I had a great meeting yesterday with a guy interested in training. He had been dealing with some lower body pain that has been getting progressively worse.
He was bummed because his pain was beginning to limit his ability to do life. He wasn’t able to do certain physical activities that he had previously enjoyed, stuff like jogging and hiking.
The pain had even reached the point where he was finding physical activities he shared w/ his son to be problematic.
As I talked to him about the relationship between strength, pain, and function I began to realize that the word strength was quite meaningless to him. Then I started to think about previous meetings where I really leaned into that term.
I can get you stronger, 100%.
But I’ve come to realize that a good many people haven’t yet made the connection between strength (force production) and function (living).
Rather than continuing to talk about strength training, I started talking about hiking and jogging during this meeting. His face completely changed.
Then he got it. Strength = Function = Hiking / Jogging
I’m wondering now, do you get it?
I know you don’t “want to be a powerlifter”. I know you’re “not trying to get huge”. And you’re definitely “not trying to look like A-hhnold”.
I’m not doing any of those things either, I’m training to get stronger.
I’m training to kick ass in life and that’s what we’re helping others do here at the gym.
Strength training is training that is specifically designed to increase your ability to produce force against an external resistance.
This external resistance varies wildly from person to person. It might be the football field, a hiking trail on your anniversary, or a 20 min jog after a stressful day of mergers and acquisitions. It might even be getting off the toilet when you’re 82 … in fact, if you’re lucky it will be just that.
Life requires force production and strength training builds force production.
