3 Weight Lifting Tips For BioHackers

Biohacking has been a big buzzword lately. It’s nothing technical and doesn’t have anything to do with algorithms like the dormroom hacking you’re used to hearing about. Biohacking is way to exploit your genetic potential to optimize your health and fitness (and maybe even make you “superhuman”). When it comes to the gym, building strength can be cumbersome. We try to lift more and more over time but either get obstructed by strength plateaus or injuries. Since strength is primarily neurological, I’ll show you 3 weight lifting tips for faster and more steady gains.

Straps

I’m not a huge fan of lifting straps because it takes away from learning to master your natural grip strength. But even more so because they pull on the wrist joint in a way that stresses your nervous system and triggers a “threat” response. This immediately decreases strength output as a defense mechanism. When joints are stressed like this they lose stability which inevitably means the forces from the workout are transferred to the next available joint (which is often how our elbows, knees, and shoulders get tweaked). Instead, add loaded carries in between sets on leg days. This is where you hold dumbbells (as tightly as possible) and walk for 30 seconds with them.

Unilateral

Traditional leg workouts involve barbell back squats and deadlifts. But they encourage something called the “bilateral deficit” – deficits in strength on two legs (bilateral) compared to one leg (unilateral). Strength coach Mike Boyle proves this with his athletes, showing one of them doing 315 lb single­leg barbell deadlifts (but not being able to do 630 lb traditional two­legged deadlifts). As human beings, we require immense single­leg stability and strength (we move one leg at a time). But our modern occupations and workout systems decrease our single­leg stability and strength tremendously. On your next leg day, add some single­leg squats and deadlifts. Start with a progressive range of motion before you progress the resistance for maximum benefit. You’ll be shocked at how much stronger you become at all your other lifts.

Asymmetry

Over 90 percent of Americans are right­handed. This means neurologically us righties are also left­legged (we balance better on our left leg and kick better with our right leg). Since the body works in a “sling” system (diagonally) we must integrate exercises that emphasize correcting asymmetries. Let me also say that we are not trying to train symmetry, we are training to correct asymmetry. There’s a difference. For example, if you have less strength and stability on your right leg (which is invariably limiting your left­side upper body strength) then you would want to do band­resisted lateral walks in a Right­Left­Right fashion. This would give your right­side gluteus medius twice as much work as the left side – leading to corrected asymmetry over time.

Integrate these three concepts consistently and you should see some pretty gnarly strength gains overall. One of our primary goals at Exerscribe is to build great workout programs that integrative of neurology, corrective exercise, and efficiency. Like the “Pandora” of workouts, our Workout App adapts to you with each workout for this exact reason. A great workout program should be adaptive – based on stress levels, sleep quality, capability, and even personal preferences. Of course, no workout program is complete without the coach. That’s why we offer live support by a Master Coach (with over 10 certifications and 10,000 hours of experience).

Keep crushin’ it