Strength is one of the most important qualities for performance, resilience, and longevity.
Strength training improves bone density, connective tissue resilience, muscle density and size, and neuromuscular efficiency.
It can also be trained and progressed continually, with improvements possible even late in life.
On the mat, strength provides a host of benefits that anyone who rolls already knows of. But it also improves durability and reduces the chance of injury.
The most common way to build strength is with resistance training, where muscles contract to move external loads.
While this method is very effective at strength building, it comes with risks of injury, as all training does.
Today’s article explores effective methods of building strength that lower the risks associated with traditional weightlifting, especially barbell lifting.
The following methods are also ranked from lowest risk with highest potential for return to highest risk.
1. Isometric Training
Isometric exercise, which involves creating force against an unmoving object, has been shown to produce equal and even better strength results when compared to dynamic weightlifting.
Isometric training improves the ability to recruit your muscles to generate force, aka your neuromuscular efficiency. In turn, you produce a better connection between your brain and your muscles, as well as improving the force your muscles can generate, aka, strength.
Isometrics also improve bone density, as your body doesn’t care where or how the force is produced, meaning by external load or internal tension. The result is the same – stronger, denser, and more resilient bones.
Isometrics also have a healing and strengthening effect on ligaments, making them denser and more resilient.
They also nearly eliminate the risks of dynamic exercise, as they require no mechanical movement.
This is a must-do strength training method for all athletes and grapplers, but particularly older athletes training for longevity.
2. Calisthenics Training
Calisthenics or bodyweight training is extremely effective for building strength, as it uses leverage to encourage high levels of muscular tension to manipulate one’s own body.
The ability to generate high levels of tension means higher force production or strength.
Advanced calisthenics practitioners are some of the strongest pound-for-pound athletes in the world, as they’ve mastered the practice of tension generation and control.
Calisthenics training can also be regressed to the basic squat, push, and pull exercises, while also eliminating the risks of training with external loads.
Calisthenics also pair well with isometrics, as well as super slow training, which builds strength through time under tension.
This is another excellent option for aging bodies looking to build strength while minimizing risks.
3. Rotational Strength Training
Some of the issue that comes with traditional weightlifting is that it’s primary exercises are done in the sagittal plane. Producing high levels of neuromuscular force repeatedly in linear patterns like squats, deadlifts, and presses trains your nervous system to prioritize these movements.
Life, athletics, and grappling, however, happens in three dimensions, with twisting, turning, and rotating not only important, but primary movements.
Rotational strength training improves your ability to generate and tolerate forces in the transverse plane, where life and sport happens.
As a result, your joints, ligaments, muscles, and fascia become more resilient in three dimensions.
This resilience lowers your overall risk of injury while also improving your strength in the traditional lifts.
There are many ways to train rotational strength, including kettlebells and barbells, but heavy clubs are the best tool for the job, and can be advanced for years with heavier loads and more advanced movements.
4. Better Load Placement
You don’t need to throw out weight training altogether as you age, and you shouldn’t. Being able to manipulate external loads is an important necessity of life.
And jiu-jitsu and grappling is the art of manipulating bodies. You need to move weight.
Fortunately, there are ways to minimize the risks associated with weightlifting by altering the placement of the load.
A favorite, and highly effective, way to strength training with barbells and heavy weights is Landmine Training.
By placing the load in front of you on a pivot point that can move in nearly all directions, you can take the compression off of your axis as with back squats and deadlifts.
Landmine Training also puts you into a much more athletic position, emphasizing “forward intent.”
Landmine squats, cleans, jerks, and single leg lunges/hinges are excellent strength building options that put the load in a safer position without sacrificing benefits.
You can also train heavy rotational strength with coiling core landmine exercises.
5. Equipment Selection
The final way to build strength with less risk is with smart equipment selection. This is the most costly of the options, as it requires the purchase of specific equipment or access to a fully stocked gym.
Most of the previous options are much better if minimalism and time-efficiency are important to you.
However, safety bars for squats, Swiss bars for pressing, neutral grips for pulling, and trap bars for deadlifting are all smart options that offer more joint-friendly strength training.
Smith Machines, cables, Hammer Strength, and traditional weight machines are other options that reduce some of the variables that can increase the risk of injury.
If these tools are available to you, they’re excellent for building strength with external loads.
Final Thoughts
Strength should be a primary quality you build your entire life.
But strength training doesn’t have to come with high risks of injury.
Any of the options above will elicit the responses you’re aiming for, including benefits to muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, and joints.
Aim for strength training 2-4x per week, with as little as once per week for maintenance.
You now have options to strength train smarter for the rest of you life.
WHENEVER YOU’RE READY, THERE ARE 3 WAYS I CAN HELP YOU:
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