Strength Matrix - a journal for people getting stronger

I created a new journaling document for our readers. It's a Strength Matrix. The table allows athletes to document certain lifts/movements according to 1/3/5 RMs.

To download or print the Strength Matrix, please click here. Sorry to those who have had trouble downloading off of Scribd in the past. Until I find another way to allow access to documents, we're stuck with Scribd. If you can't print it, send me an email, and I will send you the PDF of the same.

USING THE MATRIX: After you've at least reviewed the Strength Matrix, here's how I recommend using it: Keep this with your fitness journal. Whenever you do a strength workout that includes one of those lifts, document the 1, 3, or 5 RM (and the date too). Let's imagine that the workout calls for 5x5. If during the course of your last set you only manage to complete 3 reps, you can count that for a 3RM if you'd like! Our goal is to keep replacing previous entries with higher numbers! That's how we know we're getting stronger!!!!

Yes, I know the boxes are small. Write small. I wanted to get as much info on a single page. You want bigger boxes -- make your own.

I'm going to take this Strength Matrix and backfill it with as many previous 1/3/5 RMs as I can. If you look at this Matrix and tell yourself, "I can't fill in any of those boxes. That's not the stuff I do." Guess what? YOU AREN'T STRENGTH TRAINING!! Maybe you're doing resistance training. Or weight training. Or whatever the heck some fitness magazine calls it. But you are not doing strength training. Quit calling it that. You insult people who actually do strength work. It would be equivalent to going on a 3 mile walk and saying you're preparing for a marathon.

STRENGTH POSTS: If you click here, you will be taken to all of my recent posts regarding strength training (including this post). The posts include rants, insults, and challenges to our readers.

RELATIVE vs RAW Strength

"Strong people are harder to kill,

and generally more useful!"

-- MotorCity CrossFit, Metro-Detroit, Michigan

This is a followup piece on my recent rant about strength. Please take a few moments to read it before continuing.

Let's start off with some basic definitions of the two terms: Raw and Relative.

• Raw Strength is naked. It's not confined by any parameters other than the output number itself. Raw Strength is measured by the maximal (or near-maximal) weight lifted. If one lifter can move 400#, and the other lifter can move 450# -- the one who moves 450# is stronger. That is RAW.
• Relative Strength uses the added component of the lifter's bodyweight as it relates to a load lifted. So if each of two lifters move 450#, and one lifter weighs 180# and the other is 220# -- the 180# lifter is RELATIVELY stronger. Relative strength is measured as a percentage of the lifter's bodyweight. It's a sort of "efficiency rating." How efficient is the mass of the lifter's flesh and body?

Now the discussion.

TWO HIKERS Assume two men are hiking up a mountain trail. If each of their backpacks full of gear weigh 50#, the mountain elevation cares not how much the hikers weigh. Nature makes no distinction between hikers of 150# or 250#. The pack still weighs 50#. (Now for those of you who are doing the math, you quickly appreciate my choice of such round numbers!) For the 150# hiker, the pack is one-third his bodyweight! For the 250# hiker, the pack is only one-fifth his weight. Is this fair?

Fifty pounds is fifty pounds. Is it safe to say the heavier hiker will probably be burdened less by the pack than the lighter one? Well, maybe. There are lots of factors here that will affect the answer: cardio-respiratory capacities, stamina, etc. But generally speaking, the 250# hiker is probably stronger (in the Raw sense) than his lighter counterpart.

So if you are the featherweight, you'll be complaining that the pack is 33% of your bodyweight. But if you're the heavyweight, then you'll be answering with, "Yeah, but all in all, I have to cart up 300# versus your 200#!" So who is stronger? The debate continues....

COMPETITION CLASSES Weightlifting competitions, both Powerlifting and Olympic lifting, have weight categories. It's much like high school or collegiate wrestling. Competitors only go against those in the same weight class. Let's face it, there is no way a 55-kg lifter could ever compete against a 105-kg lifter. The disparity of the raw numbers is huge. So to be fair to "the little guys," weight classes divide the field of competitors into groups by size.

CROSSFIT TOTAL In the CrossFit world, the measure of a person's overall strength is through the CrossFit Total (CFT). This is the summation of three lifts: Standing shoulder press, back squat, and deadlift. When the three raw numbers are added, the resulting number is the "score." My last "Total" in Nov 2009 was at 1005# (and my 1RM lifts have each gone up since then too!) That is a fairly high score (95th percentile, as out of 2300+ entries on an online journal, the median and mean CFT for men is 748#. Click on link if you are member of beyondthewhiteboard.com). HOWEVER, before I get hurt while I pat myself on the back, I can analyze this number against my bodyweight. Not so good.

One of the things I like about CrossFit is that just when you think you're "there," something else explodes in your face. In this case, it was a discussion of RELATIVE strength and the CFT. I was quickly humbled to see that my 1005#CFT (latest) @ 238# (current) bodyweight wasn't all that impressive. Some of the guys who were in the 900-1100# range were significantly lighter than me. So, my 1005/238=4.22 CFT-to-BW wasn't going to turn heads. Sure I lifted over a half-ton of weight, but at my BW, it wasn't considered to be all that heavy! Click here to see one chart that dissects the CFT-to-BW. There are so-called "little guys" who have CFT-to-BW in the 6.0 to 7.0 range. While those are elitists, they do exist. These guys have not only a lot of Raw Strength, but their Relative strengths are off the charts!

THE NON-ANSWER. So where does all this discussion of Raw and Relative Strength leave us? Raw strength is obviously best. Nature does not account for the bodyweight or size of a person. A 300# fallen tree limb on top of a victim is still 300#. A downed partner or police officer is still 200# regardless of the size of the rescuer. A 50# piece of travel luggage will always be 50#. Strongest is best. No doubt.

But comparing strength to bodyweight does have some merit. For one, I believe in benchmarks or standards. For example, a 1xBW shoulder press, a 1.5xBW back squat, and a 2xBW deadlift are all great standards. Aside from the actual number of raw pounds, the percentage of one's BW is a decent measuring stick. And it humbles us Clydesdales who may not have the efficiency of some of the "little guys." So here are my challenges:

Big dudes: With your size, you are expected to be strong. Start looking more at Relative Strength. Lose a few fatty pounds to increase your efficiency. Hit some new benchmarks or standards with relation to your BW -- and log your BW in your journal when you hit certain personal records. You're strong. Now, how efficient are you?

Little guys: Don't forget Raw Strength. Nature does not distinguish your size from the bigger folks. Get stronger and quit complaining about how much stuff weighs compared to your bodyweight! Don't be satisfied with some big ratios. Your raw numbers might still suck.

Middleweights: You must balance the naked numbers against your efficiency. Your raw scores are higher than the Little Guys, AND your ratios are higher than the Big Dudes! At least I hope so. You have the opportunity to be a true hybrid athlete. Are you seizing the opportunity?

GOALS: There is value in using both measurements (Raw and Relative) with regards to Strength. Set goals for both raw poundage AND as a function or percentage of your bodyweight. For me, my goals are: 1xBW shoulder press, 1.75xBW back squat, 1.25xBW power clean, 1xBW power snatch, 1xBW overhead squat, 2.5xBW deadlift, 5xBW CrossFit Total. How to get there? Lose fatty weight, and oh yeah.....get stronger! I'm inching in on some of them.

Strength - a rant

Strength. What is it? It's one of the ten DynaMax physical skills and attributes. The others are: cardio-respiratory endurance, speed, power, flexibility, coordination, agility, balance, accuracy, and stamina. Strength refers to the ability of the body to perform a task. The "scoring" of strength is captured in pounds (#) or kilograms (kg). There is no TIME or DISTANCE component here. Simply put: in a strength contest, the athlete who can lift the most weight wins!

In the functional fitness community, strength is measured through different movements. Some of those are:

• Deadlift
• Back Squat
• Front Squat
• OverHead Squat
• Standing Overhead Press
• Bench Press
• Push Press
• Weighted Pullup
• Turkish GetUp
• Thruster
• Clean / Power Clean
• Snatch / Power Snatch

Notice a trend among these above listed movements. Each of them can be safely executed for maximal loads. My challenge to you is this: Do YOU practice movements at maximal loads? or merely for high numbers of repetitions?

What strength training IS NOT: Strength training is not any sort of weighted resistance training. Just because you are using barbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, sandbags, or dumbbells (BB, KB, MB, SB, DB) doesn't necessarily mean you are "strength training." The load being used, as well the number of repetitions, might actually be stamina or cardio-respiratory endurance training!! Beginners might experience SOME increases in strength, but any increases will be marginal and severely limited.

Easy test to see if you are doing strength training: Can you lift the load/weight for that particular movement more than five times in a single set? The further (higher) the number of reps is from ONE, the greater the chance you are NOT causing your body to become stronger. Once an athlete gets past FIVE reps, other aspects of physical fitness are being groomed. NOT strength. I'm not saying that more than five repetitions is bad. I'm saying that the strength component is longer being stressed.

Strength training is NOT body building either. While muscles do get bigger (a nice by-product), it is not the goal. The goal is to add weight to the maximal and near-maximal lifts.

What strength training IS: Strength training uses heavy loads, low repetition numbers, and plenty of recovery time between sets. Some of the notations during strength-building formats might look like:

• 5x5
• 5x3
• 7x1.

What this means is, in the case of 5x3, the athlete does five sets of three repetitions for a movement. Let's say the movement for the day is BACK SQUAT. Now since the athlete in this case study is a squared-away journal-writer, he has maintained a diary of his workouts. He flips back in his journal (or logs onto an online record-keeper like beyondthewhiteboard.com) to check what his previous loads were for "5x3 back squats." He might see that the last time he did 5x3 back squats, he succeeded with 245x3, 255x3, 275x3, 285x3, and got only 295x2 in the last set. For his current workout, the athlete might warmup, then begin his sets with 275x3 (midway in his last performance), gradually increasing load each set. This athlete is optimistic enough to not only strive for 295x3, but even 305x3 or higher!!

The recovery or rest that this athlete takes between sets is considerable. Probably longer than one minute, or two, or three. This is hard for some new CrossFitters to do...as they are sometimes misled into believing CF is all about insanely intense MetCon workouts. The recovery periods of strength training allows the body to work in a certain short-duration metabolic pathway, consistent with lifting maximal or near-maximal loads.

How personal records (PRs) are kept and recorded for strength training: I document my PRs in my journal. The data I keep is the loads for sets of five, three, and one rep(s). They are abbreviated as 5RM, 3RM, and 1RM, for Repetition Maximum. It's natural that an athlete's 1RM is higher than the 3RM, which is higher than the 5RM. I find it important to keep track of this data. Many of my current workouts (through CF Phoenix) ask that the athlete use certain percentages of a near-maximal load. For example, a workout might ask one to use "85% 1RM" for a certain number of reps. With accurately recorded data, that load will be easy to calculate.

I am in the midst of adding a special form to my journal. I am documenting each of the above listed movements in rows, and 1/3/5 RM in columns on a table format. The boxes on the table will be large enough for me to list the load, and the date of the PR. As an example, yesterday's workout produced a PR for 3RM power clean @ 255#. I would scribe in the box at the intersection of the "Power Clean" row and "3RM" column, and log the "255 (08-19-10)" under the "245 (06-17-10)" which was my previous PR from two months ago. This new table format will allow me to better locate my 1/3/5 RMs before strength workouts. It will be much more efficient than flipping through my steno pad for historical performances (Hit me up if you'd like to use my form. I'm making it on Microsoft Word).

When an athlete does specific strength-building workouts, his or her ability to perform work increases. It's a missing piece in many endurance athletes' programs, and sometimes dreaded day for lanky and lean MetCon junkies. Please don't confuse resistance training or weight lifting with Strength training. Increase the weight. Decrease the repetition numbers. Find some 1/3/5 RM data to populate your journal. Then keep hitting new personal records as you get stronger!

Next foreseeable rant: Raw Strength versus Relative Strength. Does your body size and body weight factor into this equation?

READ: "Six Reasons for a Strength/Skill Bias"

READ: "Six Reasons for a Strength/Skill Bias" by Mark Reinke, founder, TriCities CrossFit (St Charles, IL).

Mark's gym (at his old location) was the first CrossFit affiliate gym I visited. That was back in February of 2008. His programming philosophy has matured into a two-phase daily workout - Strength/Skill followed by Conditioning. This methodology has been really catching on in the CF community. If you are looking for a Strength/Skill Bias program, scroll through the TCCF WODs and see if it tickles you.

MSU Programming - Part 3 - Strength, Power, Stamina

For all parts of this series of posts, click here.

In part two, I discussed the variety of movement patterns. In this part, I discuss the variety of loads and repetition schemes. Variety does not equal random. However, variety does equate to diversity. There seems to be some difference in opinion when it comes to how one should select weight or load for a particular movement. What follows in my case for a wide spectrum of loads and repetition schemes.

I picked the above photo because of the dumbbell rack. It contains DB pairs from 5# to 80# and KBs from 15# to 75#. Life is full of difficult choices. It looks as if the man in the photo is staring at the rack trying to decide what weight to use....

Strength, Power, and Stamina are all related to the body's ability to do work. Here's some very basic (and bastardized) definitions:

• Strength = the ability to complete a task.
• Power = the ability to complete a task quickly.
• Stamina = the ability to keep completing a task, over and over again.

Yes, very basic definitions indeed. So what is more important for general health? Where should training time be focused? How do you increase abilities in each "domain?"

First and foremost, I put "domain" in quotation marks because there are not clear delineations between the three physical components of Strength, Power, and Stamina. They really are inter-related. If anyone knew exactly how, s/he would be the greatest conditioning coach of all time. Even among so-called subject matter experts (SMEs) there is great debate....different strategies to build abilities and performance, conflicting priorities, and ego clashes.

Strength = Strong. For example, one of our guys just deadlifted 585# (at about 210# bw). There is no time or speed component to this. Can the workload be completed at all? Yes or no. Pure strength can be measured in an athlete's 1RM or 3Rm for a particular lift or movement. Basically, at what load can the athlete no longer complete the task? Athletes who participate in 7x1 training will get strong! They continuously hit higher limits of ability.

Power = Fast. Power is a highly measurable piece of data. It factors in distances, times, and weights. (Click here for the posts on my Power Study.) So, if two men can both deadlift 585#, the one who does it faster is more powerful. But this also equates to sub-maximal lifts and movements. Let's say an arbitrary load of 275# was chosen during a competition. The lifter who could rip out 40 reps the quickest is the more powerful. Or the lifter who tallied the most reps during a 60-second time limit is the more powerful. As weight goes up, speed generally decreases. Somewhere in the middle, there is a "sweet spot" that maximizes power output...high enough weight at a fast enough pace. What about a shot putter? Throws, jumps, and plyometrics build powerful athletes.

Stamina = Durability. The lines begin to blur. A college football player I know did a back squat test at his gym: Back squat 225# as many times as possible, without racking the bar. He scored 61 repetitions. Holy crap! That is stamina. But it also has components of being strong and also powerful. Let's change the rules of this test. What if the challenge used 135# instead? Would a more durable athlete have beaten him? Or if the test used 365#, would an athlete with more pure strength beat him? What if it was an air squat contest? Same movement pattern for all variations. But likely different results.

Using the Front-Squat-Push-Press exercise as an example. The thruster or wallball movement patterns are fairly identical. But depending on weights/loads, height of target, and repetition schemes/numbers/formats, the workouts can cause totally different adaptations in the body's functioning. Here are a couple of workout sessions or tests that implement thrusters or wallballs:

• (a) CrossFit KAREN workout: 150 wallballs, as fast as possible. Use a 20#MB and hit a 10-ft target.
• (b) Thruster timer: Do one 135# thruster the first minute, two the second minute, until you fail to complete the number of reps in that minute.
• (c) 5x3 Thrusters: Do five sets of three reps, with adequate rest between sets. Work up to a heavy 3RM load.
• (d) Alternate maximum 75# thrusters in 30-sec and rest for 30-sec, for 5 minutes.
• (e) Maximum height wallball toss with 12#MB. One rep. Score equals height.

Above are five randomly selected challenges or workouts. Each tests different components of Strength, Power, and Stamina IN THE SAME MOVEMENT PATTERN. Option C clearly builds and tests pure strength. Option A clearly tests stamina, but power can also be calculated. Option E clearly tests for power. Options B and D are up for grabs. Has anyone ever heard of "strength endurance?" Tom G throws that term around a lot. I like it. It refers to a balance.... it's lifting moderately heavy weight for a long duration or lots of reps.

General Physical Preparedness models must incorporate many loads and weights to be considered truly hybrid programs. For those who have participated in PWO#2, you probably used a relatively light KB...one you could do many repetitions with. One downside to PWO#2 was that it did not contain pure strength-building strategies. It did wonders for my stamina, but did not increase my abilities to lift maximal loads. Conversely, other workout programs might rely too heavily on pure strength methods. They might use a lot of 5x5, 5x3, 3-3-3-1-1, or 7x1 programming. The programs develop huge abilities in pure strength, but lack in stamina or power components.

So is the answer for a hybridization model to select above Options B and D because they balance the three components? No. The answer is all of them. And more. Well-rounded programs plan for a fight on all three fronts. Some strength-building, some tests for power, and some gut-checks for stamina. But spend extra quality time where you need it most.

How to put them all together? You got me. Periodization? Variety cookie-cutter program such as CrossFit? Contrast training? (each link is to an article that I had previously posted. Yes, read them again in this context!) I don't believe there to be one right answer. We all bring a different body to the testing grounds, and we each adapt differently to stimulus. What I do believe is that any GPP program must address each aspect of Strength, Power, and Stamina to be effective and efficient at building healthy, fit people.

So is selecting the proper weight really all that important? I can make cases for both yes and no. And now after reading this rant, I hope you can too. Have both cases ready for the next time we meet up.

Exercise of the Week: "CrossFit Total"

The CrossFit Total (CFT) is a scored workout. But is different than most "typical" ones. The CFT is explained in this CrossFit Journal entry. Basically, the CFT score is the sum of pounds lifted for maximum effort (1 rep) at:

• Standing shoulder press
  
• Back squat
  
• Deadlift

This is a true test of pure "old school" barbell strength. There is no time limit. There is no stopwatch. There is no added point value for completing any lift any faster. Just get the weight up. This is in contrast to many of the popular CrossFit workouts, such as the MetCons. While much of CrossFit is based on constantly varied, functional movements done at high intensity....the CFT is compromised of functional movements done at maximum ability in weight.

Frequently the smaller statured people fare much poorer at the CFT than their larger counterparts. These same smaller statured people often roll over the larger ones during gymnastics circuits. For example, a 160# male with 20+ rounds of CINDY, might only manage to total out at 750#, where a clydesdale at 240# might only get 15+ rounds of CINDY but hit a 1000# CFT. The most fit find themselves as a blend of both worlds.

The strength aspect of CrossFit gets overlooked many times. If you have been eying up CrossFit, do NOT ignore the "one repetition maximum" component. The MetCon WOs are somewhat of a staple in the realm of anaerobic capacity and work output, but not at the cost of pure strength.

Personal note: I did the CFT last Monday. It was my first attempt ever at it. I totaled out at 925. I scored the following: a 190# press, a 335# squat, and a 400# deadlift.