Strength Basics

Getting stronger, fitter, and healthier by sticking to the basics. It's not rocket science, it's doing the simple stuff the right way. Strength-Basics updates every Monday, plus extra posts during the week.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

One thing at a time

I had a client today one-on-one instead of our usual semi-private. I knew I had an hour with this client to do whatever we wanted.

What do I do?

Lunges.

The client has a very poor lunge pattern, and it's hard to fix when you also have another client who needs direct supervision. I can't spend a whole session fixing one thing if I have another person to train who can't be set on his own to keep training. But today, it was one-on-one. Although this client also has some other issues - pushups, some pulling form, posture issues - the lunge was my goal today. Fix the lunge.

What I did was have him work through his lunges one step at a time, one leg at a time, until it was good enough. Not perfect, but good enough to progress from.

Then we did his normal workout. Except every 1-2 sets of whatever we did, be it presses, step-ups, pulldowns, whatever - we did 5 lunges each leg, only counting the good ones. Each rep was preceded by checking his stance, his balance, his hand position, and then doing a static lunge.

This worked out to 50 or so lunges, with good form, each leg. Not a lot, but steady repetition. By the end of the session, he was automatically knocking out his lunges each leg, checking his form, etc. And they looked better - even fatigued - than the ones he started with.

We could have worked on anything or everything, but focusing on just one piece of his movement problems took care of it. Now, he knows he'll warm up with 5 good lunges each leg each workout. It'll become ingrained as a correct movement pattern and he'll get stronger at them. Once that's done, we can do the next problem area. One thing at a time. It just seems easier to break a problem into as many little pieces as you can and attack them one at a time.

Based on today, I'm thinking that's the way to go - I'll try to fix one thing about each client's issues each week or each workout.


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