A deep-Dive into my training

My name is Stephen Graham, an in-home personal trainer specializing in strength training for high performers and high-achievers.

I am a personal trainer in Southern Orange County,  California and have been loving my life in this area for the last decade.  Originally, I am from the Central Valley of California, specifically Kingsburg, where my love of performance-based strength began.  In high school, I excelled in football and specialized on the defensive line.  Outside of football, I threw shot-put and discus in track, but chose to pursue only academics during college. 

 I graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Kinesiology from California State University, Long Beach.  During my studies in college, I trained at the campus recreation center, worked with the CSULB Track and Field team, and participated in exercise-science Masters' Thesis research projects. After graduation, the next six years to follow were extremely career-focused at a luxury gym, accumulating a well-rounded experience within the fitness industry.  Covid lead my creativity to pursue self-employment, and that is where we meet here! Thank you for taking a minute to join!

My biggest mantra as a trainer is  "Lift heavy, lift often, and move with intention."

From peer-reviewed research, we can see that relatively difficult training sessions can transform the body best, whether to lose fat, gain muscle, or increase your athletic performance on the field.  Now, before this scares you off, heavy is ALWAYS relative to the person. For example, my newer clients may be pushing themselves to the max with a fifteen pound weight, but my collegiate sprinter requires more than 300 pounds on his squats to remain competitive. The body needs to receive this "heavy" stimulus to create effective change, otherwise we will see the living proof that our bodies are extremely efficient at remaining complacent.  Changing your body composition (fancy terms to lose fat and to retain/grow muscle) requires stress to our muscles and tendons.  

Now, lifting heavy once per week and relaxing the other six days sounds like you are checking this box of mine, and all should be great, right? Unfortunately, we need to lift heavy AND OFTEN to see favorable change.  In some research, we can see subjects making (slow) progress while strength training once per week.  These findings are usually in NON-trained, older populations (think 75 years and older, who may have never exercised before) and will plateau very quickly once the body adjusts.  The frequency of training needs to be twice per week, minimum, to see progress, but even more progress is seen after reaching three days of strength training per week. Why is this?

The reasoning of frequency is a direct reflection of our body's response to the training. We lift heavy, we leave the gym, eat/rest/sleep, then wake up sore. Our bodies were pushed past their comfort zones in the previous day's session, muscle tissue accumulated very small micro-tears from the excess stress of weight lifting, and our wonderful bodies attempt to heal through a generic injury response. This is where the muscles receive nutrients and healing through inflammation of the muscles.  The inflammation fills the worked muscles, pressing on nerves, and generally becoming uncomfortable (or downright SORE sometimes!).  This process may seem to take a lifetime to complete, but it will soon pass. 

After the injury response has run its course, the body has become stronger and more resilient to training stresses.  Our tissues are stronger and we are now more efficient at dealing with these micro-tears, allowing better and faster healing and ultimately less soreness after the upcoming sessions.  As we leave behind the "I am going to kill you for making me this sore" phase, we are ready for the next training session. This will start the injury response over again, and leave us stronger, more resilient, and happier as a result! 

Now..... with all this being said, I reach my second mantra. "Train who showed up today."

This is a quote from trainer Peter Twist of Twist Performance and Wellness, after hearing him speak at the IDEA World Fitness Convention in 2014. Peter was speaking on the importance of recording sessions, writing down every detail of every repetition, and having a session-to-session plan of advancement for every single client.  Though this holds true for the most part, I still must work with the person that showed up today. 

My client in front of me may have a program that plans for heavy squats and reach for a new max today. In order to do so properly, this client needs proper sleep, excellent nutrition for the last few days, and should be able to recovery well in the following days.  If my guy is coming in after a four day business trip to the east coast, dining with clients and drinking wine while closing deals, he will probably not be in ideal health to push his body very hard in this session. We may still squat, but nothing near his max! Could he get away with shooting for that new, higher one-rep-max? Probably. Would it be healthy and beneficial? Probably not, especially if he's flying out the next day for another client meeting. Sound familiar? 

I use hard data to push performance, though there are always "real life" factors that require us to adjust the training program on the fly. 

In the name of health and longevity,  let's listen to how our bodies feel and then respond accordingly. Training is for health. Training is for real life.  Training is to make you move, feel, perform, and admittedly look better.  Remember this always, and train as hard as you can today, not judging the "you" that "should have" shown up today.