#372 – Reexamining the Exercise Selection Criteria with Noah Hayden – Part 1

As coaches, we likely love lifting, and this passion helped motivate us to pursue a career in helping others lift and experience the benefits of strength. Many of our clients, however, do not share the same passion, and while getting stronger will benefit them–and strength will likely get them closer to their goals–we cannot ignore their goals and prioritize strength about our clients’ goals.

Strength, in fact, is not the most important thing in life (nor the only thing).

When it comes to programming, examining why we program a certain lift rather than another, we have to think about the why and then we can develop the how. A bit part of the why are the client’s goals.

We need to think about how we improve quality of life for the client? How do we help them meet their goals?

We’re Barbell Logic and we’re strength coaches, so we understand the importance of strength and advocate that simple, hard, effective training should be a part of any fitness routine. If, however, we put 100 more pounds on a client’s deadlift as their waistline increases when they wanted to get leaner, we failed to help the client meet their goals.

In his article, Noah outlines what he considers the fitness attributes. While there are different lists, people tend to argue over whether two attributes should be combined or divided or whether there should be more that might fall under another. Below is his proposed list.