You're Probably Thinking About Exercise All Wrong.
When most people picture a gym workout, the same image typically comes to mind.
Someone sitting at a machine, headphones in, doing a set of an exercise. Then sitting there and resting. Doing another set. Then repeat. Or maybe they finish one exercise and jump over to another machine and do a different exercise. Rest and repeat.
This type of training, muscle by muscle, machine by machine, has been the picture of fitness for a long time. This method was typically used by body builders and is effective for developing specific muscles.
But for most, they are more interested in feeling great, staying injury-free, moving better, and enjoying their lives into any age. Building muscle is great, but focusing on a muscle only approach like many are used to, misses out on some of the biggest benefits of training.
At San Diego Premier Training, we approach exercise completely differently. Once you understand the method behind what we do, I promise you won’t look at exercise the same way again.
The Program With the Traditional Approach.
The traditional style of muscle based training was designed with the specific goal to isolate muscles, fatigue them with training, and make them grow.
This method does work. But it is missing out on some really important areas that you can improve on with a few simple changes.
Some of the missing elements to traditional training include:
- The way your brain and body communicate during movement.
- Your balance and small stabilizer muscles that protect your joints.
- Strengthening the connective tissue like tendons, ligaments, and fascia.
- Your ability to move through a full, functional range of motion.
- Improving the movement patterns that you use in everyday life.
- Incorporating all of the ability of muscles including power, strength, and endurance.
Much of traditional training focuses on what you look like like on the outside only. It often does this at the expense of your function and ability. There is nothing wrong with wanted to look better, and exercise can be a great part to assist with that. But if that becomes the focal point of training it might be leading you down the wrong path.
We see it often when exercise turns into something that you do purely for the gym and no carry over into benefiting your evey day life. Most have the goal of building a more capable, resilient, and functional body that requires a different approach.
What Real Training Should Look Like.
At SDPT, we design every workout to train the body as a complete, integrated system. Not just a group of muscles. Not just cardio. Not just flexibility. We consider all of it working together. We are not married to a specific style of training. We find things that work and use them. This is why we may use yoga moves, Pilates exercises, or other training styles. If it works it works.
Building strength means many things, but essentially we are trying to strengthen all aspects of the body and that is not just limited to muscles. Here are some of the components we consider and develop with every client, every session:
🧠 1. The Brain-Body Connection (Neuromuscular Training)
Your brain is pretty important. Every movement you make is started in the brain. Your nervous system sends a signal and your muscle respond to move the body. The quality of that communication, AND the feedback to the brain determines how efficient, safely, and powerfully you move.
The brain does not just tell your muscles to move though. It coordinates groups of muscles to move in the right sequence and right timing to create efficient movement. This is displayed often in movement patterns. We can’t isolate muscles in human movement. They work together to move your body, yet many traditional exercises work to isolate single muscles.
For example, a leg extension machine will train your quads and that is it. But a squat would train your quads, glutes, hamstrings, and core plus it would train the coordination of all of the muscles and joints working together.
Instead, focus on training movement patterns like squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, and rotating. The better we get at these types of movements, the better our bodies can function with daily tasks. This is neuromuscular efficiency. It should be the foundation of your training. Your brain getting better and movement and your body providing feedback for your brain to learn and grow from.
⚖️ 2. Balance & Stability
Balance is obviously something that is concerning for many individuals as they get older, but balance training is something that everyone should do.
Balance is a skill that can be developed just like strength. Many believe that they have bad balance, but when you regularly work on it, you will see improvements.
Every time you walk on an uneven surface, step off a curb, walk upstairs, or change directions, your balance system is at work. When it is not trained, that’s when we see trips, twisted ankles, or even falls.
We always include single leg work and other exercises that challenge your proprioceptive system. This system is how your joints and muscles tell your brain where they are and what is going on.
🏃 3. Mobility & Flexibility
Restricted range of motion at a joint is one of the most common reasons people get hurt during exercise and daily activity. When a joint can’t move through its full range of motion, the body compensates. This means that we start moving other areas of the body in ways it may not have been intended to. This often leads to pain at other areas of the body seemingly unrelated to the restricted area.
Often with restricted mobility, we see joints in suboptimal positions. Joints work best when they are aligned properly. This allows soft tissue like tendons and ligaments to help support the joint. When tightness leads to poor joint position, these soft tissue structures take on excessive force and start to wear down.
Every workout should include a variety of mobility exercises from foam rolling or other soft tissue work, to stretching. This helps improve joint position and improve the quality of muscle tissue so it can work better.
🏗️ 4. Core Control
Most people think of the core as a six pack. It’s not. The muscles that you see create a six pack are one of many core muscles, but they aren’t the whole story.
Your core is a 360 degree system of stabilizing muscles that surround your spine and pelvis. It’s primary job isn’t to look good at the beach. It’s to protect your spine and stabilize it in all directions. It also helps connect your upper and lower body by transferring energy properly.
A strong, functional core means your spine stays stable while your arms and legs are moving or while a force is being placed on the body. It is means you can control forces moving through your body, such as in picking up a heavy box. A weak core means, those muscles cannot properly stabilize and create energy “leaks” in the spine by allowing unnecessary movements. This usually leads to pain and injury.
It is important to train the core the way it actually works. You do this by trying to resist motion in different planes. So instead of doing crunches you place a stress on the spine and use your core to prevent movement from happening. Just image a plank exercise. You get into a place position and gravity is trying to pull your spine down towards the floor. But when your core is engaged properly, it remains in the plank position, resisting those forces.
⚡ 5. Power
Power is the ability to produce force quickly. We typically think of this with athletes, but this is the same things as catching yourself when you trip or reacting fast to something.
You may not be an athlete, but this is still a crucial part of training for all individuals. Power is one of the first physical qualities we lose as we age. Strength declines gradually and power declines much faster. This is a major reason why older adults become more susceptible to falls.
In order to move quickly you need to engage specific muscle fibers in your muscles. These are called fast twitch muscle fibers. They are great for moving quick and lifting heavy objects. You typically don’t use these regularly in every day life. This is why we need to specifically include exercises that use them in your training. If you don’t use them your body will start to get rid of them.
We incorporate power exercises for all clients. The key is making sure they are joint friendly and skill appropriate. This could range from jumping on boxes, sprinting, to throwing medicine balls.
Power training keeps the neuromuscular system young and reactive.
💪 6. Strength
Yes — strength is absolutely in the program. Building muscular strength through progressive resistance training is one of the most evidence-backed things you can do for your body, at any age. It improves metabolic health, bone density, joint stability, hormonal function, and quality of life.
But the difference at SDPT is that we build strength through multi-joint, functional movements — squats, deadlifts, lunges, rows, presses — that develop real-world capability, not just bigger muscles on a machine.
First you must learn how to do the movements properly. Then we can start to challenge the body with more intensity to build strength. Not all strength exercises are appropriate for everyone, so it is important to understand your specific movement restrictions or compensations.
🫀 7. Cardiovascular Endurance & Conditioning
Not only are strong and powerful muscles important, but we need a strong heart to keep everything going.
There are a lot of research studies showing the connection between cardiovascular endurance and brain function, longevity, and overall quality of life.
This is something you should be doing most days of the week, but since we know things get in the way and may need more accountability, we build it into our training system to make sure you are getting some conditioning every workout.
The goal of your cardio program should be to mix up the intensities. There are benefits to both high and low intensity exercise, so it is important that you include both in your routine.
How It All Comes Together
Each client we see may have some strengths and weaknesses in these different areas. This is why we can evaluate each client to see what types of training their program can use.
All individuals will go through all of these different components but we can vary the amounts of each based on each clients situation and goals.
When you focus on all of these factors versus just muscle training, you can just feel the difference it makes. You will see noticeable changes in your ever day life.
Every training program should be efficient and smart. I often joke, that this is not rocket science, but it is science. The human body is complex, and it take a variety of training methods to put together a complete training program.
We would love to show you what a complete training program looks like for you.
Your first session is on us. Click here to schedule it and see the difference.