Fit with FitDoc #2 - Strength for life

Hello dear Steemians, Matt here with yet another fitness related post. For those who don't know me, and at this point in time that is pretty much everyone, I'm going to introduce myself shortly.
I'm a medical doctor and I've been leading healthy and sporty life for better part of my life. Therefore I came to some conclusions through learning, trial and error and experience. By now I've tried it all and I know what works for me and here I hope some of my insights will help you as well.

Not your ordinary strength training

Strength training is pretty controversial topic among the fitness people and I won't help to dissolve that controversy here. There are books written about it, so I won't bore you to death by graphs, definitions and stuff. Let's get to the gist of it: there's my favorite kind of strength. It's kind of strength that makes you feel powerful outside of gym. What does it mean?
Well, powerlifting is fine. Olympic lifting is fine, but that kind of strength is very specific. It does transfer to other areas as well, but not so much as both me and you would like to think. I've bench pressed 330lbs and yet I could hardly out wrestle 155lbs guy. I could hardly throw the bales of hay on top of the tractor trailer.
This kind of strength that I preach kind of resembles Crossfit training, but it's different because I don't do high volume (but even that has it's place). I call it functional strength. A type of strength that makes you feel powerful while cleaning the home(you know, lifting the couch with one arm) or saving your pup from jaws of that German Shepard (that happened too).Also it's very fun way to train .So,we could even move away from word strength and call it physical toughness, because it encompasses so much more than moving heavy objects. It encompasses muscle endurance under tension, speed of contraction, grip and core strength etc. But let's leave the semantics for some other time and let's deal with the practical.

How to do it?

There's no reason to limit yourself to only one of these methods. You can do it all at the same time.

Compound lifting

Heavy compound exercises are great way to build speed and strength. I stick to the basics.
Deadlifts

• deficit deadlft
• sumo deadlift
• romanian deadlift
• Zercher squat

Squats

• back squat
• front squat
• overhead squat

Presses

• bench press
• floor press
• overhead press
• jerks and splits

and old other variations of mentioned exercises and some more such as lunges and similar.

Calisthenics

As I've mentioned in my previous fitness post; calisthenics are a great place to start. I'm doing combat sports now, grappling to be specific, and calisthenics have helped me immensely. They've helped with strength and muscle endurance both. Go read my calisthenics post here if you want to know more.

Asymmetry

Have you ever tried to deadlift a 150 lbs barbell? Good, I'm glad you have (If you haven't, you should reexamine your priorities in life, you're missing out!). Now try to lift some odd object (like a person) which has weight distributed unevenly. That's right, it feel double the weight. And that is just the point. In my humble experience few things build strength like exercising with odd objects such as stones, rocks, logs, sandbags and people. Yes, people. Here I'm going to slide in my recommendation that you start some combat sport if you are into that type of things. Strongest people I ever met were wrestlers. Exercising with odd objects confuse your nervous system and help you recruit more muscle cells into contractions. It goes without saying that the impact on your core and back strength is amazing. Good bye back pain. Exact how-to and list of exercises I'm going to reference in recommendation section.

Isometry

This basically means to sustain muscle contraction without changing the length of muscle fiber. A bit to technical eh? Well, go down in a low push up position. Good. Stay like that. That's isometric contraction for you folks. Works with anything plus you get set of kitchen knives with it. All jokes aside, this is one of the best way to build muscle endurance (ability to stay under contraction without diminishing power output) and strength. You can do it with deadlifts by locking the bar somewhere, by doing wall sits, by doing pull ups. Everywhere. It's very challenging because you have to sustain maximal effort during the period. Over time, your nervous system will learn to mobilize more muscle fibers and use them more effectively.

Benefits

I could talk for hours about this. Here are some. You will feel better psychologically. Building muscle and strength will do a lot for your confidence and well being. Also, strength training has been shown to decrease the rate of degradation of telomeres. Those are little repetitive parts of DNA on the end that wear down over time and make you age. So basically you slow down the rate of aging. Not to mention you are going to be strong old man(or woman) which won't break his bones easily(and that is a big problem today). Once you break your hip as an old person you are in grave danger. You'll look better, you'll be able to handle yourself in most physically demanding situations. Your insulin sensitivity and antioxidant status will improve. Your muscle will build slower compared to bodybuilding but they're here to stay, meaning they last for much longer. There are so much benefits that there's hardly a reason why you shouldn't do it.

Recommended
The Encyclopedia of Underground Strength and Conditioning - awesome book that covers everything I've said
Muscle Madness - Youtube channel with highlights and exercises.

That would be it fellows. I din't want to get into too much details but I could if you show interest. I'll gladly answer all of your questions

All photos are my own and every written is original content.

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Thanks for the support and have a nice day,
Matt

Me training my friend