5 Things Every Beginner Should Master
I start my beginner clients off a little differently than the way I see most coaches do it. There are certain things I like my clients and athletes to master in their first few weeks or months of training with me (depending on their training age and history) before we really hit the ground the running by using heavier weights.
This results in a period of training known as an “Introductory Block”, which is sometimes not what the client suspects. They often come to me wanting to improve their low bar squat or sumo deadlift, and may be taken aback when neither of these exercises appears in their first few weeks of training (again, depending on their training age and experience). Instead, I have a list of other movements I want them to become proficient in first, before they have earned the right to perform those exercises.
A lot of the time, the things holding people back from excelling at exercises like heavy squats and deadlifts can’t be solved simply by doing those exercises over and over again. Sure, repetition and practice are a HUGE part of mastering these lifts, but not before the prerequisites for performing the movements safely and correctly have been met.
Before you can walk, you have to learn to crawl. And before you can break any world records in the 100-meter sprint, you need to know how to walk. Here are the basic things I like to address before someone learns how to move heavy weights:
1. Mobility
This might seem boring or something that most trainers cringe at, but not assessing and addressing your own or your client’s potential mobility restrictions before putting them under load is just plain negligent.
I am not here to convince anyone that they need to be static stretching for 45 minutes before every session. There are many ways to define, assess, and improve mobility that are not limited to any particular modality. For example, two coaches are trying to assess ankle mobility. The first coach uses a half kneeling dorsiflexion test, the second watches a client perform walking lunges and notes what happens. Both coaches find the information they were seeking.
Long story short, if your client doesn’t have the ability to move into a certain a position without any load, don’t expect them to be able to do so under heavy exertion. The result is compensation patterns and increased risk of injury.
2. Unilateral Joint Stability
Stability is another factor that most people neglect to train entirely. Dr. Jordan Shallow defines stability as the ability of a muscle or joint to resist force, and believes it to be an entirely different adaptation than strength (the ability to produce force). Some joints that need to be especially stable are the hip, ankle, and shoulder. Some would also say the spine, but I will address this later.
I include the unilateral aspect here to point out that it is very important to ensure your client has sufficient stability on both sides of their body independently before you start loading heavily bilaterally. Think about it, if you have one stable shoulder and one very unstable shoulder, what is going to happen when you go to bench press? Can you fix that problem by doing more bench press? The answer, in my experience, is a firm no.
Another mentor of mine, Rusty Ruffcorn, a strength coach at the University of Nebraska, once told me that he had all of his incoming freshmen (who had a low training age) perform lunges for several weeks before they ever squatted with weight. While I am a huge fan of this approach for many populations, I understand that a lot of the people who come to me want to squat, and enjoy squatting. It is not in my best interest, nor is it necessary, to remove bilateral work entirely while unilateral stability is brought up—it’s an ongoing process after all. Instead, I introduce different bilateral variations that stress different things, which leads me to my next point:
3. Technique
This could easily be number one on the list. It should almost go without saying that good technique is an absolute, non-negotiable prerequisite for heavy loaded movement.
The competition lifts such as the bench press, squat (especially low bar squat), and deadlifting from the floor are all highly technical, and are designed to give the lifter the most advantageous leverage to lift the most weight possible. While it is important to practice these specific techniques for anyone looking to compete, for me there are several steps that must come first.
For each of the big lifts, I have a series of progressions that I take people through, like a checklist. For example, before you are allowed to pull off the floor in either stance, I need to know that you can hinge at the hips correctly without compromising the stability of your spine. Before you can lock your scapulae in place, arch your back, and bench press, I need to know that you can perform a proper pushup. Different coaches can have different progressions, but throwing a new lifter into a movement they aren’t ready for will be of benefit to no one.
4. Core Stability/Bracing
Technically yes, this still falls under the stability headline, but it is such a big issue for most people that it gets its own bullet point on my list. Lower back pain and injuries to the spine are incredibly common, both among lifters and in the general population, and billions of dollars are spent treating low back pain each year.
I choose to start teaching bracing (intra-abdominal pressure) and training core and spinal stability right away with beginners, and give it a higher emphasis than at any other point in their training. Simply put, if a person can’t create a good enough brace to protect their spine and maintain form during a certain progression from the point above they will not be progressing on to the next one yet, and they certainly won’t be maxing out any time soon.
This could easily take up a whole article in and of itself, and actually it has. You can click HERE to read all about my core training philosophy or you can watch it HERE or HERE.
5. Weight Room IQ/Good Habits
This one is a little bit more vague and hard to define, but another goal of this introductory period of weight training is to make a new client feel more in control, more comfortable in the weight room, and have built some good habits both inside and outside of the gym that will help them as they go forward into more intense training.
Simply being in the gym a few times a week with you is enough for a lot of people to get over their previous apprehensions about being there on their own, but you can also help this process along by making sure they know their way around, where everything is, and how to operate every piece of equipment they need for their program. It may sound silly but this even includes knowing how to load the proper weight onto a barbell and learning what the names for all the different exercises in their program are.
As far as building good habits goes, this includes everything from making sure your client is capable of keeping a dedicated log book of their progress to making sure they understand the importance of sleep and nutrition to their training. Like everything on this list, these can always be improved upon later, but starting to stress the importance of these things right away will help your client tremendously.
And that’s it! To reiterate, this is just how I choose to do things with new clients who have a lower training age. All of these things can be continue to be improved upon after the initial few weeks of training but these are when I give them the most attention. If you are looking for a good example program that hits all of these different qualities, look no further than the new Outlier 4-Week Beginner Program, which you can download and use for free.
Happy Lifting!
