The industry average for a person that embarks on weight training as part of their fitness goals only last two years until they drop out and it’s easy to see why. There is far too much emphasis in the media about 12-week transformations and short term results. The truth is in reality it takes time to build muscle and get strong.
When it comes to weight lifting it’s easy to fall into certain traps where you want to jump in at the deep end and try all the big lifts, continuously trying to adding weight to the bar and grinding through reps get the quickest results possible or using far too many random exercise with too much volume not enough true intensity thinking the aim of the game is just to walk out of the weight room on your knees in a puddle of sweat. This usually results in the same outcome injury or stagnation.
The key to weight training is longevity. Anyone can throw throw together a bunch of exercise to make a workout but when it comes to creating a plan that systematically challenges you to build strength, learn correct technique, layer in complexity and build intensity intelligently to stay injury free and see long term results it’s a lot more challenging.
Weight training hasn’t got to be the only type of training that you do, however it should form the FOUNDATION to what you do. Getting strong in the weights room has real life cross over to how your perform as a human being and an athlete. If your passion is be it cycling, running, yoga, skiing, climbing or whatever. Getting stronger will make you perform better.
I have written STRENGTH TRAINING FOUNDATIONS as a 18 week program, which i recommend running in the order written but my all means you can just opt into the phases that you feel are most relevant to you.
