Spreading Yourself Too Thin
Strength, Mobility, Handstands, Skill. Can You REALLY have it all at once?
Becoming a movement generalist is all the rage. And for good reason! Being proficient in a wide array of physical capabilities can be highly motivating for some to achieve as it provides a sense of freedom in one’s own skin. We need strength to control our body and move external forces, flexibility to move unrestricted through our environment, and the skill to coordinate multiple qualities at once to consider ourselves a proficient mover. Training these competing attributes all together may not lead to the fastest progress in each but may aid in the longevity of your training. At the end of the day, it’s not that cool to just be strong, or just be flexible. The person that can squat a house and drop into the splits on command is the person that is turning heads! In my opinion, the road to proficiency in this style of hybrid movement practice is the most appealing way to spend my time training. Many coaches are popping up on social media claiming they can program it all at once and bring up these qualities at similar rates. The short answer to the title is YES. You absolutely can have it all, however this article is going to address the biggest issue with this style of programming and expectations for goal setting: Spreading yourself too thin.
Sometimes, doing less is more. Focusing on one or a few things at most, increases productivity. It increases the quality, effort, and time we can invest at that given thing. People who program too many things at once end up becoming successful due to having too little time, expertise, and practice in each area. Not to mention the interference effect with competing energy systems in the body when it comes to performance. When movement culture came on the scene, we were told that we always needed to be moving to be healthy and it was the cool thing to train 6+ hours a day on different qualities. Turns out… rest and recovery matters. Like a lot. Even if you are training different “containers” in the realm of movement, you can’t possibly put the same amount of focus and effort into each. Unless you have no life. They justified this amount of volume by saying, “well the goal of being a generalist is to only be good enough.” To me that’s bullshit. If I am sacrificing my time and effort into something want to get out what I put in. Training 25+ hours a week and getting mediocre results doesn’t sound too appealing to me.
This was me for the longest time. I wanted to train every aspect equally all at once. If EVERYTHING wasn’t being trained in my program, I would freak out that I would get weaker in that area, when this is hardly the case. I needed to train for the splits, while increasing my back squat numbers, and unlock every single upper body strength skill. Oh yeah, I want a one arm handstand too! And train acrobatics and floor work and climbing. The list goes on. The truth is, this worked for a little and then my results started to slow tremendously. In the past year or so I have made the most progress towards my goals by learning to prioritize better.
As a beginner, this isn’t really an issue. The nervous system is pretty fresh, and you will be able to get better at any novel stimulus relatively quickly without consequence to the other attributes. This will work up to a point where you will plateau or backtrack in progress. When this happens, you will need to get a bit more clever in programming.
We realize now that there is a smarter way to go about hybrid training. Finding the sweet spot between minimal effective dose and maximal recoverable volume is key to making long term consistent progress. Here are some things to think about when designing a generalist style program… given that your goals are to achieve… EVERYTHING:
1) Lifestyle/ & Time commitment:
These should be factored into any program, but I figured they are worth mentioning anyways. Lifestyle refers to how you are living outside the gym. Occupation has a lot to do with this as well. How you live will determine what type of resources you can invest in your training from equipment to recoverability. If training is not your life (which I hope for most of you it is not), you will not be able to spend a ton of time training. Those of you who are obsessed with training or are coaches themselves might want to invest more time in training. In general, it is going to be very hard to juggle strength, flexibility training, and skill development if you can only train 60 min 3 days a week. You will not be able to spend ample time on any of the attributes unless your goals become more specific. You must understand this is NOT a minimalist practice, and you do need to devote time to see results across the board. Remember lifestyle plays a huge importance and more is not always better if you do not have the means to recover or willpower to split your focus multiple qualities in training.
2) Compare Competing Goals- It is extremely important to consider the overlap of muscles being trained with specific movements, so you do not under recover or over tax the CNS. For instance, training back squats and loaded middle split flexibility work will overlap in muscles trained. Maybe you are training handstand push-ups and planches. Overlap there as well. You can absolutely train multiple movements that involve the same muscles, just be aware of where they are in the program. Make sure you understand the amount of volume and intensity that is being put into each to ensure adequate recovery. We also need to think about energy systems involved. For instance, strength/ hypertrophy training and high intensity interval training will primarily involve the phosphocreatine and anaerobic energy systems and can compete for recovery/ adaptation. However long duration, steady state cardio will rely more on the aerobic energy system and won’t compete with those two as much. Cardiovascular training isn’t a huge part of what I coach anyways so this is just an example.
3) Prioritize- Simply put, we get better at what we make our priority. If you are naturally on the strong side and want to achieve high levels of flexibility, you may need to train flexibility first in your workout order even though you will be weaker afterwards. It may benefit you to put strength work on maintenance especially if you build strength relatively easy. I was in this boat training flexibility and heavy strength training both very intensely. I was making progress, but I started to plateau significantly in each. From there, I put my lower body strength goals on maintenance and my flexibility became the main focus. And what do ya know, I was hitting range PR’s shortly after. This doesn’t mean that I let my lower body strength completely tank. I think it is counterproductive to completely give up general strengthening in pursuit of flexibility as it provides a base of capacity to handle more intense stretching techniques. Remember, there is a consequence to everything in physiology and it’s never black and white. Not every attribute can adapt at the same rate all the time. There are only so many resources the body can contribute for positive adaptation. The more emphasis you place on one area of a program, the more those resources will be used there. Maintaining your gains are MUCH easier than building them. So don’t be afraid to prioritize.
4) Carryover – When we are juggling multiple competing goals, we must think about what exercises will have the most carryover to the overall picture. We simply cannot train everything at once. In my opinion, exercises used to build raw capacity (max strength/ hypertrophy/ flexibility/ balance) should make up the bulk of the program. Strength skills can be focused on for a few phases but aren’t always worth the time to keep in a program long term since skill demand can take away from force production. As long as skills are worked on separately at some point in a macrocycle, the strength will carryover. For example, a freestanding handstand push up will rely on balance and coordinating the correct path in order to complete the task. You will be able to produce less force compared to a wall facing handstand push up unless you are very proficient at the skill. It is important to figure out where you are on the spectrum of skill development. Some people are strong enough and just need to put that strength to use with specific work. Others pick up skills relatively fast but have a hard time building strength.
Two great examples of carryover to the bigger picture are the Planche and middle splits. Both will tick off a ton of boxes for making other strength skills like the press to handstand, stalder press, and one arm handstand more efficient. My program “Becoming the Supple Dragon” on the StrengthQuest platform places these two skills on high priority.
Sample schedules and goals:
Train 60 min 3 days a week- Pick 1 strength and flexibility goal for lower body and upper body each. Then one skill to practice in each of the 3 sessions. Some accessory exercises can fill in missing links but won’t be a huge focus
For example:
Balance Skill:
Freestanding Tuck Handstand
Lower Strength:
Back Squat 2 x BW
Upper Strength:
Handstand Push Up
Upper Flex:
Back bend
Lower Flex:
Hip Internal/ External Rotation
Train 90 min 5 days a week- Pick 2 strength goals for the upper and lower body, 2 flexibility goals for each. And 2 skills.
For Example:
Lower Strength:
Front Squat
Nordic Curl
Lower Flex:
Forward Fold
Middle Split
Upper Strength:
One arm chin up
Planche
Upper Flex:
Shoulder Extension
Back Bend
Balance Skill:
Press HS
Handstand shapes
Train 120+ min 6 days a week- When training past 90 min, it is best to break sessions up in to 2 sessions to get more quality work done. I wouldn’t suggest adding a ton more goals but maybe more quality work for each. However, feel free to add one more goal to each list.
For Example:
Lower Strength:
Back Squat
Nordic Curl
Dragon Squat
Lower Flex:
Middle Split
Front Split
Hip IR/ER
Upper Strength:
One arm chin up
Planche
Front lever
Upper Flex:
Shoulder flexion
Shoulder Extension
Back Bend
Balance Skill:
Stalder Press HS
One arm Handstand
Training longer then this is not really necessary in my opinion unless you are training to more advanced skills or are on gear… For the average weekend warrior wanting to achieve some solid strength and mobility, and get decently far with handstands, you’ll most likely just run into overuse injuries.
Hopefully these examples can help guide you in creating your own generalist program for strength, mobility, and skills. Just doing “the thing” will get you most of the way there, but eventually you will have to get more specific with exercise selection.
If you are interested in learning more about this style of programming and want to see it in action, then let’s work together!
The Supple Dragon program covers all your bases for strength skills and flexibility programming, but if you want a more tailored approach, 1-1 Online coaching is available