Here’s a question I get all the time: I noticed from your testimonials that you’ve trained a broad spectrum of people like elite pro athletes from the WNBA, high school PE students and even seniors. My question is do they all follow the same exercises and routines.
First let me start off with the fact that everyone no matter what age or ability can only really squat, lunge, push, pull, rotate or combination of. With that being said everyone is going to have these types of movements in their exercise routines because that is what is required of daily living no matter who you are. The only difference is that actual weight used or speed of movement will be different.
In the field of exercise science these movements are broken into categories and called things like: primal patterns or the 4 pillars of human movement. To learn more about this you can read Movement that Matters by Paul Chek or Breaking the Bonds of Traditionalism by Juan Carlos Santana. Basically what they are all saying is that any exercise you do will fall into a category of pushing, pulling, rotating, squatting, lunging or a combination of.
So if you see the exercise records of my elite pro clients and my senior clients you will see many of the same exercises. The main difference is that a Shelly (a 75 year old male) will use squats with only his body weight or light dumbbells and Frank Rodriquez
(a 32 year old pro baseball player) may be using 300-400 pounds in his squatting routine.
Ultimately everyone should learn all the primal patters and do them properly with at least their bodyweight and then you can go from there. Many times you’ll find that just using body weight exercises will be more than enough to keep you fit. You can even use these bodyweight exercises for high end conditioning and performance like many wrestlers and combat athletes do.
For over 12 years Virgil has helped numerous people from all walks of life reach their strength & health related goals. His career highlights include working as a strength & conditioning/baseball coach for the New York Mets Instructional Baseball Academy, serving as an assistant with the WNBA New York Liberty’s strength & conditioning staff and creating the Ultimate Stair Exercises DVD set [http://www.StairExercises.com] which has sold in 6 countries.
Currently Virgil continues to teach, train clients and is releasing a new DVD series entitled GetFit Anywhere [http://www.GetFitAnywhere.net]
Subscribe to his free health & fitness journal at: [http://www.GivStrength.com]
