STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING

Why do strength and conditioning training?

There’s a saying in fitness: “Strength has no side effects.”Or, more simply, it’s better to be stronger. Full stop. Regardless of what sport you play or don’t. And no matter what your lifestyle, your age or gender, how you make your living and what you do in your spare time. Whoever you are and whatever you do, a strong, functional body is more capable, healthier, more resistant to illness and injury, better at doing the things we need and want it to do safely and effectively, and just all-round more useful and beneficial.

Is strength and conditioning training right for me?

It is a great way to help your body improve its functional performance through your daily life – enabling it to move better, with more control, more power, and with less effort.

If you play sports, at whatever level, improved strength and better conditioning will help you perform better on the pitch (or track, court, road etc.), and ensures you’re more able to resist the impact your sport places on your joints, bones and muscles, reducing the chances and severity of injury.

If you’re returning from injury or surgery, strength and conditioning work is the natural progression from rehabilitation. That way, you’re ensuring that you not only recover from the effects of the injury and resolve the underlying cause, but you progress past the position where you were injured and continue the upward trajectory to reduce the risk of future recurrence.

What to expect from strength & conditioning session?

Yes, weightlifting is often an integral part of a strength and conditioning programme, but it’s just one of many tools that can be used (along with mobility work, plyometrics, core-stability, and endurance training amongst others) to improve quality of movement, performance and overall health.

Every S&C programme is unique, starting with an in-depth assessment of where you are now – including strength, mobility, body composition, injury history, diet and lifestyle. I’ll help you create meaningful and achievable goals, and we’ll create a plan that will enable you to achieve them.

You’ll progress at the pace that’s right for you – in line with your needs and the demands and pressures of your life - and we’ll help you develop strength, power and speed effectively and safely over the coming weeks and months.?

Don’t think this is just about lifting heavy weights. Strength and conditioning is an approach, not a set of exercises.

Yes, weightlifting is often an integral part of a strength and conditioning programme, but it’s just one of many tools that can be used (along with mobility work, plyometrics, core-stability, and endurance training amongst others) to improve quality of movement, performance and overall health.

Every S&C programme is unique, starting with an in-depth assessment of where you are now – including strength, mobility, body composition, injury history, diet and lifestyle. I’ll help you create meaningful and achievable goals, and we’ll create a plan that will enable you to achieve them.

You’ll progress at the pace that’s right for you – in line with your needs and the demands and pressures of your life - and we’ll help you develop strength, power and speed effectively and safely over the coming weeks and months.

The results and benefits of Strength & Conditioning

Increased strength and fitness

Self-evident perhaps, but an important benefit all the same.

Muscle strength is crucial for making it easier to do the things we need to do on a day-to-day basis – whether that’s a weekly game of rugby or lifting a sleeping toddler out of a car seat.

And as we naturally tend to lose muscle mass by up to 5% a year from the age of 30 or so, maintaining it is an essential part of a healthy active lifestyle.

Improved Body Composition and Weight Management

Strength and conditioning will help you build lean muscle, and because increased muscle also increases your resting metabolism, you’ll burn more calories per day (even when you’re not exercising), helping reduce body fat.

Stronger Bones

Bone mass and density tends to decrease with age. But numerous studies have shown that strength training doesn’t just increase muscle strength.

It can also play a role in slowing bone loss, helping prevent osteoporosis and bone fractures. It can even make bones stronger and denser - essential for anyone looking to remain strong, healthy and more active for longer.

Injury Prevention And Recovery

A properly-designed strength and conditioning programme will strengthen muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints. It will also improve mobility, flexibility, proprioception and balance, all helping make the body more resilient and resistant to injury.

It will also improve posture, not only benefiting many of the body’s functions, including the respiratory system and circulation, but it also helps counter the effects of today’s sedentary lifestyles, reducing the risk of musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction that affects over 80% of UK adults.

However, no matter how well-prepared we are, injury is sometime unavoidable. Again, evidence shows that by keeping the body strong overall, recovery is frequently better and faster.

Better General Health

The concept of exercise and medicine is becoming ever more widely understood and accepted.

The combination of strength training, HIIT training, plyometrics and cardio conditioning that characterise strength and conditioning programmes increases cardiovascular function as well as muscular, skeletal and mental health.

It has also been shown to help manage the symptoms of many chronic diseases, including diabetes and arthritis amongst others. And by generating endorphins – nature’s ‘happiness hormone’ - it also improves mood and helps raise self-esteem.

General questions

  • Everyone is different – with different strengths, weakness, limb lengths, and training history. As such, you’ll never come to us and just be expected to lift big weights just because other people do. Instead, we’ll carefully assess you and your abilities, then begin strength training in a safe and considered way.

    If you’re interested in how strength training and muscle gain can differ from person to person, we’ve talked to our personal trainers in London and explored this question in more detail on our blog: Should You Be Lifting Heavy Weights?

  • Yes, we can. Grip strength is a factor that plays a huge role – both in personal training sessions and in everyday life. Our coaches will help identify if your grip strength could use some work, the programme the kinds of exercises that will help to boost that strength.

    If you’d like to learn more about grip strength, we’ve created a dedicated blog on the subject: Why is Grip Strength Important?

  • We can help you work towards any goal you have in mind – so yes, training to increase muscle size or ‘tone up’ is no problem and an area we have a lot of experience in.

    We’ve created a blog that looks at hypertrophy and strength training – comparing and contrasting the two: What Does Hypertrophy of Muscles Mean?

  • Almost certainly, yes. Most personal trainers will explain that as you exercise and get stronger, you’ll usually find that your levels of energy, focus, and general feeling of well-being increase too.  It makes sense of course, the more your body is conditioned for performance, the more likely you are to get ultimate performance from your brain too!

    Of course, exercise isn’t the answer to all mental health conditions, but even if you require medical support or medication, exercise is almost always going to be a helpful tool.

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  • If weight loss is one of your goals, muscle and strength building workouts are an important part of how you’ll get there. Your body requires more energy to maintain muscle than it does fat – so as your strength grows, so will the amount of calories that you naturally burn as you go about your day. The most striking body transformations always begin with strength training.

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  • Absolutely! No matter what you goal or current level of fitness, improving your strength is always going to offer benefits. The personal trainers at Trang fitness will be able to work with you and support you even if you’ve never stepped foot in gym before.

    In fact, we’ve created a blog post that looks at this subject in more depth: Strength Training for Beginners.

  • Yes, it definitely can. Runners will often avoid strength training fearing that it will make them bulky and reduce their performance.

    This is often a misconception though. A well-rounded program for runners should include some strength training – especially because it helps with injury prevention and coordination.

    Take a more detailed look at how it could work for you in our blog: Adding Strength Training to a Runner’s Workout Plan.