Strength & Conditioning Coaching in Austin, Texas Raw Power Gym

Strength & Conditioning Coaching Gym & Philosophy

Raw Power Gym’s strength and conditioning coaching involves a range of exercises designed to build a variety of skills centered on mind, mobility, strength, stability, endurance, speed, agility, power, and performance.

Our goal is to help you develop in such a way that you’re able to apply these qualities into both your sporting endeavors and daily life. We will continually challenge you to maintain a healthy attitude of positivity, hard work, accountability, and total effort to workouts with the goal of enabling the best version of you, both mentally and physically, to rise and shine. 

We’re committed to providing you with the knowledge, motivation, confidence, and training necessary to reach your athletic potential, while decreasing the likelihood of injuries and increasing mental and physical stamina.  Together we’ll accomplish goals by using free weight and machines in an environment of positive reinforcement, good communication, and constant encouragement. Raw Power Gym’s  Strength & Conditioning Coaching will provide you the underlying structure required to perform at your highest level possible. 

Strength & Conditioning Coaching Program Goals

The strength and conditioning program is not designed to be a quick fix or crash course. Proper lifting technique is critical as we build functional strength. Of utmost importance is developing balance to help prevent injuries. We also place a heavy concentration on core stability and body composition. Effective training will improve joint stability, joint range of motion, increase muscular strength and power, enhance movement mechanics, and increase energy system function.   This is accomplished by implementing movement training that is specific to sport, and that challenges each athlete mentally and physically. 

• Prevention of injury  
• Increase total body strength and power  
• Improve speed and agility  
• Improve sport specific conditioning  
• Increase lean muscle mass and decrease body fat 
• Improve mental and physical self esteem  
• Improve performance  

Strength & Conditioning Coaching Program Strategy

Focus Training on the Core Body – The center of all power and strength in the human body originates in the core of the body. Imagine the human body broken down into three links of a chain: the upper body (ribcage up), lower body (mid-thigh down), and core body. The exercise movements in this core cover: 

• hip extension
• hip flexion
• abdominal flexion 
• back extension 
• torso rotation
• lateral extension and flexion
• hip adduction 
• hip abduction

Most athletes are only as strong as his/her weakest link. If you are weak or inflexible in the core, the chances of maximizing your athletics potential greatly diminishes. The core body is the center that coordinates all ground based human movements. Focusing strength training attention on the core body is thus extremely important. The core body consists of these muscle groups: abdominals, obliques, erectors of the lower back, gluteals, upper quadriceps, upper hamstrings, hip flexors and the groin area. 

Train with Ground Based Lifts & Body Weight Calisthenics

Most people involved with sports are ‘stand up’ athletes and initiate power with the feet planted to the ground.  Thus for most athletes, the more force that can be applied to the ground, while maintaining balance, the greater the chances of generating speed and power. Training with this approach optimizes the use of prime mover muscles, synergistic muscles, stabilizer muscles, joints, tendons and ligaments.  Hence training you on your feet with ground based calisthenics best simulates the demands of most sports. 

Athletic Lifts, Not Isolation Lifts 

Athletes rarely isolate a single joint or muscle group when participating in their sport and involve their whole body – making it all look natural.  Frequently athletics success is determined not by how strong the athlete is, but how they best use their strength and power.  Those who train with lifts, drills and calisthenics that incorporate many muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints and bones in a natural progression are better prepared to use their whole body in sport skills.  Training with free weights mimics sport skills in that it’s multi-plane and multi-dimensional. Therefore, you are using prime muscle movers, stabilizers, and synergistic muscles. It is important to stabilize and balance the body in order for the prime mover muscles to perform.  The more muscles, joints, ligaments and tendons used in a wide ranging motion the more beneficial to your sport and athletic the lift is.  When the resistance is held in the hands and the feet are placed on the ground, in the standing position, the lift is more athletic.  During a lift the further and faster the resistance is moved along with how the body moves around or under the resistance, the more athletic the lift is.  

Great athletes make the skills of their sport and movements look easy and effortless. They know how to activate the right muscles at the right time and relax the right muscles to optimize a moment of recovery.  The best performing athletes know how to apply their whole body to their sport. This is done by performing thousands upon thousands of repetitions of the skill of their sport at the speed needed in competition. When performing athletic lifts, as well as athletic skill, athletes are getting the best of both worlds in developing champion athleticism. 

Training for Power 

Different from strength training, which can be as simple as incremental additions of weight to the barbell with every new workout, or bodybuilding,  centering on creating fatigue,  training for power requires an amount of finesse to benefit from. Knowing where to dedicate your attention between intensity, volume, and frequency, is extremely important.   There’s a lot of study out there indicating power development,  intensity and volume drive gains more strongly than frequency.  Studies have been published on the best level of intensity for increasing an athlete’s  rate of force development (explosive strength).  It’s been determined that though power output can be increased by working with light weights (3), coupling light speed work and relatively heavier sets is best(3)(4).

Incorporate the Olympic Lifts

Training power in the legs, hips, and upper body is best achieved through  the snatch or clean & jerk.   Olympic lifts foster explosiveness and significantly improve vertical jump height and sprint speed, sometimes better than training those specific movements. (6)(7)   Be mindful,  — Olympic style lifts require time and have a steep learning curve to develop proper technique. Fortunately, numerous variations can be substituted in your workouts not requiring months of training like push presses and hang cleans for developing Olympic lifting caliber power.

Strength & Conditioning Coaching

When it comes to fitness, getting healthy and working out, there are several different areas where you can focus – such as strength and conditioning. Whether your chosen exercise is pilates, running, cycling, recreational basketball or yoga, at the end of the day building strength matters.  That path to achieving fitness goals, including  those difficult yoga poses,  is through having a strong core body. This is precisely why strength and conditioning training is an important addition to any fitness routine.  Let’s explore some of the key benefits of strength and conditioning training:

Helps Prevent Injury. Perhaps the most important benefits of strength and conditioning for competitive athletes is how it helps guard against preventable injuries.  With a thorough understanding of your body mechanics comes an appreciation of the importance of strengthening tendons and ligaments thereby eliminating muscle imbalances (a primary source of injury).

Promotes Healthy Bones. A strength and conditioning program can be structured to help prevent an ailment athletes commonly experience later in life, osteoporosis. Combining regular weight bearing exercise with strengthening is key to developing a strong musculoskeletal system.  Research has shown specific mechanical loading is converted into positive cellular growth in improving our musculoskeletal system health. In other words, weight lifting enables the tendons, ligaments, and muscles to pull the bones which in turn signal bone cells triggering them to produce more bone.

Improved Posture.  The building of a healthy musculoskeletal system not only fights off osteoporosis but also improves your overall posture.  Posture is vital to good health and aligns your entire body starting with your ligaments, tendons, muscles and ending with your bones.  Posture is what ensures all these components operate in sync and in symmetry.   Once your body’s components are able to function properly, tension, stress, and pressure is relieved on your joints, especially around your shoulders and neck.  Many also experience an unexpected benefit of healthy posture which can be improving self-esteem, building confidence, and even reducing anxiety.

Enhanced Mood.  When weight training there’s no part of the body that isn’t impacted as muscle covers almost every inch of you.  Therefore strength & conditioning will flood your system with the “feel good” chemicals, endorphins, dopamine and adrenaline giving rise to a powerful sense of achievement and happiness.   According to a study at Nature.com regular weight training substantially reduces anxiety and elevates feelings of contentment.  A 2018 review of studies, for example, found lifting weights reduces the chances of developing depression as compared to those who never workout lifting weights. Research from the Georgia Institute of Technology, concluded lifting weights not only restores connections between your brain neurons (improving memory and learning) but also boost confidence, mood and sex life.  Appalachian State University has published a finding where those who exercised with three weight workouts per week significantly improved their mood and measures of calmness over 6 months.  We can go on with more evidence but the point should be clear, strength and conditioning not only improves your physical body but also your  emotional and mental wellbeing.

Increased Fitness.  Strength and conditioning is not just for competitive athletes but also for people of all ages and fitness levels, interested in making their body stronger. Whether you’re interested in reducing body fat, increasing lean muscle mass, or burning calories more efficiently, strength and conditioning training will achieve these goals.  A well-designed strength and conditioning program addresses the individual, their sport or primary activity, any muscle imbalances,  as well as few other factors.

It’s also important to know that with age,  lean muscle mass naturally diminishes so we’re all faced with a ‘use it or lose it’ fork in the road.  Your percentage of body fat will increase as you age if you don’t act to replace the lean muscle that fades away over time. Strength and conditioning training is the best way for people of all ages to preserve and enhance muscle mass.

Raw Power Gym strength and conditioning programs strengthen primary and supporting muscles, eliminate muscle imbalances, increase mobility, improve posture, stabilize joints, while you learn new movement patterns enhancing peripheral and coordination skills. Specifically:

• Increases muscle strength.
• Increases muscle endurance.
• Increases muscle fiber size.
• Strengthened Mental Health.
• Increases neural recruitment.
• Improves connective tissue function.
• Improves bone health.
• Develops motor skills and confidence to push your physical activity journey.
• Improves mobility and flexibility.