It's humorous how often people warn me that the way I train (very basic without much accessory work) will lead me to sub-par performance on the platform and a huge set of injuries. It's impossible, they tell me, to adequately train and prepare the muscular system for athletic exertion without a massive list of special exercises and corrective drills, and without isolating motor patterns around joints, I'll be hurting myself regularly.
The fact is, as I've transitioned over the years to a low-variety system based on specificity, many nagging injuries have cleared up. I've PR'ed in 2 weight classes in powerlifting and expanded the number of federations I hold titles and records in by over 100% with no new major injuries. I've attained my largest size yet at a leanness I haven't matched in years.
My hiking performance has benefitted too. It's the other sport I participate in with serious interest. Times and recovery intervals have decreased while my capacity for long hikes and hard trail runs in a given time span has gone up. I'll add that I sustained no hiking-specific injuries last season either.
My hamstrings haven't exploded because of a lack of knee flexion in my program. In fact, both hamstrings have old injuries that have improved since removing the fluff from my training to go harder on what works.My pec tendons haven't shortened into unmoveable cords because I don't do deep dumbbell presses and my bench lockout hasn't gone to hell over a lack of triceps extensions. My back requires me to let the seams out on my shirts, even though I haven't done anything for it besides chins and rows since I moved to Portland. Neither ankle has been devastated by the rampaging injuries supposedly common to those who don't train calves, and my calves push on the legs of my pants hard enough to rub all the hair off. And, oh yeah, doing absolutely zero cardio training hasn't affected my conditioning. At all. (Clearly hiking is endurance training and this specificity has been enough to prepare me for the rigors of the sport.) My training is a lifting template so boring you'd have to be in love with powerlifting just to do it and as many hikes in a week as I can fit when the season to hike approaches.
You'd be surprised how much of an impact proper, basic strength training will have on every single aspect of your athleticism if you give it a chance. Clearly, there is more than one way to train. I'm all for individualizing programming to meet specific needs and I'm all for doing the corrective work and special training that carries over to your athletic endeavors. But I often ask people to look critically at their training and ask what the purpose and result of every lift they do is. If you can't identify a purpose, and the movement doesn't result in a measurable performance or rehabilitative improvement then why are you doing it? Isn't it a waste of time? Many times, athletes are shocked to learn that a large portion of their training falls into the category of lifts without clear purpose or effect. If this describes you, consider going back to basics. It's okay not to be fancy, especially if it allows you to finally train as hard as you always should have been.
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