Establishing Your Priorities With 8-Week Strength

Establishing Your Priorities With 8-Week Strength
Written by Hunter Britt

If you want to get stronger, do less.

Often, athletes ask their bodies to bring their abilities up to their maximum potential, in all areas, all at once. 

That is not always the best approach to achieve your goals. 

Training for a Strength Priority

Specialization Periods 

Sometimes, you want to…SPECIALIZE!

This doesn’t mean spend all year only specializing on one or two things…but consider it if there are one or two areas in your training that need significant gains.

Take the time to find out what you want to accomplish, when you want to accomplish it and then the plan for how you will do it.

If you want to get stronger, focus on your strength. If you want to run faster, focus on your running.

This does not mean automatically just add more of that into what you are already doing.

Training Volume

Adding volume to your training could be detrimental to all of your goals. So take the time to look at the training you’re doing and overall volume. If you need help determining the volume you can handle for where you are today, talk to a coach! More often than not, we see athletes add to their training to get better in a certain area, but then burn out or see no gains.    Consider the volume you are doing and what you are doing may actually be too much. 

Many athletes want to test or challenge the idea of overtraining, thinking they are the exception to the rule because they have energy to go into the gym and they aren’t crashing or having other signs of it. Those might be the same athletes who only see a new PR when it is the second Friday of the month on a day with a full moon. Maybe you know this athlete or maybe you are the athlete.

Prioritizing Your Training

The answer may be that you actually should be doing less.

Doing more seems like the right thing because we want to work hard to reach our goals, but your body needs time to adequately recover before your next session so it can build and improve. If we are constantly breaking down and never repairing then that just means nothing is being built. 

The majority of the athletes I have the conversation with are scared to fall behind if they focus on strength only for a period of time. Athletes that need to also be conditioned and do gymnastics movements and perform a handstand walk well. This doesn’t mean to take that out completely, but to prioritize your time and the majority of the training you are doing to the specific goals that you have.

Invictus 8-Week Strength Program

And that’s what we do in 8-Week Strength. We take the 8 weeks to prioritize your strength so you can build your absolute strength. That does not mean that we have to remove ALL of your other training. But it may mean that we reduce some of your current training to allow your body the time to adapt and build strength. If you sign up for 8-Week Strength, I will help you find a volume that will allow you to continue progressing towards your strength and training goals. The new cycle starts September 12! If you’re interested, click here to learn more about the program.