Strength & Conditioning

‘It’s Elementary, my dear Watson’ when it comes to hitting the gym!

Charlotte Corrigan experienced the benefits of strength and conditioning with Personal Trainer, Doctor Watson. The good doctor was able to prescribe an outstanding regime specific to her needs. Find out more about the importance of strength and conditioning. Also, when it comes to strength and conditioning, Charlotte discovered that it is a ‘marathon and not a sprint’.

 Why is strength and conditioning important in so many sports?

There are two components to strength and conditioning. Even in endurance sports, it has shown that strength is really important and can improve endurance performance. This has been seen with long distance cyclists and we’ve also seen this with long distance runners. One of the main reasons we have seen so many world records to come down and down over the years is because of the improved knowledge of coaches when it comes to strength and conditioning training and how to train people. Generally, the science behind exercise has become more advanced. It means that we can avoid injuries or avoid burning out athletes, instead we can get people to peak physical condition before their competition. It also means that we can reduce the number of injuries for athletes across all sports because a lot of sports do not require whole body workouts and are not necessarily balanced for a body. If we take cycling, for example, lots of work is being done by your quads and this means not much is being done by your glutes or hamstrings, but that could turn you into quite a fragile human being. Strength and conditioning can help to re-dress the balance when it comes to a lot of the unsymmetrical nature of sports training and can help to balance it out.

Do you think strength and conditioning is important for young women? Why?

I think strength and conditioning is important for everybody, to be honest. But I do think the gym is an environment where young girls can feel a bit wary and worry about strength training. There seems to be all sorts of misinformation out there for example lifting heavy weights will make you really bulky and it’s not very feminine. I believe that this attitude is slowly dying off, but not quick enough. I also think that gyms can be even unwelcoming environments to people, especially young women. I can remember a time when my wife, in the last 15 years, was told ‘Women have to go and train over there, this place is where the men train’. She has encountered an attitude that seems incredibly backwards and outdated. But this is changing. I also think it is amazing for your self-confidence. Weight training and strength training is something that never can be finished and doesn’t necessarily have an end goal. It’s like a personal journey and its amazing for personal growth and teaches great habits like discipline.

Why do you think so many people neglect strength and conditioning?

So, as a personal trainer I have to recognise that I am in a little bubble and I believe it is really important because I read all the time about the benefits and I read about what it can do for your health if you neglect it. This is a tough sell for a lot of people. Many people know you have to commit a certain amount of time to it. So, maybe from 1 hour up to around 3 to 4 hours a week, depending on what you want to get out of it. It’s really tiring at first and you have to get through that feeling for the first month when it is quite tiring and it feels difficult, before it becomes a habit. I think that’s one reason why a lot of people neglect strength and conditioning. I also think that there’s a public perception that strength training is not as important to health as cardiovascular training is. There was a huge aerobics boom during the 1970s and 1980s which spread across the Atlantic into Europe and the belief was that you weren’t fit unless you were running a marathon. I think that was slowly starting to shift the narrative there. People began to realise that there’s such a thing as aerobic fitness and there’s also muscular fitness. There’s lots of research that outlines both are important for rounded health. Falls in the elderly are inversely correlated with muscle mass. So, if you build up a decent base of muscular mass, and then you obviously age, you will lose some of this muscle mass. But the more of this muscle that you have when you’re older, means you will be less likely to trip and break your hip or something similar. Therefore, you will be less likely to end up in the hospital if you’ve built up a good muscular base.

Where should girls start when exploring the prospect of strength and conditioning?

I guess there are so many good gyms out there and so much good information. There are lots of good role models online who I think young girls should check out who don’t use false information. They have a very healthy relationship with exercise and they’re very passionate about it as their lives really revolve around it. So, there are people who have a very positive outlook on health and fitness and promote this idea of making it a sustainable part of your life. I also think any trainer or person who doesn’t make the message just about weight loss is someone also worth checking out. I think that the emphasis for fitness advice for women and girls should shift away from weight loss, like squeezing into clothes that you didn’t used to be able to. It should shift towards thinking of building muscle and fitness capacity. For example, if you want to run a 5K, that’s a separate thing to weight loss. So, any chat about burning calories and doing workouts to burn fat is really someone who you should avoid. Anyone saying about getting stronger and building muscle is someone worth listening to because it’s okay to build muscle.

What does the expression mean ‘girls should train for their body type’? Is this correct? 

I’ve heard about training for the body types before and people used to believe in somatotypes, which originates from the Latin word for body type. Soma means body in Latin. You have endomorphs, ectomorphs and mesomorphs. Ectomorphs are typically quite slight and they seem to find it difficult to put on muscle and are very slender. A mesomorph seems to have a high muscle to fat ratio. Finally, an endomorph carries quite a lot of muscle, but a good covering of fat. I think there’s no evidence to say that these body types exist. I think everybody’s body exists on various spectrums. When we talk about exercise, I think everybody should find a form that they enjoy and do that. I also think that there are some exercises that might agree with people more. There are clearly body types that agree with some sports more. Some sports suit different people better. Let’s say you’ve got really long limbs, slender hips and slender shoulders but you love lifting. Go lift weights! But finding the sport you enjoy is more important than finding a sport that suits your body type.

How often should someone hit the gym?

It really depends. There are basic exercise guidelines that the government put forward that we should follow. For vigorous exercise like vigorous resistance training, we should be doing about 75 minutes a week. But this could comprise of household activities like gardening. But you certainly don’t need to go to the gym every day. I think there’s no minimum. For example, once a week is better than once a fortnight or twice a week is even better. There’s no minimum amount. I think if you want to get consistent benefits from going to the gym and really move the needle, the minimum effective dose would be once a week. You certainly don’t need to do six days a week, two hours a day. Over-training can break your body and a lot of people sprint, when in reality, strength training is a marathon. Usually, two to three days a week in the gym is sustainable.

When not in the gym, Doctor Paul Watson is often found cycling in the hills. Check out more about him and his adventures on his website www.endlesstrailfitness.co.uk