I’m pretty sure that everyone is familiar with the people that they see at the gym who are trying to lose weight or get stronger but seem to stay the same, year after year. For some reason, certain individuals just do not find the success they are striving for in the gym. Many of these people are consistently working hard and eating right, but it’s just not happening.

When it comes to gaining strength, many people are just training incorrectly. What they are doing that is so wrong is that they are simply lifting too heavy, Period! Many people believe in what some people call “the transcendent rep.” What people are referring to when they say this is that you have to push past the prior PR boundaries in order to lift more. If you agree with that, good for you. However, I do not subscribe to the aforementioned frame of thought.

If you want to gain strength, power, speed or explosiveness, you must have a program that allows you to have incremental (yet realistic and predictable) increases in strength. If you cannot calculate how strong you will be at a particular lift 1 year from now, then you could be basically going in circles. Let me put it another way. Say your fitness goal is to bench press 315 lbs. You have to have a program that acts as a roadmap. As with finding any destination, it doesn’t matter what kind of car you are driving or how fast you are driving. If you have no idea where you are going, you’ll never arrive at your destination.

So, if you are serious about real, tangible goals for your little athlete then you need to get him on a program that produces results with a proven system, so that you can show him (or her) how to get where they need to be going.

Until next time …