Yup. Being told not to rely on your strength, is the same as being told not to rely on your speed or natural athleticism, especially for beginners. Doesn't mean you don't want those things, just means you have to learn how to make everything work in case you come across someone stronger/faster than you.
Such a high quality post!
I get you.
I think the issue in telling someone to rely on technique rather than their strength, is in working to develop a higher quality in the technique. If technique quality is poor, you can still make it work if you put a lot of muscle into it. If technique quality is high it is more efficient and can be more effective even with less effort and less muscling of it. So when training, you want a student (and yourself) to focus on quality of technique, for better efficiency and better effect, with less effort.
This is the chicken and egg issue. Sometime your technique quality is poor because your strength/muscle is weak.
I don't disagree with any of that. When doing technique, technique should be the focus. But that doesn't mean that you also shouldn't build up strength/stamina/speed/agility/etc. when possible, for exactly the reason you mention in the second paragraph. And that's where my experience is that people focusing on technique tend to fall short.
Ultimately, superior application will be affected by both. I do not see it a chicken and egg issue, nor as an either/or issue. They work together. Develop quality technique. That will be optimally applied when strength is appropriate.
Technique is the 1st 50%. Ability (strength) is the other 50%. Both are important.
I think there is truth in that. For most people, training time and energy is limited, and one thing may hold our interest more than the other. I find martial training to me more interesting than strength training, so I spend most of my limited training time there.
That is what I am saying.
This is what my weight training is based on. Endurance, which is why everything is done for a minute. I don't lift heavy because I'm not trying to increase in size. I'm not trying to have big arms and big shoulders. I already have those and they make the training more difficult. So I weight train for endurance. As a result, I'm becoming tone, I'm getting smaller but I'm also getting stronger. My muscle density has increase, once I reach a certain size and weight, I'll start doing yoga and some gymnastic exercises for strength building. This will probably happen once I'm able to push weight for 2 minutes non-stop.
If you're getting smaller and you're getting stronger it isn't because your muscles are shrinking. You're either losing fat, reducing inflammation, or quite possibly both, but if you're losing healthy muscle tissue you aren't getting stronger. If you really are losing healthy muscle it still may seem like you're getting stronger as skill plays a big role in everything, including things as seemingly devoid of skill development like chest press with machine weights. Other forms of exercise are much more skill dependent and skill increases can masquerade as strength increases for quite a while.
There are better training equipment than others. You can use:
I wasn't trying to comment one way or the other about whether highly skill dependent exercises were better or worse than very easy to learn exercises. Just pointing out that skill improvements can look and feel a lot like strength increases and the longer it takes to get proficient with an exercise the longer your skill development may deceive you with regards to your actual strength building progress.
There are some strength training that no machine can be used to replace it. How do you use machine to develop your
I'm losing fat. The muscle isn't shrinking. It's becoming more compact. I do what I refer to as Mastering the weight. Basically, when a weight gets easy to lift then I'll rotate the various parts working. So if I'm doing dumbell press then I'll change how lift it by switching my arm position. I'll use my workout as an example. My bench press and workout in general is always 1 minute rounds. I do a wide bench press for reps 1-3. For reps 4 -6 it's narrow press (like a military press) for reps 7-9 I twist the weights. for 10-14 wide press and so on. I crease the number of reps for a specific movement time I go through the full set of 3 positions. I do this instead of increasing the starting weight. At the moment my starting weight is 15 lbs and I'm debating if I want to increase beyond 30 lbs.
