Most "Strength" Workouts Aren't Strength Training: 3 Principles That Actually Build Strength

A listener asked us about rib flare (not Ric Flair), so we took it on. Rib flare is what happens when your ribs drift in front of your hips, usually when you press overhead or hang from a bar. Your lower back arches, your core can’t brace, and you start leaking strength.Wendy explains why your torso works like a canister, with your ribs stacked over your hips. Rob covers why your diaphragm and deep core can’t build pressure when you’re out of position, and why even high-level athletes often don’t know how to brace. Pete talks about the low back problems he had for years from “bracing” by filling his belly with air, and how RKC planks finally taught him the real thing.In this episode:What rib flare is and how to check if you have itAwareness vs. mobility: when tight lats are the real problemBracing vs. flexing your abs (they’re not the same)Why a lifting belt gives you feedback, not supportDrills that help: dead bugs, RKC planks, and balloon breathingWhy bracing is a basic skill, right up there with squatting and pressingNot sure if your ribs flare? Ask a coach to watch you press overhead. And remember: Wendy is always right.

Is it better to carry a few extra pounds and be strong, or to be thin with no muscle? Rob, Larry, Pete, and Wendy dig into research suggesting that fit people with some extra body fat often outlast skinny, under-muscled people. They’re more durable, recover better from illness and injury, and have more in reserve when life knocks them down.The crew covers the rise of GLP-1s and why rapid weight loss without strength training and proper nutrition can cost you bone density and muscle (and even teeth). They talk about the rebound cycle that leaves people with more fat and less muscle each round, and why the coming health crisis may be frailty rather than obesity. They also explain why “naturally thin” people may be at a disadvantage, why being heavy and sedentary is still frailty in a bigger body, and why your muscle works like money in the bank.Focus on what your body can do, not just how it looks. Strength is never a weakness.

Summer slump is over, and the holidays are coming fast. Between Halloween, Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving and Christmas, this is the stretch where most people drift away from the gym and wake up on January 2 wishing they hadn’t.Rob, Larry, Pete and Wendy share the tactics and mindset that get you through the season without losing everything you built. You don’t have to be perfect. You just can’t fall off the rails.In this episode:Why it takes roughly 10 to 14 days before your body starts to detrain, and why training less still beats stopping completelyResearch suggesting that people who trained every other week ended up in the same place as people who trained every weekWendy’s non-negotiables: lock two sessions a week into your calendar and protect your routinesPete’s three-stage plan: an entry plan, an in-season plan and an exit strategyPick four of the five (diet, exercise, sleep, hydration, stress management) and hold them tightOne bad day when you’ve had 30 good ones doesn’t matter, so eat the pumpkin pieWhy restricting too hard backfires, and why coming back too fast in January gets people hurtThe holidays are about the people, not the drinking and eatingPlease don’t play drunk flag footballYou have about two months left in the year. You can do a lot of good or a lot of damage. The choice is yours.

"Strength" is in every class name now: strength yoga, strength Pilates, strength circuits. Moving around with weights isn't the same as strength training, though. In this episode of Strong Principles, Rob and Larry go over the three principles a program needs to build strength.We cover:Progressive overload: adding load, reps, range of motion, tempo, or pauses week to week, and the Greek story of Milo and the bullEnough load and tension: why light-dumbbell combo moves don't send a strong enough signal, and why strength is a neurological adaptation before muscle shows upConsistency: why constantly switching exercises ("muscle confusion") works against getting strongRest periods, and why you get stronger during recovery, not during the workoutWhy strength is specific: carryover from the big lifts (squat, deadlift, press, bench)Machines vs. free weights: why a big leg press doesn't mean a big back squat, and the "illusion of functional strength"The six fundamental movement patterns and odd-object training for the real worldIf your program can't show you're lifting more, doing more reps, or moving better over time, it isn't strength training.

A good group program is written for the bell curve, meaning the majority of the people in the room. It isn't written for you specifically. In this episode of Strong Principles, Rob, Wendy, Pete, and Larry explain how to get the most out of group training without feeling defeated when your workout doesn't look like the person's next to you.We cover:Why a program everyone can do, or one that crushes everyone, isn't effectiveProgressions, regressions, and scaling (split squat to Bulgarian split squat)Training by movement pattern, and why some lifts depend on your anatomy (long femurs and the back squat)How a six-day phase is built, and why changing a workout's stimulus can backfire across the weekWhy five-minute Saturday tests exist, and why they hurt the mostCherry picking: endurance athletes skipping strength, meatheads skipping cardioZone 2 explained, including the 3-zone vs. 5-zone mix-up, and why middle-intensity work is the hardest thing to get people to followTrusting the process, and why personal training is money well spent at the startStrength is the base. Build on it.

About 60% of Vero Strength's members are women, and the average age is 51. In this episode, Larry, Rob, and Wendy talk about how that happened and what it looks like on the floor — a 70-year-old getting her first strict pull-up on her birthday, an 80-year-old sending photos from the top of a mountain, and a 17-year member flexing her back mid-class.They dig into why women often learn to lift better than men do: more attention to movement quality, better mobility, less ego in the way of loading correctly. They also get honest about the thing that keeps most women out of a gym like this one — not a fear of getting bulky, but a fear of being watched while they don't know what they're doing. Wendy walks through how she talks a nervous member into her first class, and Rob explains why teaching movement patterns before names is what gets people comfortable.Everybody starts somewhere. In a perfect world you'd have started in your twenties — but you can't reverse time, and it still works.

Wendy, Larry, and Rob get into what to actually do when something hurts — and why the exercise bothering you might just be the wrong exercise for your body.The crew breaks down the difference between a real injury and a tweak, why pain usually shows up somewhere other than the source (the shoulder that's really a bicep, the knee that's really a quad), and how to keep training by holding the movement pattern and changing the implement. Barbell bench bothering you? Dumbbells. Conventional deadlift feels wrong? Trap bar. A squat is a squat, a hinge is a hinge.They also dig into why hip and femur anatomy means the back squat isn't the king of exercises for everyone, how overcompensation shows up in pull-ups and cleans when the small muscles fire before the big ones, and why slowing a movement down will make a light weight feel heavy in a hurry.The throughline: get to know your own body, learn what you're supposed to be feeling and why, and stop adding strength to a pattern that's already broken.

Rob and Wendy flip the mic on Larry — the co-host who isn't a coach, doesn't live in the gym, and has spent twenty years watching life get in the way of fitness.Six months into the podcast, Larry's down about twenty pounds. He didn't do a cleanse, a challenge, or a 5 a.m. overhaul. He added protein to meals he was already eating, cut the handful-of-nuts habit, stopped skipping workouts because something hurt, and started working around injuries instead of using them as a reason to quit.The conversation gets honest about what actually derails a normal week: the desk job, the dog, the dinner-to-dishes-to-couch spiral, the bourbon, and the fact that even full-time coaches don't feel like training after seeing eighty-five clients. Rob and Wendy push back on the idea that it's easier for them, and Larry talks about the small-goal approach keeping him from getting discouraged — plus the long-game reason underneath all of it: what he wants his body to be able to do at seventy.Not a transformation story. Just a plan a normal person can keep.

GPP was never designed to build you a base. It was designed to keep Eastern Bloc athletes from going backwards in the off-season — and somewhere along the way, an entire industry turned a maintenance tool into a training program.Rob breaks down what the original literature actually says about general physical preparedness versus specific preparedness, why GPP works beautifully for total beginners and high-level athletes but fails the enormous group in between, and the point at which more mixed-modality work starts costing you skill, strength, and endurance instead of building them.Also covered: why every-day-is-a-GPP-day programming blunts the strength work you just did, the ratio Rob actually programs (four days building, one day testing), and the Leatherman analogy that makes the whole thing click — you don't build a house with a multi-tool, but it's a great thing to have once the house is up.If you've been grinding through mixed workouts for a year and your numbers haven't moved, this one explains why.Larry Medina, Zach Bragg, Pete Miller, and Rob Delacruz.

Most people confuse warming up with warm-up sets. One raises body temperature and opens up your joints. The other is the barbell in your hands — and skipping it is why your third set finally feels good while the first two were a waste.In this episode, Zach, Rob, Larry, and Pete break down what a real ramp-up looks like: starting with an empty bar, stacking 10 to 15 practice reps, and making small jumps to your working weight so your central nervous system, movement pattern, and joints are all online before the load gets heavy. They get into why treating a compound lift like a skill (the way a golfer starts with a wedge, or a quarterback starts with short throws) drops injury risk and raises the quality of every rep that follows.They also cover the traps: rushing your ramp-up because a program gave you a fifteen-minute window, assuming you're "already warm" because you biked or rolled beforehand, and the myth that warm-up sets will fatigue you out of your working sets.If your last set is always the one that feels best, this episode explains what you're leaving on the table.