Author: Jonathan Wong, Singapore Personal Trainer And Fitness Expert

Maximum Strength Training - Nothing Works Without It

You need to be strong. There is no other way around it. How much muscle you can build is very determined by how strong you are. How fast you can lose fat, also determined by what your maximum lifts are. How fast you run, how high you jump... yup all linked to how strong you are.

Every athlete or personal training client, for just about any goal, can do with more strength. This applies for both men and women.

When you are strong, you can work with more "density" i.e. more weight lifted per unit of time. That means more muscle and better ability to lose fat.

When you are strong, you can produce more total force, which when applied with the correct speed and skill, produce great athletic performance.

There is no point in doing plyometrics and "speed" training if all you are doing is learning to use a puny amount of strength quickly. This is a common mistake among many athletes that I see. They can't even squat light weights without good form, and yet they ask me what advanced polymeric drills they should be doing.

My answer: Squatting!

Recently I experienced this myself. I have always liked basketball and have always wanted to dunk a ball. But alas, genetics decided that I would only grow to 5'8" (173cm). Not quite Jordanesque stature... but what the heck, that's not going to stop me from trying.

I have been able to dunk small balls like tennis balls and softballs for a few years now.

But by recently building up my maximal strength in the squat and dead-lift exercises, my jumping has improved. Vertical leap has gone up over the last 2 years from 31 inches to 35.

Last week (Oct 2007) I managed to cleanly dunk a soccer ball. No problem at all. And the ease of the dunk surprised even myself as well. The only reason I can't dunk a basketball now is my smallish hands that can't grip it cleanly ugh another limitation. 

No excuses, get strong, and then we can work on the rest of the attributes that you want to develop!

Written For www.CoachJon.com Singapore Personal Trainer & Fitness Expert

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