect of strength and conditioning and where there might be a correlation in your life.
POWER
In strength and conditioning, power is there as a means to move yourself or something with great speed and effort in a short duration. Heart rate does not need to skyrocket for you to do this and thus the breath is not labored.
So in our power section we usually have an upper body power, a lower body power, and some sort of core work where we try to create as much tension as possible. The table below shows the basic break down of power and select exercises.
Med Ball Slam(upper body power):So, have you ever thrown a baseball? Or a kickball? Or even peg someone in an intense game of dodgeball? I’m sure you have at least seen it. Well, power is the primary engine behind those movements. When we perform a med ball slam, we are maintaining and keeping the ability/skill to transfer the energy into an object and make it go far and fast.
Plank (High tension core exercise):Ever lift a box off a shelf? Or do a push-up? Or have to push furniture around the house? A plank at high tension allows you to do so. When you press up against a large object or lift an object from a shelf or off the ground, you core engages. The reason for a few seconds is because these tasks only take a matter of seconds and require a ton of effort in those moments.
Hinge Jump (lower body power):Ever jump onto a rock? Ever jump off of a rock? Ever misstepped on/off a curb, caught yourself and say “whew that was close”? Yep, I am pretty sure we have all been there. When we jump or we fall, our body flexes and reacts to the environment. Whether we are lunging our body onto an object or off of an object, they require power to help us achieve our final position.
Strength
No one has ever been too strong, and strength is a subjective term, but for the sake of this blog, let’s just say, its the ability to move a load or weight repeatedly. Now in strength, we have a break down of what we call a push/pull split program.
Let’s look at our strength section and exercises that play out in your everyday life.
Goblet squat(lower body strength/push)
Do you sit at work? Have you ever had to stand up quickly? Or ever sit on a log around a camp fire? All those require the ability to squat down and get back up. When we goblet squat or squat in general, we are strengthening muscles that move our body’s easily to and from the ground.
½ kneeling cable row(upper body strength/pull)
Ever open a heavy door? Or pull a garden hose? Or play a game of tug-of-war, whoop the others teams ass and celebrate like it’s 1999? Sure, we all have. Well that requires upper body pulling strength. Anytime you pull your elbows and shoulders towards the seams of your shirt it demands some upper body pulling strength.
Conditioning
Conditioning or heart rate as I like to call it when speaking to a group, is where we get the heart rate up to increase cardio, movement efficiency and our ability to sustain periods of work. Here we use interval training rather than long bouts of slow sustained aerobic output. The table belows shows a break down of what our interval training looks like.
So where might conditioning, specifically interval training play out in your everyday life?
Ever play a game of soccer? Or play a game of tennis? Or move dirt or gravel in a wheelbarrow? Anytime, you put in work for a short duration at a moderate to high intensity, you are getting your heart rate up and increasing your ability to sustain the work for a larger period of time. The cool thing also about this interval conditioning is that it has transfer into longer, slower bouts of cardio and endurance, so things like golf become easier, and your game doesn’t suffer.
So, there you have it. Areas where Strength and Conditioning play out into your life. You can do this with any of the exercises or movement patterns. All it takes is a little bit of thought and awareness around what you are doing and where these things may benefit any of the games or activities you do.
For more on this, feel free to contact us on our FB page Core principles strength and conditioning or hit us up on our email Info@coreprinciples-sc.com
Best,
Coach Jim
