Episode #44: The Best Way To Start Barbell Training | A guide to strength training with or without barbells at home, in the gym, or in a rehabilitation clinic

Episode #44: The Best Way To Start Barbell Training | A guide to strength training with or without barbells 

If you want to get stronger, a barbell strength training program is the way to go. However, the term “strength training” may be confusing or intimidating to you. So we want to take some time to help you understand the attributes of a quality strength program and how it can and should be adapted to any individual regardless of age, ability, medical history, and desire to train.

Regardless of the equipment you have available, your willingness to use barbells or go to a gym, and your training/athletic history, you should have a plan for your training to help you achieve your goals.

A strength training program must meet certain criteria including being planned and progressive towards increased strength. A planned program with progressive overload plays a fundamental role in working towards your strength training goals without encountering roadblocks, setbacks, or lack of goal attainment. Without planned, progressive overload, you’re exercising instead of strength training. 

In this episode of the PRS Podcast, we talk about how to start your strength training journey no matter the equipment you have or want to use or your ability level. Everyone can start somewhere and doing something is always better than nothing.



We share why the barbell is the best equipment option for strength training but also when and how to use alternative equipment to help you get started or just make the most of the equipment you have available. And if you’re already a barbell athlete that won’t have access to barbells for any period of time, you can benefit from no-equipment workouts too. 



Listen to this episode to learn how to start training, continue training without interruptions, and gain the confidence to take your barbell strength training to the next level. 



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Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:00:32] Welcome back to the Progressive Rehab & Strength podcast. I'm your host Dr. Rori Alter here with my lovely co-host, Dr. Alyssa Haveson. We are clinical coaches here at Progressive Rehab & Strength. And in this episode of the podcast we are going to be talking about one of the most common, as I always say, questions that we get. I mean, that's why we put this podcast together to answer all your questions. So a very frequent question that we get is how do I start barbell training or how do I get strong or where do I start? Or what am I supposed to do and what equipment do I need? And you know, all those questions that a newer strength trainee is looking to get answered, or a clinician who wants to integrate barbell training into or strength training into their clinical practice or coach who is looking to go, or a personal trainer who's looking to become a strength coach. Where do we start and how do we identify where a person should start? So what we want to do in this episode is really talk about how someone begins strength training and we call it barbell strength training, even though it might not utilize the barbell. So what some people call strength training without a barbell we have one umbrella term called barbell strength training. So before we dive into that, we kind of want to talk about the three people or types of people that this episode is geared towards. So Alyssa do you want to talk about like what those three people are to help the listener identify if they're one of those three people?



Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:02:30] Yeah. So, you know, the first person is going to be the athlete. And, and even if you don't consider yourself an athlete right now, if you're looking to start training in any capacity and we're calling it training, but even, you know, if you're thinking of it as working out, that's fine, too. When we say, you know, training, we're talking about something with a plan and we want you to have a plan. We want you to feel like you're prepared. You know what you're doing. You know why you're doing it and kind of where you're going. So, you know, this is still for you if you have never touched a barbell, if you have never touched a weight, or if you've never been in a gym. Because we're looking we want to help you figure out where to start, even if that means starting in your house, in your living room, with nothing to work with. And then, you know, coaches, if you're or if you're a trainer and you're looking to become a strength coach, we want to help you figure out how to integrate or optimize how you're integrating the barbells, how into training, how you're planning your clients, your programs and really transitioning somebody from being the training client who's coming in for exercise as and without as much of a plan to a plan progressed program where they are making progress and you know continuing to progress long term.



Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:03:54] Yeah. And I think just to kind of touch on the trainer or coach the personal training realm a little bit more, everyone essentially is a beginner strength training or barbell strength training. And we use the term barbell strength training to encapsulate, like I said before, strength training as a whole. So even personal training is actually the training word is misused almost because it's personal exercise sessions. You know, if that session does not fit into like a grand scheme of thing program and it's not working towards it's not a planned session. It's not predetermined what you're going to be doing in that session. In the grand scheme of working towards a larger goal, then it's just exercise, right? So for personal trainers who are doing just general personal training, you know, like you kind of show up and here's what we're going to do today. But it wasn't planned. It wasn't precisely determined based on performance last time and where we're going. Next time, then it's just exercise. And personal trainers can transition to a strength coach by utilizing planned progressive programs with their clients to be strength training. And really everyone who works with a personal trainer or coach, usually especially if they've never touched a barbell, or they're just going from personal training to strength training or barbell strength training. They're beginners because it's a new stimulus, and most trainers or coaches are going to work with beginner lifters until that beginner lifter becomes an intermediate and advanced lifter.



Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:05:46] You know more in the online coaching realm for people who have been specializing in barbell training or power lifting. Those individual coaches might be working with more intermediate or advanced lifters, but even still, when a program or when a person switches a program or switch it or sorry, not switches a program but switches a coach and the programming style is different. There's this novice stimulus that happens. So there is a slight novice effect when a person switches from coach to coach or a huge program change. There's always or exercise selection change, there's always going to be this like novice phenomenon happening. So yeah, like you said, Alyssa the end of the this episode is for the person who wants to get started with barbell strength training and will define barbell strength training in a greater detail shortly. But you don't really know where to start. And so that that could also be the trainer who's working with those people and that trainer is transitioning into this more barbell strength training type training versus just general exercise. And so those trainers or people can have access and willingness to use barbells or not have access or be unwilling to utilize barbells or not strong enough to use barbells. So we're going to talk about how to figure out what implements to use in various situations.



Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:07:21] So there was a third group of people that were really talking to today, and those are the clinicians. And even if you are a clinician who is working in a clinic where things seem pretty standard and you know you're usually doing some manual work with somebody and theraband exercises, but you want to do more with your patients and even potentially transition them to being clients once they're once they're done with their rehab, whatever they're seeing you for in the clinic. You know, that's the other thing that we can do with this. And you don't have to utilize barbells or maybe you want to, but you can use other implements. You can work them up to working with barbells, depending on where they're starting and really give them more in terms of strengthening, having a progressive plan. You know, we've talked in earlier episodes about they really often is no plan or progressive overload in the clinic. It's okay, it's the blue band every time or the same weight every time. So how do we do more for our patients and our clients with the tools we have available or potentially adding some tools and knowing what those things could be that you're going to get the most benefit out of in the clinic for a wider range of people. Because, you know, maybe a barbell isn't appropriate for your clinic because you're not going to get as much use out of it because of who you're seeing, who else is there. But there could be some other tools that you will get a lot of use out of that you'll be able to, you know, implement exercises with more people.


Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC: [00:09:08] Yeah. And a lot of times we, I say we because I come from a physical therapy background where I was in a clinic that, you know, that didn't have the implements that I needed. One thing that I did was I presented to them why we needed the things that we needed. And so I got the things that I wanted. But you might be in a clinic where you don't have barbells and you don't have machines, but there are other things, you know, like you can do progressive overload with. Bands and ankle weights and get you can get creative you know like you can somehow load that person whether it's more reps, more sets, um, change the range of motion, you know, add two bands together, take two 5 pound ankle weights and strap them on like some like a dumbbell. And that's there you go. You have a 15 pound kettlebell because you've got a 5 pound dumbbell and two 5 pound ankle weights, you know, So you got to just get creative. There's always a way to add more. There is always a way to add more and you just have to figure it out. So what does barbell strength training mean?