The Motor Unit Biweekly

I like training full-body 3 days a week. I find that it gives me the biggest bang for my buck because I put on about 10 kilograms of muscle just by training full-body 3 times a week (or 2 times if life gets too busy) with the rest of the days focused on improving my conditioning.

The additional bulk didn’t slow me down during my amateur MMA training because I was performing heavy compound lifts that made me explosive too. I was faster and more explosive than other athletes who were considerably lighter than me.

But here’s the thing - I was doing a few things right with this routine, while I was doing other things wrong. What I did wrong was that I sometimes ended up ignoring some of the foundational movement patterns. This was until I started to understand concurrent training and movement patterns better from the experts in the field and implement it my own training.

I’ve already talked about the different intents with which one can move weights to develop various aspects of strength here, here, and here. So, I’m using this post to talk about the different movement patterns you need to bring into your training sessions so that they can be performed with the intents discussed in the posts linked above. Most of the weight lifting movements can be classified into one of these patterns or as an accessory to improving your strength in that movement pattern. Broadly, these patterns are -

1. Upper-body push pattern

2. Upper-body pull pattern

3. Squat pattern

4. Hip hinge pattern

Pattern 1: Here, you use your upper-body musculature to object away from your body. For example, the shoulder press, the bench press and their variations can be categorized under the upper body push pattern because you’re using upper body pushing muscles to push a barbell or a dumbbell away from your body. Only difference here between the movements here is that the shoulder press is done when your body stands vertically while the bench press is done when your body is positioned horizontally. Same principle for body weight pushing exercises like the pushup except you’re pushing your body away from the floor or some stationary object.

Pattern 2: If what I’ve discussed above makes sense to you then it’s easy to understand the upper body pull pattern. It’s basically exercises like the pullups, pulldowns, rows and their variations. Again, you get to perform them vertically or horizontally.

When it comes to training patterns 1 and 2 with compound multi-joint lifts, you’re training all upper-body muscles in one or the other form, even your biceps and triceps because your biceps are also trained when performing upper pulls and triceps with upper pushes. I like to alternate between the vertical and horizontal workouts on a monthly basis along with accessory workouts to make sure any lagging muscle groups are accounted for.

Pattern 3: The squat pattern should be pretty straight forward to understand that includes any variation of the squat exercise and it also includes lunge variations also because the principle behind the squat and lunge patterns are to strengthen the lower-body muscles involved in lifting or pushing yourself up. You can also think of it as a lower-body push pattern with the quadricep muscles being the primary driver.

Pattern 4: The hip hinge pattern include variations of the deadlifts, hip thrusts, good mornings, glute bridges, etc.,. Basically any exercise where your hips, glutes and hamstrings are the primary drivers of the movement.

When it comes to the upper-body, patterns 1 and 2 complement each other. With the lower body, patterns 3 and 4 complement each other. Training these patterns means training all your body muscles including your biceps, triceps, adductors, abductors and what not for their functional capabilities. This is what it means to train functionally. When you skip out on a pattern or two, you’re leaving a lot out on the table, making your training incomplete and non-functional. If there is a lagging muscle or two like the calves or triceps, we program a couple of accessory isolation exercises just to target those muscles.

Now keep in mind that these movement patterns can be split across your weekly training routine in a number of ways. You can train with a selection of exercises for each movement pattern with a specific pattern for each day, upper-body and lower-body split for 4 or 6 days a week, or full-body for three times a week. Key is to have a clear goal, train with intent towards that goal, and stay consistent with your chosen routine.