Having a proper strength and conditioning program is essential for achieving long-term fitness goals and optimal performance. While it may be tempting to pick a random workout your favorite shirtless influencer posts, this random approach will not likely yield the best results.

Training vs. Working Out

Firstly, it's important to make the distinction between "training" and "working out". Working out typically involves going to the gym, performing a few exercises, and then leaving. It's not often considered with a long-term plan, structured progression, or careful consideration of individual goals and needs. We would consider workouts to be “single serving”. You know, the kind of workouts you expect when you’re on vacation and drop into a gym. It doesn’t really matter what you do, you just want to get hot and sweaty to negate the bad decisions you’ve made on your trip. Shame on you.

Training, on the other hand, is a more purposeful approach to exercise with the goal of improving specific aspects of fitness, performance, or overall health. It involves following a well-structured program that takes into account individual factors like current fitness level, injury history, and goals. If you drop into a training facility that actually runs a program, you may be underwhelmed when you leave. You could have come on an “active recovery” type day. You may leave there thinking “wow that was easy”, good that was the intended benefit. They clients and athletes that have come there through out the week are beat; that type of workout is meant to promote recovery, not erase your poor decisions. Either way, it should be obvious that their workouts don’t cater to the microwave society.

Benefits of a Proper Strength and Conditioning Program

So, why exactly is a proper strength and conditioning program so important? Here are a few key reasons:

1. Progression and Goal-Setting: An effective program is designed to help you progress over time, gradually increasing the difficulty and intensity of the exercises. This not only helps you avoid plateaus but also aids in goal-setting. This is called Progressive Overload, for more on that concept, click this sentence. By working towards specific goals, you can stay motivated, track progress, and see meaningful results. Having an educated coach there by your side ensuring proper exercise technique and real time progression/regression is just icing on the cake!

2. Injury Prevention: Proper strength and conditioning programs also incorporate exercises that help build strength and flexibility while minimizing the risk of injury. Randomly choosing exercises without proper guidance and assessment can lead to imbalances and injury over time. Frankly, if give the choice to do whatever you wanted in the gym; without proper guidance, you’d always pick the things you’re really good at. Without any context, or even an understanding of the intended benefit you may even pick random things you saw on the internet. Again, having a coach there to ensure you’re ready for the exercise and it’s actually an appropriate exercise for you to do is critical. You should leave the gym feeling better than when you walked in. The next few days you shouldn’t be so sore you can’t get on the toilet. You should be a little sore, you know, like you actually did something.

3. Individualization: A well-designed program takes into account individual factors like current fitness level, injury history, and goals. This means that each person's program is tailored to their specific needs, ensuring better results and minimizing the risk of injury. In any one of our Total Fitness or Sports Performance session it’s incredibly common to athletes/clients doing variations of the same “root” exercise. We adjust as needed and choose the best variation for that client or athlete! It's a personalized experience in a group setting.

4. Professional Guidance: A proper strength and conditioning program is typically designed by a qualified fitness professional with experience and knowledge in the field. This means that you can have confidence that the program will lead to meaningful results and avoid wasting time and energy on ineffective exercises. To be Frank, it's incredibly easy to make somebody tired, hot and sweaty; but that's an awful way to measure the meaningfulness of a workout.

To wrap this thing up, while picking random workouts off social media may be tempting. Taking a structured, purposeful approach to fitness is essential for achieving long-term results and minimizing the risk of injury. A proper strength and conditioning program takes into account individual needs, provides a structured progression, and is designed by a qualified professional who understands the nuances of fitness and exercise science. By investing in a proper program, you can achieve your goals much sooner than if you simply chose at random or even worse, program hopped.

For more information on our Total Fitness or Sports Performance Programs, click the links!