Being stronger reduces your injury risk. And what's the best way to develop maximal strength? Heavy, relatively stable, full-body lifting.
There's just one problem: modern living. Today, most of us use the gym to offset an otherwise sedentary lifestyle. Seated jobs and a lack of varied movement is the norm. The gym is our only real activity.
In this common scenario, focusing only on the big lifts may be increasing our injury risk. It's a weird paradox given that big lifts make us stronger and strength decreases injury.
So why does this happen? Because our "deeper" stabilizer muscles are underdeveloped. You can get very strong on the big lifts, yet still be woefully unstable and prone to injury.
Fortunately, there's an easy way to tell if you're at risk. For every big lift there's a strength-stability test that will give you some valuable insights.
Here are the common strength standards for the barbell back squat:
If you stand on one leg though, what can you do?
This is important because life doesn't happen symmetrically. When you move on one leg, your core and hip musculature has to be able to stabilize your pelvis and spine so you can actually use your leg strength.
This is how your body works in real life. If you have a massive barbell squat and can't single-leg squat, then you're at risk of hurting yourself. Here's the test:
Based on the above strength standards for the barbell squat, here's what you should be able to do on the skater squat:
What if your single-leg squat doesn't match up to your barbell squat number? Don't stop focusing on your barbell strength. If you want to be strong, then get strong, but address the deficit in your assistance work.
If skater squats are initially too hard, follow the progression of split squats (static lunge), Bulgarian split squats, and finally skater squats in your assistance work. Get your single-leg strength up alongside your barbell strength and you'll be safer and stronger in the long term.
The generally accepted strength standards:
If you can't hit these numbers because of balance and recruitment issues, then fix it. Add single-leg deadlifts to your assistance work. Do them barefoot and reap the benefits of the improved recruitment, improved balance, and improved stability.
The strength standards:
The bench press overdevelops the prime movers relative to the scapula stabilizers and full-body stabilizers. This is a recipe for injury. The push-up, on the other hand, challenges the scapula and other stabilizers, as well as your big pressing muscles.
If you're a push-up machine, that'll go a long way to balancing out the risk from bench-press related muscle imbalances.
If you can't hit these numbers, you're either too fat or too unstable: both are injury risks that need to be addressed.
I'm not necessarily suggesting you should prioritize push-ups over bench press. But if you suck at push-ups compared to bench pressing, do push-ups in your assistance work instead of things like machine work.
Here are the usual standards:
If your standing single-arm pressing is out of sync with your seated barbell press, then your core stability or your shoulder stability (or both) are letting you down. That's risky. Just make sure you're super-strict with the single-arm press. Any leg drive to get it moving will be very misleading.
If your single-arm press lags far behind your seated strict press, prioritize that movement in your overhead assistance work.
If you're massively strong through the prime movers (when you're balanced and static), but you're less stable and strong with single-limb and bodyweight exercises, you're asking for an injury in the real world.
There's a caveat to this though. When it comes to fitness, it's possible for the pendulum to swing too far. If you test these exercises and find your that stability is lagging, don't stop your regular training. Don't completely replace your big lifts with these counterparts, just add them to your assistance work.
If you haven't hit the barbell numbers talked about here for an intermediate, you're either too fat or too weak and need to prioritize strength. By all means, do the single-limb exercises and push-ups in your assistance work to avoid developing imbalances, but make sure you focus on getting stronger overall too.
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