Ok, people have been asking us lately, “are you all anti-bodybuilding now?”  No, we are not.  We are against purely training in one manner, and that’s for just about all goals.  Even bodybuilders, competitive and high-level ones, need to incorporate other phases into their overall program.  This will not only optimize results and move you past plateaus, but also lower the possibility of injury. 

A well designed program must incorporate compound exercises (closed and open chain), utilize all planes of motion (including cross body), as well as isolation (typical bodybuilding) exercises.  And if you ask me “why” I swear I’ll smac…no no, ok, those all offer different benefits that we all need.  Each one will benefit the various interdependent components of strength and purposeful capacity (see our last blog) that the others may miss.  If we look at this logically, you’re simply making sure you don’t miss anything.

You want to be a human that can perform a broad range of tasks and possess a high purposeful capacity.  You DO NOT want to be someone who’s body is only adapted to a limited number of gym, machine-based movements.  The more adaptable to the real world that you are, the more successful you will be able to navigate life or your chosen sport’s physical demand.

Further, building both a stronger body, as well as a more muscled one requires utilizing all strength training components.  NO single type of resistance exercise can address all demands.

Remember, your body will respond to how it’s loaded, then they adapt to that load.  Placing different loads, different placements, and different body positions will change the force generation and CNS coordination in response.  Cross-body exercises are different from compound exercises.  Then isolation exercises fill the gaps left over.  Nothing left to chance. 



See, it makes sense to mix things up.  And we haven’t even gotten into programming CNS-based training into hypertrophy and sports-specific programs.  This all provides for a more effective and comprehensive training method.