Why Am I Not Getting Stronger?

So a lot of people come in and they say, why am I not getting stronger? And I’ve been doing X, Y, and Z and I can do 20, 30 reps of, let’s say, a dead deadlift. Well, we’re gonna learn something today that’s called progressive tissue overload. It incorporates good form, the right dosage, and adding weights as necessary and most safely so you can make strength gains for a lifetime. 

So the movement I really enjoy teaching this concept is the deadlift. It strengthens muscles in your ankles, knees, and hips, and requires a great amount of stability through your back. , so this client of mine has been working on these movements for the better part of a year, and so we’re going to kind of dissect how the principles of adding weight and resistance correspond with keeping good form to maintain gains over a lifetime. We have 65 pounds here that she has worked up to and she’s just gonna show us 10 reps with the best form that she knows how. Very good. So in this deadlift motion, we want more motion from your hips than from your knees.

Building Strength Safely

I like this exercise because it does demand so much from so many different muscle parts that, it’s a good bang for your buck exercise and it even has a little static balance when you have to move the weight around. Good. So we’re looking for that straight back. She’s looking forward to keeping her chest up. Good. And now you’re getting a little bit more bend with the hips and I can see the knees getting a little shaky. So we’ve added a few pounds on either side and we’re really looking for that sweet spot for this client, to get the strength gains that she is, is seeing me for. We want to get the number of reps to be about four to six and with good form and not too much soreness.

Reaching New Milestones

So we’re working up to our magnum opus today. This is the heaviest weight we’ll probably see for this client. I can already tell the form is kind of difficult for her to maintain. I have already warned her that she might be a little sore tomorrow from doing this strength dosage for the first time, but that’s why she’s here. She’s here to see strength gains and see how her body changes. That doesn’t happen by doing what you did yesterday. Like we always have to keep pushing our body a little bit more and that’s one of the tenets of progressive tissue overload.

We’re probably getting to a weight that is close to too much, but that’s kind of what we need to hit in order to see the gains that she would like. So this is going to be part of her home program. Now that we know she can do it under supervision at the clinic, it’s gonna be her job now to continue strengthening in the way that we know she can.