Strength: The cure for what ails you. It’s a critical component in longevity and leading a healthy lifestyle. To many in the fitness industry, strength is our home base. After flexibility, strength is the thing on which we can build the rest of our goals, it is what helps us perform better in our daily lives, and it’s something that everyone needs.
In fitness, it’s very trendy nowadays to think of exercises as being “functional,” but what does that really mean? A lot of times, if you see someone doing a “functional” exercise in their training, it’ll usually consist of some type of awkward movement standing on a BOSU ball while trying to balance three different weight implements. They claim it’s “functional,” when in actuality, it’s more like a circus act. I have to ask: where is the actual function in an exercise like that? What are we trying to accomplish by adding in these silly, borderline dangerous movements? Taking a step back from just making an exercise difficult for the sake of ego and functionality will let you see the bigger picture of strength. When it comes down to it, most exercises and movements we perform in the gym aim to get our bodies stronger. That, to me, is true functionality. A stronger body is more able, and a more able body is more functional.
Taking a look at the animal kingdom, the pack leaders or alphas of the group are always the biggest and strongest. This is because these animals are the ones that can perform, provide, and set examples for the rest of the pack. If a weaker and less able individual were made to be in charge of the pack, how would hunts go over? If I were to take a guess, it would be: not that great. In our daily lives we fortunately don’t have to hunt and gather all our food but that does not mean we should stray away from having able, strong bodies. A lot of the injuries we see in daily living can be attributed to weaknesses that we have. Hurt your back gardening? Get your abs stronger. Knees ache after a round of golf? Get your leg strength up. Want to play with your grandchildren as you get older? Get your tush in the gym and lift some weights! Strength is a fantastic measure of health and well being and should be taken seriously. A study done on elderly individuals showed that poorer grip strength is directly associated with all-cause mortality (Gale et al, 2007). That must mean the founder of The Spot Athletics, JL Holdsworth, is immortal. With his vise-like grip he’s going to be a tough one to kill. Check out one of JL’s insane feats of grip strength: https://www.instagram.com/p/BxpSfBJg0ok/?igshd=1pngojf6mj553
Being strong is also crucial for sport. From a performance standpoint, the ones that make an impact in their sport are usually the ones that make an impact in the weight room. In almost every sport, there is some sort of sprinting component. The NFL combine, for example, uses the 40 yard dash as a major indicator of performance and millions of dollars are on the line for a few tenths of a second difference in sprint times on this particular test. That means the faster athletes will be arguably better and get paid more. These athletes need to be faster than the ones they’re up against if they want to make it big. Since that’s the case, a study done on professional rugby players suggests that if you want to be able to sprint faster, you should be building your squat strength because increasing your squat strength is correlated with faster sprint times (Comfort et al, 2012).
The bottom line is that everyone should want to get stronger in some way, shape, or form. Being strong makes hard tasks easier, can cure pain and discomfort in daily living, and can literally increase your lifespan. Remember folks: in the end, it all comes down to strength.