Why muscle endurance before Strength/Power
Yesterday I highlighted that for me a begginer in strength training would be better off concentrating on muscle endurance first before strength and power.
My reasoning for this is such - as a 'beginner' I feel loading a relitively new lifter/weight trainer for squats/deadlifts would be a bad idea. Let me explain: Form is probably an issue we either all do face or certainly have. Very few people can execute a complex movement for the first time correctly... now imagine this, a person arrives in the gym (they weight 80kg for argument sake) and they load an olympic bar with 40kg each side and try a Romanian Deadlift - I'd like to think some (if not most) can see the issue here. If they execute it perfectly then that is great - if not, the risk of injury increases greatly. As coaches/trainers and even enthusiasts who have people read our blogs/listen to us, our main objective is the athletes safety before improvement (surely?).
In fact I would take it back even further and have them conduct body weight movements first (as I'm doing with one of my 'clients') and ensure form is correct before loading.
There is no specific reason (physiologically) other then the fact muscle endurance is a lighter load with greater volume. For me reducing the risk of injury and allowing the athlete to spend a greater amount of time on each movement and thus increase movement pattern familiarity.
Remember, this is for the beginner - those with experience I imagine can jump in and work on what ever aspect they want, when they want. But I'd still encourage a small amount of time of familiarization before jumping into 5x5's (something I almost did only this week).
I was also asked yesterday what was the difference between muscle endurance, strength and power - I will do a short blog later on with examples of sets/rep ranges that hit each one along with load %.