Okay, you and I both thought I was done this series. And then BAM! Part 3. Looking over my posts thus far, I realized that I’ve used terms such as ‘powerlifting’ and ‘Olympic lifting’ without actually defining them. While I do hope this blog serves as a jumping off point which encourages you to do your own research, I do want it to be able to stand alone to a certain extent.
For the record, my definitions of each of these types of training are not meant to be exhaustive. I intentionally left out a lot of details about each sport. The goal of this post is not for you to understand everything there is to know about each of these types of training, but rather to give you a basic understanding of some key principles, as well as how each form differs from the others.
Before we get into different types of resistance training, I want to tackle an often used and rarely explained term…
Functional
While most fitness professionals have an idea of what this is, it can be difficult to actually define. Here is my stab at it. My understanding of functional training is that it is training which can be applied in a variety of ways. What I mean by this is that the capacities developed in training carry over into lots of different athletic activities, and in everyday life. For example, the gym-goer who spends all of his ‘leg day’ on the leg press would probably have a harder time picking up a heavy barrel off the floor than the athlete who spends his time front squatting. Why? Because the front squat is a gym movement which challenges your body to displace a heavy load using a NATURAL movement pattern.
Ever seen a small child pick something up off the ground? They pop down into a deeeeeep squat like it’s their job, hang out there for a while, and then get up when they feel like it. Squatting is a natural movement. Squatting requires core stabilization as well as movement in the hip, knee, and ankle joints. Picking up a heavy barrel in front of you is basically a mixture of a front squat and a Zercher squat. The leg press involves little core stabilization and virtually no hip extension. As a result, core muscles and glutes are ignored in favor of disproportionate quad and ham development. Leg pressing will do little to help you pick things up in real life, or win a sprint race. A leg press is therefore not very functional. If you front squat, the work you do will pay dividends in athletics and in everyday physical tasks. Therefore, the front squat is a functional exercise.
And now for the resistance training styles.
1) Bodybuilding
General Goal: hypertrophy (muscle growth), aesthetics
General Training Principles: focus on body parts as oppose to movements, use of compound movements such as squats and isolation movements such as leg extensions, moderate intensity aerobic exercise is used for fat loss
Athletic Pros: a bodybuilding routine can produce strength and power gains
Athletic Cons: I don’t want to go too deeply into this because I don’t want to come off as insulting to people who bodybuild who may be reading this blog. I will just say this. A bodybuilding resistance training routine will lead to increases in strength and, to a lesser extent, power. Beyond that, such a routine will do little to help improve your athletic performance. Any serious bodybuilder who knows anything about fitness will tell you this.
2) Powerlifting
General Goal: lift the largest weight possible in the sport’s three lifts: deadlift, back squat, bench press
General Training Principles: focus on the ‘3 big lifts’, low rep strength training
Athletic Pros: powerlifting makes you strong, good mobility is required in knees, hips, and to a lesser extent, ankles
Athletic Cons: Conditioning is not part of powerlifting. Powerlifting is only concerned with the three big lifts. Powerlifters do want to get strong, but they also want to find ways to make the lifts easier. Many powerlifters squat with an extremely wide stance to reduce the range of motion, and bench with an obscenely round back for the same reason. Between the focus on the three big lifts as well as the constant attempts to make those lifts easier, powerlifting may not be the best tool for creating functional strength. I knew one powerlifter who told me that his body would literally explode if he tried to do anything athletic besides powerlifting. Lastly, due to a large amount of benching with little emphasis on upper body horizontal pulling, many powerlifters have internal shoulder rotation. Lastly, there little to no single leg training involved.
3) Olympic Weightlifting
General Goal: to lift the largest weight possible in the sport’s two lifts: (squat) snatch and (squat) clean and jerk.
General Training Principles: focus on the two big lifts, low rep strength and power training
Athletic Pros: Olympic lifting will get you strong and powerful, to Olympic lift properly you have to have excellent upper and lower body mobility, because of the nature of the Olympic lifts (as opposed to the power lifts) there is a large amount of functional carryover, focus on upper back stability and quad development (specifically the VMO) is good for preventing knee and shoulder injuries
Athletic Cons: no focus on conditioning, Olympic lifts are extremely complex and difficult to learn which means there is an increased potential for injury, little emphasis on single leg training and upper body pulling
4) Strongman
General Goal: displacing extremely heavy/odd objects (functional strength)
General Training Principles: (see general goal), low rep strength training
Athletic Pros: the goal of the sport is functional strength, short duration anaerobic conditioning involved
Athletic Cons: lifting odd objects increases risk of injury, little emphasis on mobility
5) CrossFit
General Goal: general fitness and athletic capacity
General Training Principles: constantly varied workouts, combines aspects of powerlifting, Olympic lifting, endurance events, gymnastics, strongman
Athletic Pros: excellent for anaerobic and aerobic conditioning, focus on strength and power, constant programming variation means your body is being challenged by a large variety of different movements
Athletic Cons: poor form and exercise adaptations (such as kipping pull-ups) create a high risk for injury, focus on anaerobic conditioning hurts strength and power gains, little emphasis on systematic programming and periodization
Here is the important thing to take away from this post. With the possible exception of bodybuilding (which I would argue is not a sport at all, but rather an art form), there are ASPECTS of each of these resistance training styles which can assist in athletic training. Note the emphasis on the term “aspects”. If you are a football player, don’t train like a powerlifter. You are not a powerlifter. If you are an MMA fighter, don’t train like a CrossFitter. You are not a CrossFitter. In my first blog entry ever, I posted a video of George St. Pierre. In the video, you can see him doing gymnastics, Olympic weightlifting, and plyometrics. For many sports, especially MMA, the best course of action is to pick and choose aspects of each of these training styles to create a program unique to YOUR sport!
Steal snatches from Olympic lifting for power. Mix in some heavy bench from powerlifting for strength. Flip a tire like a strongman for in your conditioning routine. Use thrusters like a CrossFitter and watch your anaerobic capacity skyrocket. Be creative and mix it up! #allgo
All Go Fitness 