Strength training can mean different things to many people. The way a weight lifter looks at strength training is completely different to how a football player looks at strength training or someone in a Pilates class. There are many different ‘strength types and having a great understanding what these different strength methods are and more importantly what type is most suitable to your goal is critical in achieving the results you are looking for. Most people use a typical 3 sets of 10 reps approach which really is a body-building type program to build muscle size more than muscle strength. To improve strength to its absolute potential you must work with a much higher intensity using what is known as a maximal strength program. There are many questions surrounding this approach with the first one being is this good for everyone to do and is it too risky? There is also several other important questions needing answers such as what exercises should you use? How many sets and reps should you use? Do you need a weight belt and wrist straps? And how many times per week is best? To answer all these questions and more I asked our trainer Nathan Fejes to give us his thoughts as he regularly uses this type of training himself and often lifts weights of 150kg with deadlifts and squats and 45kg with Turkish get ups!

If there is one thing that frustrates me more than anything it is seeing people remain in pain from following a plan that is based on poor information and doomed to fail. I regularly see clients who on the first visit tell me the things they have been doing to help their problem in the belief it was the right thing to do. Some had made this decision themselves, whereas others were given advice from someone else, or found a video on You Tube. Back pain is by far the most common injury with statistics showing 85% of the population will suffer with this at some point in their life and it does not discriminate who it affects. As it can greatly impact inactive people, fit people, young kids, sporting athletes, and older adults. Most of the strategies people adopt thinking it is helping are merely treating the symptoms and based on information that is never going to work and in some cases make it much worse! Most of these methods neglect the reason WHY the pain is there in the first place which leads to gradual progression of the problem and eventually more severe pain. This article I am going to discuss what are common myths relating to back pain and what you can do to avoid making these mistakes and get rid of your pain for good.

One thing that has been a constant problem for me over the years is explaining to medical practitioners our methods for helping people to overcome serious injuries and regain their life. The very first thing they say is that there is no scientific research to support your findings. There has been several great books and articles that have explored this topic before (see Hanson D, Allegrante JP, Sleet DA, et al Research alone is not sufficient to prevent sports injury British Journal of Sports Medicine 2014;48:682-684.) but I have posed this question as it relates more specifically to our training studio based in Melbourne Australia. Even though many of our programs and methods are based on research papers and studies, and we have hundreds of testimonials and even case studies that have proven these to work for a long time (almost 15 years now), we are still looked upon as something of a rogue and not validated due to a lack of medical qualifications. Recently the Google core update on the internet reflects the information on our website in exactly the same way and moved us down the rankings in internet searches that we had previously ranked very well with. Google has a hard time understanding how a particular injury can relate to so many things. It wants to have an algorithm that gives a specialist answer. And unfortunately it is not just Google who thinks like this as this is the thinking applied by most people and is supported by research that also uses this same reasoning. I must make it clear we use scientific research all the time and most of our programs are based upon this, however, it is through practical application that all of our best solutions have been discovered. This article I wish to explain how we currently use research and the danger we place by relying too much on what science has to say.