Basic Strength Routine

Last week, I talked about what I would do if I could go back in a time machine and speak to my teenage self.  After all, I’d certainly have had quite a lot to say.

Fortunately, I managed to whittle it down to 11 short points, as follows:

1. Think long-term
2. Rest properly
3. Eat properly
4. Lift weights
5. Choose low reps and high sets
6. Put the weight up
7. Write a training plan
8. Keep a training log
9. Put the weight up
10. Learn how to squat properly
11. Find a mentor

A basic programme

I wasn’t going to specify a programme as I think it’s important to go through the process of finding out what works for you and what doesn’t.  After all, lots of intermediate lifters find success with a 5 x 5 programme but 5 x 5 never seems to work out for me.

Having given it a bit more thought, though, I figured that it might be handy to have a cookie-cutter programme on hand, just to start with, in case my 17-year old self asks for one.

Starting Strength

Ideally, I would recommend that my teenage self began the famous Starting Strengthprogramme immediately.

Why?

Well, it’s a programme that many thousands have tried and succeeded with.  Why would I try and create a customised programme when there is a field-tested and proven formula that works?

So what’s the problem?

I think Starting Strength would be too advanced for me without doing some sort of preparatory programme first.

Now before you go thinking that I was some kind of chess-playing, sick-note carrying sport hater, you have to bear in mind that I was swimming 100m in under a minute and had the upper body to prove it. 

No, I’m not talking about advanced in terms of strength development but in terms of mobility and technical ability.

Mobility and stability problems

My main problem was that I was sitting at a desk all day studying and then doing an hour or more a day of very repetitive exercise with no corrective strategies whatsoever.

So my hips were tight, my quads were dominant, my lower back was hypermobile, my pecs and lats were pulling my shoulders round and I could barely look to see behind me without twisting at the waist.

After all, the Starting Strength programme is based around several key movements: the back squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press and power clean.

These are all great movements, possibly The Great Movements.  However, they all require a certain amount of mobility and technique to perform.  So I came up with a few compromise lifts, alternatives to get me started and take me from being in the danger zone to being ready for Starting Strength.

Some alternative movements

Back squat

• Problem: squatting can be performed badly if you don’t know how to use correct hip drive and use your quads/lower back instead.  Swimmers tend to have hypermobile lower backs because of butterfly and after a couple of hundred lengths of freestyle, they often forget they have legs at all…
• My replacement: the lumberjack squat
• Reasoning: no spinal loading, you learn to keep your chest up and it makes you learn that you need to suffer if you are to improve

Deadlift

• Problem: getting all the way down to the floor can be challenging if your hips are tight from sitting at a desk all day
• My replacement: the Romanian deadlift
• Reasoning: avoids mobility issues off the floor, makes you push your hips back and use your hip drive, and helps increase mobility at the hip (rack pulls do the first but not the second or third)

Bench press

• Problem: benching badly is a recipe for sore shoulders, especially if your shoulders are as wrecked as mine were
• My replacement: weighted push ups
• Reasoning: weighted push-ups groove the correct movement for a good bench and are good for core and scapular stability

Overhead press

• Problem: er, can you say “overhead athlete”? plus my posture was poor from the overdevelopment of my pecs and lats from too much front crawl.  Not a good idea to introduce overhead pressing without some corrective work first
• My replacement: the Viking press
• Reasoning: overhead presses can aggravate shoulders where posture is poor, this gets some overhead without being directly overhead

Power clean

• Problem: as back squat.  Plus, have you seen swimmers on land?  They’re like penguins.  Problem is, though, that they’re really good at pulling motions.  So do you want a bunch of malcoordinated athletes throwing large amounts of iron around when they can’t control their own bodies?  No?  Me neither.
• My replacement: pull ups and inverted rows, followed by bent-over rows once completed
• Reasoning: I like pull ups, inverted rows get your core and scapulae working better and rowing is good for you

The programme

So I hope that this programme would have done a couple of important things:

• Start building some basic strength
• Start correcting some of my muscular imbalances
• Prepare me for Starting Strength

It’s not a true “corrective” programme.  I haven’t put rear delt flyes in, for example, which I probably would have done, along with a fair amount of rotator cuff work.  But it’s the basics that I would have based my programme around, had I known what I know now.

For simplicity, I’ve based it along the same lines as Starting Strength, with an A-B-A split, 3 sets of 5 reps, true linear progression and 3 workouts per week.  Here’s the summary:

Workout A (3 sets of 5 reps of each of)

• Romanian deadlift
• Viking press
• Weighted pull up

Workout B (3 sets of 5 reps of each of)

• Lumberjack squat 
• Weighted push up  
• Inverted row, transitioning to bent-over row when 3×5 completed

This would be just the beginning, obviously.  In time, I’d hope to run through a Starting Strength cycle and then move towards the kind of routines I do today: 10 sets of 3 reps and 5RM, 3RM and 1RM max effort work.

You have to ask yourself, what would you have done differently?

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