General Prep for Strength Athletes 101
Obviously if you’re involved in a strength sport, you have to be strong. Whether it’s Weightlifting, Powerlifting, Crossfit, or Strongman, strength and different strength qualities are a primary source of success. But, even in these sports, strength is not a vacuum. There are many factors that go into how strong you are and how strong you can get. A couple key factors are how in shape and how athletic you are. That’s where General Physical Preparation comes into play.
If you’re from an Eastern European or Asian, and some US training systems, then you’ve had exposure to periods of not doing the competitive movements in order to prepare you for the upcoming training volumes and loads. Unfortunately, most strength athletes ignore these phases in order to continuously chase minimal personal records. In this article, I will break down the 3 reasons you need General Prep and how to implement them into your training year to ensure you’re ready for not just the next PR, but the ones that get you to the next level.
You have to be in shape to lift big weights.
Yes, your aerobic matters. Before we get into that- 3’s, 5’s, and 10’s DO NOT under any circumstances count as “cardio” no matter how many Instagram meme accounts or whiny lifters tell you it does.
There’s a reason the best strength athletes, across all disciplines, do some form of steady state cardio. Because it works. No, you don’t need to run a 5K weekly but when you’re 16+ weeks out from a major competition spending some time on a sled, bike, or trail at a heart rate of roughly 120-150bpm for 20-30 minutes won’t kill you. In fact, it will allow you to lift heavier more often when the time comes. Also, having a decent cardiovascular system will keep you from dying earlier. Just do it.
Because this is the “101” portion, we’ll keep it simple. Basically, the higher capacity you have (without turning into a distance athlete), the better you’re able to recover from training session to training session and set to set. Allowing you to do more strength work during those sessions. Which will allow you to hit PRs more often and when it matters most.
You Need a Break.
The most common reason strength athletes either get injured or burn out, is due to overuse stress/injuries. You’ve been crushing the same or similar movements over and over for months at a time, eventually your joints will hit back. Doing movements outside of your specific sport will give your joints a much needed break AND give you an increased amount of body awareness that will allow you to move through those specific movements better when the time comes.
Every strength athlete has dealt with burn-out at some point or worse, overuse injuries. Both of these have the same cause- repetitive motion. Taking a few weeks to do more general exercises not only gives you the fitness benefits that we talked about earlier, but gives your joints a break from the wear and tear of the sport. At the end of the day, the athletes that win are generally the ones that can last the longest. Give yourself the chance to outlast and outlift the competition.
You Probably Specialized Too Early.
The reality here in the United States is that with any activity we want to be good at, we dive full on right away. This generally means doing programs that we’re not ready for. You’ve looked up the Russian Squat Cycle or Bulgarian System and decided that’s what you’re doing. The part all of these programs leave out is the development leading up to these. These advanced systems are all based on athletes that went through YEARS of generalization to prepare their technique, joints, tissues, and minds for the workloads they’re handling.
Yes, most strength athletes in the United States start as adults so we don’t have 10 years to develop, but for the first 1-3 years of training, building a base will pay off big time in the end.
The further out from competition, the more general movements you can add in, the better. Even if you ignore the previous aspect of cardio work, just do something athletic, challenging, or outside of your sport for a period of 4-8 weeks, 2-3 times a week before diving into your next prep.
Again, this is a 101 article. We’ll dive deeper into each of these and how it pertains to strength athletes at the novice, intermediate, and advanced levels later on. But, the lesson for you to take away is- DO SOMETHING outside of your specific sport 1-3 times a week, and thank me later.