Mark’s Blog: HOW TO BE HARD TO KILL

Functional Strength: How to Be Hard to Kill

by Mark Divine

My mentor on the subject of strength, Mark Rippetoe—author, coach and former competitive powerlifter—offers up the following incentive when it comes to strength training: “Why get strong? Because strong people are harder to kill than weak people,” he says, with the incisive addition, “and more useful in general.”

In more than one way, Mark’s words bore into what we’re trying to get at with SEALFIT training when we pursue functional strength development.

Let’s start by defining what it doesn’t mean to develop functional strength: Adhering to a static regimen using weight machines designed to isolate muscle groups to get them strong, or isolating regions of the body (legs, back, chest, arms) in hypertrophic bodybuilding is not functional strength training. Seriously, doing multiple sets on a trapezius machine is not going to help you haul 300 pounds of man and gear out of the danger zone. I prefer to think about strength in the context of warrior or industrial athletics – working a job like farming or construction, or a day in the field as a Navy SEAL: The lifting, pulling, pushing, throwing, running, jumping, often with load, requires a symphony of muscular coordination and integrated motor patterns, none of which resemble, or are improved by, isolating a muscle like a trap, a bicep or a quad while being buckled into an expensive machine.

Functional strength development starts with re-learning how to move the way your creator intended you to move. Thus embedded within SEALFIT training is a layer of work on purposeful movement that borrows from disciplines like CrossFit™, yoga, martial arts and methods employed in Navy SEAL training.

But the strength program of SEALFIT is specifically geared toward your mission; being able to demonstrate relative strength to carry your load and being able to move with full functionality while under stress and loaded. That makes you optimally useful to your team and supports mission accomplishment. Our OPWOD model emphasizes strength four days a week, using basic barbell power movements like the squat, the deadlift, the military (strict) press and the bench press, variations derived from these movements, and some Olympic Lifts thrown in for strength, speed and power. We chose these moves for their simplicity, functionality and because they generate broadband stimulus throughout the body’s range of complex motor patterns.

The benefits of this method are wide and deep. To tie this back to Mark’s quote about utility, this brand of strength training increases your durability as well as the ability to move and carry heavy loads—making you more resilient and useful to your teammates. In addition, improving functional strength has the ancillary (and indispensable) benefits of an increased reservoir of confidence and courage.

Here are a few tips to guide you as engage with SEALFIT strength training:

1.Check your ego at the door, and keep it there. New trainees are routinely advised to check their egos at the door and to stick with light loads until these lifts are performed safely and with solid skill. No need to prove your awesome strength using poor technique…your teammates will just think you are dumb. Learn to perform the deadlifts and back squats and Oly lifts properly, or you will injure yourself and look silly.

2.Perform a thorough warm-up. In the “Baseline” component of a SEALFIT session, we weave together range-of-motion drills, aerobic work like running or rowing, and typically begin grooving the movement patterns that will be used in the strength component of the session. Still, strength work requires you warm-up the specific lift before diving into the prescribed number or reps and load.

3.Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Take your time with strength training. Spend adequate time between lifts to restore your muscular fuel and never perform the strength component of a SEALFIT session under the pressure of a ticking clock. It’s important to stay relaxed and alert before, during and after each set. This helps retain a safe environment and encourages a very focused level of work, where trainees keep their eye on the ball, help one another succeed in sustaining good technique, and stay methodical throughout. Every lift is as much a mental training evolution as it is physical.

4.Be Front Sight Focused. Rather than what you might typically see at a Gold’s Gym, where gym members wander around from exercise machine to exercise machine without a clear intention or plan, SEALFIT training emphasizes clear goals and an OODA loop for self-improvement. For example, if the strength training task is to perform five sets of five deadlifts, you will be tasked with lifting specific sub-maximal loads—perhaps 75 to 95% of maximum ability. This sub-max work is designed to push the envelope and condition your body and mind in a known range of performance. You will track your numbers with goals to expand your capacity, measured when you come around to that one round maximal effort. So in other words, when you walk into the training space you know your purpose and have a plan. This is a core principle of SEALFIT. It’s about training. Not just hazily ‘getting in a workout.’

I can’t be emphasized enough that you need to leave your ego out of it for strength training to be safe and effective. This starts with an honest appraisal of your set point (where you are now). It’s important to be mindful of how your body type and past experience plays into lifting heavy weights. If you are a tall, former triathlete you are keenly more at risk of getting hurt when it comes to performing heavy deadlifts and squats due to your structure and the way you have trained in the past. Your posterior chain and spinal muscles have not been conditioned to jump right to the prescribed loads of SEALFIT. Note that I went too heavy, too soon in my early years of strength work and injured my back more than once performing dead lift and back squats. These are very useful lifts but can be dangerous when performed with poor form or you’re your body structure is not ready for the load. Learn from my experience and take it one plate at a time.

If you are completely new to strength work, then I encourage you learn the movements with a bar bell or a PVC pipe. Tap into the online instructional videos at SEALFIT.com or CrossFit.com, or my book 8 Weeks to SEALFIT.

Next we’ll take a deep dive into the subject of power: What it is, why you want it and how to get it.

Until then, stay focused, safe and train hard. Hooyah!

Mark Divine