Movement Before Muscles

There's a tendency in the weight room for people to do a whole slew of accessory exercises before they even get around to being able to bench, squat, deadlift, or even pull-up properly. I was recently asked, "How do I build bigger lats?" and this guy, who is a good friend of mine (and is probably reading this embarassedly), probably doesn't hit the gym very often at all. Yet he's worried about an "imbalance," because he thinks he looks a little awkward. In the infamous words of Dave Tate, "Maybe you just don't know how to fuckin bench."

It took me a while to learn the lifts properly, and I'm still learning. I can squat ATG, but I noticed that I have a slight kyophotic stance in the bottom of the hole. Well... that sucks, but it can be fixed, right? Before I was ever able to notice the weaknesses in my bench, I had to learn how to bench. Before a person can build lats, they need to know how to pull-up.

Here's the big secret of the weight room: people need to learn MOVEMENT before they worry about their MUSCLES. And there are four major movements: Bench, squat, deadlift, and pull-up. Coach Mark Rippetoe believes that overhead press and the clean are in the "major 5" exercise list, but I don't entire agree. SOME kind of press is necessary... and we're in the USA, so it's going to be the bench. In Parkour, I believe in teaching movement before techniques (not many people agree with me here). If a person can't quadrupedal forward, backward, sideways, fast slow, jumping... then what chance are they going to have at moving properly in a vault? How are they going to know what I mean when I say, "You need to kip your hips up a bit better." So I bring them through a whole slew of bodyweight exercises, I make them play, run around, and just get used to their bodies. And you know what? It saves me a hell of a lot of trouble because they already understand the basic movements before I even begin to teach them anything specific.

The weight room is no different. The crazy thing is that when you focus on these primary, compound movements, your body will probably end up looking the way it needs to look without too many imbalances. The inclusion of accessory movements occurs when you notice a deficiency. I'll use myself as an example. After a good long while of training bench, with the incorporation of max effort and dynamic effort days, I began to notice a key weakness in this lift: both in max effort and ballistic bench, I could rocket the weight to lock-out fairly easily, but my biggest issue was getting off the chest. In a heavy weight, I would often need a spot in the bottom half of the lift (I could probably get it an inch or so off the chest before progress begins to stall). In a speed lift, I would be slow off the chest, and then lock out with quite a bit of explosiveness. So we could take this pretty easily and figure out where I'm strong and where I'm weak. The lock-out is mostly a product of the triceps, and the vast amount of dips and climb-ups from Parkour probably contributed to a fast and strong lock-out. Off the chest, however, is one of the few times even a powerlifting bench press is predominantly a chest exercise. So, in this instance, I want to do some accessories that hit the chest a bit more often so that I can get stronger at the bottom of the bench.

However, the key point is that I wouldn't be able to know where I'm weak in the bench without having experience with the bench in the first place. I needed to know the movement thoroughly before I focus on anything else. Do you think that I would need to give my chest extra training if I had a 95lb bench? Hell no! At that point, I need to work on the BENCH to make my bench go up.

"But Andy, I'm a bodybuilder! All I want to do is look good. I don't care about how much I lift!"

Well, the principle of mass gain is time under tension. You either increase the time or you increase the tension. If you can increase both, then all the better. What do you think will happen when you put 20lbs on your 8RM? Of course you're going to get bigger! Look, you can do these extra accessories all you want, but if you're a beginner, you're going to see incredible gains from the basic movements alone. You're going to look the way you should look and you can work on the other stuff later. If you're skinny, or chubby, then work on the MOVEMENTS first. Don't worry about looking "out of balance," because these movements will MAKE you balanced. First and foremost, get strong. Then worry about the rest.

So, please don't ask me how you can hit your lats better until you can pull-up 10 times with good form and once with at least 40lbs, or how to get your triceps or chest stronger until you can bench your bodyweight, or how to get "killer quads" (Rawr!) before you can squat 1.5x your bodyweight. Train movement before muscles.