“WHAT ABOUT MY GAINZ?!”
“COACH, WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN TO MY STRENGTH?”
We keep getting asked this very similar question from many of our stellar athletes voicing a bit of concern while they’re kept away from their beloved barbells.
The Awesome News
Well, my fit friends, I have some very encouraging and enlightening news for you. Speaking in terms strictly of ‘muscular strength’ – which is our ability to exert force against a given object in a single effort – several studies point out that we won’t lose much if any strength (in the concentric/eccentric portions) over a short period of time. As a matter of fact, these same studies actually show you aren’t going to lose any of your gains if you quit EVERYTHING, that’s all physical activity, over the course of THREE weeks. We won’t bore you with the full nerdy details, but losing your progress isn’t something that happens quickly!
How We Work For You
Luckily, you athletes are smart, and your coaches have got your back. We aren’t going to let a simple closure of the doors prevent you from continuing to progress down the road of fitness. You’re not going to allow this stay-at-home order because of a pandemic to turn you into a couch potato. Instead, you’re tackling this ordeal head-on with your personal coach based on your goals and what you have available to you.
To that end, we have the ability to still focus and work on strength-specific wants, as well as continuing to work metabolic conditioning — even without a lot of equipment. One of the best things about having smart, science-backed approach toward programming and design, a staff of committed, professional coaches, and a team that truly cares about you is that we’re going to push forever forward whatever the odds may be.
Hopefully, all of you have had a chance to get equipment from the gym and express some of your goals to your personal coach — if not get those goals to a coach as soon as possible – cause this a month that we can double-down our focus on you!
To continue to work on muscular strength goals, we as coaches can approach this from several directions should you want to focus there:
Good option – Time under tension: we focus on perfect quality reps at lighter weights being done at a tempo; time under tension is key to our success here. It may get really uncomfortable, but a tempo down of 5 seconds will trigger significantly more physiological adaptation than simply flying through the work prescribed. Be deliberate in your movement for maximum return from your workout.
Better option – Increased load: we can lower the rep count on exercises while going heavier than we might normally. Strength is heavily tied to the ability to move weight on an absolute scale. By going heavier we can focus less on muscular endurance (the ability to move a set many more times) and much more on increasing your top-end strength.
Best option – Adding the above, as well as periodizing your lifts and focused auxiliary movements: This may not be available to everyone, unfortunately, unless you get creative, though we do know that some of you have some incredible home gyms. Talk to your personal coach, and we can make large, extensive changes to your workouts. We can bias and pick an area of emphasis that we can work on several times in the coming month. We’ll get nerdy and work linear periodization while adding specific auxiliary movements to improve that core goal. This requires the greatest amount of equipment and programming, but will also yield the greatest result.
In conclusion.
If you’re worried about keeping your strength in the hopefully only 6 weeks away from the gym, set your mind at ease. Focus on what you can control: diet, sleep, and exercise – and trust your coaches to help you stay strong and improve even from a distance!
If you are currently without a gym or programming while at home, reach out to us at info@sycamorecrossfit.com. We are doing 100% online customized programming/coaching during this unprecedented time.