Proportionate Strength, Proportionate Physique

Various Tips and Thoughts on Developing Proportionate Strength, a Well-Rounded Physique, and Bringing Up Your Weak Points

     “Achieving a high level of strength fitness is a constant, everchanging challenge.  The program that enabled you to reach one level may no longer be as effective when you try to move up another notch.  To some this is quite frustrating, for change is bothersome and requires you to adapt by learning new exercises, alternating the order of exercises or even switching the sets and reps sequence.  To me, however, this is what makes strength training so intriguing.  It’s also one of the main reasons that there aren’t many genuinely strong people in this country.” ~Bill Starr

     The great strength and conditioning coach Bill Starr, in the same article where I discovered the quote above, wrote that one could count on two fingers the number of truly strong lifters in the average American gym.  Outside of the Olympic weightlifters, the powerlifters, and other “strength sports” athletes, most guys just weren’t that strong.  I doubt things have changed much in the decades since Starr made that observation.  If anything, perhaps, it’s gotten worse.  One hand might be all that you need to count the number of strong trainees these days.  It’s odd, or at least it is to me.  You would think that with all of the handy information ready at the touch of your fingertips, more folks would know how to train.  Of course, that might be part of the problem.  There’s so much information that many gym-goers don’t even know where to start.

     I also find it interesting that Starr said outside of the strength athletes this is the case.  In other words, lifters that actually follow a training system tend to be the ones that get strong.  That’s one of the benefits of competing in a strength sport.  It forces you to actually get on a program, follow it, observe your body’s response to it, and then make adjustments as needed.  Most average trainees just go to the gym and “workout” without actually being on a regulated program.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.  It shouldn’t be that way, in fact.  There’s no reason that, even if your only goal is “aesthetics,” which, let’s admit, is the goal of most of your average trainees, you shouldn’t be on a program.  You should.

     One of the primary problems with not being on an actual program is that bodybuilders don’t end up working on proportionate development.  A lot of lifters let one area of their body get too far behind the others.  For the majority of male gym-goers, the issue is that they train their chest and arms far more than they do their legs and back.  They want a well-developed chest and big arms—the bodyparts that they can see in the mirror and that they admire—but end up neglecting their lower body and the rear of their body.  The obvious problem with this approach is that they end up with a physique that simply doesn’t look good, the very thing that they are striving for in the 1st place.  For another, true strength comes from the muscles in the rear of the body, not the front.  If I want to know whether or not a lifter is truly strong, all I have to do is look at the development of his (or her) traps, lats, mid-back, lumbar muscles, glutes, and hamstrings.  That is where power comes from.  This is doubly so if you’re an athlete who needs strength and power more than just a body that “looks” good.

     Proportionate training goes hand in hand with working on your weak points.  As Starr wrote, they are “two sides of the same coin.”  The body is only as strong as its weakest link.  This is true not just for the body overall, but for individual lifts.  Maybe you want a strong bench press.  Most lifters do.  If your chest, shoulders, and lats (the lats are more involved in a big bench than most guys realize) can bench press 315 pounds, but your triceps are only capable of benching 275, then guess what?  You will only be able to bench 275.  There’s no way around this.  You must bring up your weak point to the same level as your stronger muscles that are involved in the lift.  Same goes for all of your other big, compound movements, be it the squat, the deadlift, the military press, or even the barbell curl.  Perhaps you’ve been dreaming of repping 135 on the barbell curl, and you do have large, strong biceps from all those cable curls that you’ve been pumping out.  But if your lower back and abdominal muscles can’t brace more than 100 pounds in the curl, then 100 is all that you are going to lift.

     This concept is nothing new.  Starr preached it over and over in his many articles.  Louie Simmons, the founder of Westside Barbell, constantly wrote about the same thing.  It’s the reason he was big on lots of triceps, front delt, and lat work for building the bench press, and praised good mornings, heavy abdominal work, and the reverse hyper for pushing up one’s squat and deadlift numbers.

     One issue is the ego.  Too many gym-goers don’t like to do the lifts that they don’t excel at.  It deflates their egos to not be able to lift as much as other lifters on the same movement.  It’s kind of odd when you think about it.  The same ego that prompted them to take up lifting in the first place—to be bigger, stronger, and better-looking than others—prevents them from working on their weak points.

     Starr told a good story to illustrate this point.  He wrote, “When I was still a fledgling in the sport of Olympic lifting, I got to train occasionally with a world-class 198-pounder.  At one contest, he cleaned a world-record poundage three times only to fail with the jerk on every attempt.  A week later, a fellow 181-pounder and I were working inside the power rack, doing jerk lockouts.  The veteran joined us, for this was a movement that would help strengthen the very position at which he was losing his jerks.  He found, much to his dismay and embarrassment, that he couldn’t use as much weight as two local unknowns.  It was just too much for him to handle.  He stopped doing jerk lockouts with us, and I never saw him work them again.  At the next meet, he once again cleaned a world record and failed to jerk it.  In fact, he never jerked it in his career.”

     If you don’t work on your weakest point, you will simply never move past your sticking point in the lift.  However, there’s an even bigger issue than your sticking point if you fail to bring up your lagging muscles or bodyparts.  You risk injury.  This might not be that big of a problem if you’re not using heavy weights, but for truly strong athletes, it can be severe.  When you’re moving heavy weights on a lift, if something “gives,” the damage to a tendon, joint, ligament, or muscle can be quite severe.

     A good strength program is a balanced one that gives attention to all of the body’s various muscles.  True strength originates in the center of your body—hips, glutes, abdominals—and then radiates outward to your surrounding muscles, meaning that after those it’s important to work your legs and mid-back, then your chest, trapezius, and shoulders.  Your biceps, triceps, and calves—the “outermost” muscles—aren’t as strong.  If they are, then you have some serious issues.  But the fact is that there are a good many “lifters” who are strong on various bench presses and curls but are weak on their squats and deadlifts.  I have been to powerlifting meets where “bench press specialists” were capable of benching more than they could squat and deadlift.  No lie.  I’ve seen it more times than I could count, truth be told.  Of course, they were specialists who weren’t interested in developing their squats and deadlifts, but the problem is that, as they got older, they were more likely to develop injuries from being so lop-sided in their training.

     Based on what I’ve written thus far, it logically follows that a good program should center on the larger muscle groups—what Starr referred to as the “shoulder girdle” along with the legs and back—first and then should focus on the arms and calves.  This is one benefit—there are many others—of training on a full-body program.  You are less likely to neglect the big lifts.  You start each workout with a squatting movement, followed by either an upper body pressing exercise or a back movement (for example, some lifters like to deadlift after squats and then do presses; others prefer to squat, press, and then deadlift), and then you train your arms and calves at the end.  When bodybuilders follow a split program, the truth is that they are more likely to neglect the muscles that they don’t like to train.  I can guarantee you that more lifters miss their leg and back days than they do their chest and arm sessions.  If you truly love to train squats and heavy pulls, this won’t be a problem.  It’s the reason I have no issue with powerlifters who love to squat and deadlift following a split workout.  Even the great Bradley Steiner—he wrote a column for Ironman for decades—who generally loathed split routines actually recommended that powerlifters—or anyone whose sole goal was strength alone—train their squats on one day, their bench on a 2nd, and their deadlifts on a 3rd.  For pure strength, he actually preferred it over full-body programs.

     One way to ensure that you are training for balance and proportion is to make sure that each and every week you are training with the Big 4.  Every week, without fail, you should be doing these 4 things: You should be squatting something heavy.  You should be pressing heavy weights over your head.  You should be pulling heavy stuff off the floor.  And you should be dragging or carrying heavy implements.  You can do them at each workout.  You can train 2 of them at a session.  Or you can train each one of them on different days.  Doesn’t matter.  As long as you are working the Big 4 each week, you will make good gains.

     If you train with a balanced program from the very beginning, you are less likely to fall into the unproportionate trap.  Most lifters who run into problems are those that start their training by just working the “beach muscles” and then later on realize that they need to start working their legs and back.  This is also behind the logic that beginners should start with full-body programs, outside of the more obvious rationales that I typically prattle on about.

     Another way to ensure that you are following a balanced program is to calculate your total workload throughout a week of training.  I have talked with a number of lifters over the years who truly believed that they had a well-rounded, balanced program.  But then I had them calculate their workloads for a week or so, only to discover that they weren’t quite as balanced as they thought.  A lot of this was because the lifters were following, on paper a least, a well-rounded program.  They were giving “equal” training time to their various bodyparts, or so they thought.  What typically happened was that they were doing more assistance or auxiliary work for the muscle groups that they enjoyed training, usually chest and arms, along with more back-off sets.  They would do their obligatory 5x5 on squats, then do the same thing on their bench presses.  But when it came to benches, they would also do 2 or 3 back-off sets and then possibly a set or two of other chest exercises.  That extra work adds up.  More than a lifter often understands.  Try calculating your workload for one week.  Your workload should be the highest on either your back or leg movements—depending on which one you’re naturally strong at—followed by chest, shoulders, and then arms.

     Why should your workload be higher for your legs and back?  If you’re using the same kind of workout for each muscle group/lift—such as the aforementioned 5x5—then you should be able to move the most weight on either a leg or back movement, such as squats or deadlifts.  After that should come various bench presses, and then overhead work, followed by arm training.

     Another factor to consider is that, in order for your workload to “make sense,” the training should be the same, or very similar, for your different muscles.  For example, perhaps you train your bench press with multiple sets of low reps, something such as 8 sets of 5 reps or 10 sets of 3.  That’s a good workout, the kind I readily write about and approve of.  But then, because you don’t like training your legs but you do know that you need to work them, you do 2 or 3 sets of high reps on your squats.  In this case, because high reps can really push up your workload, it will appear as if your training is balanced, because the leg workload is higher than your chest’s.  But let’s say that you do 225 on the bench press for 10 sets of 3 reps, and then 135 on the squat for 2 sets of 30.  Your squat workload, in this example, will be a couple thousand pounds higher than your bench press session, but it clearly doesn’t paint the entire picture.  The bench press workout will develop more overall strength and power, not to mention muscle mass because of the “intensity” (intensity here being % of your one-rep maximum) compared to the low intensity of the squat session.  Now, this doesn’t mean that all of your training for all of your muscles has to be exactly the same.  As I pointed out in Part 3 of my “Tailoring Your Workout” series, some of your muscle groups might respond better to higher or lower reps compared with others.  But your training for your various bodyparts should be reasonably the same.

     As you advance in your training, you must consider more than just equal attention to each muscle.  Advanced lifters—strength athletes and bodybuilders alike—must consider the various parts/aspects of the larger muscle groups as well.

     Take what Starr referred to as the “shoulder girdle,” for example.  The shoulder girdle would be the entirety of the chest/shoulder/upper body “pressing muscles.”  A lot of modern lifters do plenty of bench pressing, particularly flat barbell bench pressing, but neglect overhead work.  Since bench presses have become the mainstay for upper body pressing, shoulder injuries have constantly arisen, particularly in regards to the rotator cuff.  It’s important to do an equal amount of overhead pressing work as it is various bench presses.  Even within the chest alone, you will develop an asymmetrical chest if you do flat benches without training your upper chest through different incline presses, both barbell and dumbbell versions.  Many bodybuilders have stepped on stage with large but “droopy” pectorals from training flat bench presses and neglecting incline work.

     For the shoulder girdle, if you’re training on a 3-days-a-week, full-body program, consider doing flat barbell bench presses on the 1st training day, military presses on the 2nd, and incline bench presses on the 3rd.  And, if you’re following a heavy-light-medium program, each movement naturally “slots” into the designated day, since you can train flat benches the heaviest, overhead presses the lightest, and incline presses somewhere in between the others.

     Both the back and the leg muscles face a similar problem.  When a lot of lifters talk of training “back” and “legs” what they really should say is that they are training “lats” and “quads.”  The back is more than just the lat muscles and the legs have a whole other “half” to them—the hamstrings—in addition to the quadriceps.

     Starr wrote that, although it may be an oversimplification, it helps to think of the back as divided into upper, middle, and lower parts.  In my latest book, “The Strongest Shall Always Survive: Lifting Lessons from an Iron Legend,” which can teach you the entirety of Starr’s training system, I wrote that it’s important to train on a wide range of movements by dividing back training into 5 categories: speed pulls (i.e. “quick lifts”), deadlifts and other “slow” pulling movements, lat training, trap work, and direct lower back training.  You don’t have to necessarily train all 5 categories at one session.  If you’re following a full-body program, it is probably best to divide up your back training.  However, if you’re training your back on a split program, you might train the entirety of your back at once.  Whatever you decide to do, and however you decide to go about training it, be sure to do some kind of trap work, such as shrugs or high pulls, some lat work (I prefer lifters I work with to include both “chinning” and “rowing” movements), some direct lower back training via good mornings, hyperextensions, or stiff-legged deadlifts; finally, include both quick lifts (various forms of snatches and cleans) along with some “slow” pulls—assorted deadlifts.  The bottom line is that your back is made of various muscles and they all need to be trained for balance and proportion.  That’s why it helps to break down the back into different muscles, because they are different muscles.  For example, you don’t train your “front.”  You train the various parts of your pecs, your shoulders, along with your upper and lower abdominals.  You don’t just do a set of bench presses and say, “well, I trained my front for the day.”  In the same way, you shouldn’t do a set of lat pulldowns and then assume you’ve trained your “back” well.  It doesn’t work that way, even though that is, unfortunately, exactly what many gym-goers do.

     Even though many trainees neglect legs, even when the legs are trained, the hamstrings and adductor muscles lag behind the quadriceps.  Starr blamed this on quarter and half-squatting.  He was entirely correct.  I taught both of my sons how to squat properly from the time they were 10 or 11 years old.  (They are both now in their mid 20s.) They won’t call it a “squat” proper unless their butts touch their calves—ass-to-the-grass, as they say.  Yet they tell me that most lifters at the gym to this day invariably just do half, or worse, quarter squats.  Any form of partial squat will work the quads but will neglect the hamstrings and adductors.  The problem is, once again, the pesky ego.  When lifters do a proper, full squat, they will have to significantly cut down in weight.  To illustrate how wide-spread this was even in Starr’s day(s), here is a quote from him when he was still the head strength and conditioning coach at John Hopkins University: “Just about every other year I’m told that I’ll have an incoming freshman who can squat more than the gym record, which is 625.  The reports are always that he did more than 700 in high school.  That’s great—that is, until I actually see the prodigy do a squat, and it’s barely a quarter squat.  When I force him to go below parallel, the 700-pound squat suddenly becomes a 385-pound squat.  Sometimes, their egos are so shattered by that humbling experience, they never fully recover.  As yet, none of the wonder squatters has actually done a full squat with as much as he supposedly used in high school.”  Apparently, if my sons are correct, nothing much has changed.  But you do know better, so do your squats and do them fully!

     One of the biggest reasons, well, excuses, that lifters have for doing partial squats is that full, ass-to-the-grass squats are “bad for your knees.”  What’s bad for your knees, however, are the partial squats.  When you do partial squats, you never strengthen all of the tendons and ligaments that surround your knees, which is what leads to knee problems in the long run.  On a personal note, I have had a lot of injuries over the years, but I have never had knee problems, which is something when you consider just how many hard, heavy, and deep squats I have performed over the decades, along with a lot of martial arts training, including many high kicks in Taekwondo.  I have hyperextended my knees while kicking on occasion, but I have never had knee problems, and that is because I never neglected doing full squats.

     Regarding adductors, if your knees turn inward while performing either heavy squats or deadlifts, then you have weak adductors.  The good news is it’s an easy problem to rectify.  The best exercise is the wide-stance squat, going very low.  It will quickly bring up your weak adductors if you have that problem.  If your gym has one, the adductor machine can also be helpful.  Just don’t use it as your sole movement.  As with all machines, since it locks you into a fixed plane of motion, you want to include additional free-weight movements for adductor muscles that are functional in addition to being strong.

     Before I finish this piece off, we need to discuss one more thing: lateral strength balance.  Unfortunately, this is often only discovered when an injury occurs.  You need to work both sides of your body equally.  This sounds obvious or even silly, I know, but we all have lateral weaknesses.  The most obvious sign of this is seen on the bench press.  How many times have you witnessed—or, perhaps, done it yourself—a lifter lock out one side of his bench press first?  Heck, I think I used to see it almost every time that I went to the gym; you know, back when I actually went to a gym.  This is what happens when you rely solely on barbells and machines.  Your stronger side always takes over for your weaker side.  Often, especially on the bench press, it’s the weaker side that will lock out first.  Your body pushes that side up first, “knowing” that it then has the strength to lock out the strong side once the weak side is complete.  The best way to fix this is through some heavy dumbbell training.  Use dumbbells as much as barbells or, for a limited time, just train with dumbbells to help fix your imbalances and ensure that your smaller, stabilizer muscles are being worked.

     This is also the reason why it’s good to do one-arm dumbbell movements.  One-arm dumbbell overhead presses, snatches, cleans, and high-pulls, along with different rowing movements are all valuable, and should be a regular part of your routine.  (For more on the benefits of dumbbell-only training, read my article The Mass & Power Resurrection!)

     Even though it’s not that popular of an exercise these days—I have read more than my fair share of strength coaches “hate” on it—Starr was fond of the barbell lunge for fixing lower body imbalance.  He said that any time he witnessed a lifter leaning to one side while doing a heavy squat, he was sure to start including lunges in the lifter’s routine.  Once again, if you’re following a heavy-light-medium system, such as Starr’s, barbell lunges are a great “light day” movement, since no matter how “heavy” you lift, you will never reverse lunge what you can back squat on your heavy day or front squat on your medium session.

     I suppose, since this essay has stretched into the 4K words territory, I have gone on long enough about developing your imbalances and improving your weak points.  If you think I missed something that you would like to see discussed or have any questions or comments about what I have discussed, then leave them in the comments section below.  In the meantime, perhaps it’s time to head to the gym and start working on your weak points or ensuring that you don’t become unproportional in the first place.  Heck, I feel the garage gym calling me to do those things right now.

     If you enjoyed this article, then you will love my latest Bill Starr-inspired book.  It is full of training programs and insights on some of the very subjects discussed here, plus many more quotes from Starr.  If you want to purchase it, or any of my other books, then go to the My Books page for more information.

     I am in the process of editing my latest book with the current, working title of “The Book of Old-School Muscle-Building Methods.”  It is putting a slight damper on writing for the blog, but until I finish editing it, I will still attempt to post a new article or essay every 3 or 4 days.

     As always, if you don’t want to leave a comment or question below, you can always email me for a more personal, private response.  I try my best to answer my emails within a couple days.

Sources

“Only the Strong Survive: Proportionate Strength” by Bill Starr, from the January 1997 issue of Ironman magazine