Bodybuilding to Strength Training

  When I first started lifting it was just in my bedroom, I had a couple of dumbell handles, cast iron weights and an ez curl bar. I was always interested in moving more and more Weight but realised at the time that the sets and reps were what made me look better and I vainly
plucked away for years not really knowing what I was doing.
  I had read the odd mens health or muscle and fitness magazine and had a go at the workouts they had set out but never really stuck to anything for any length of time.
The catalyst for change in my opinion early on was when I started to use a little book to keep track of everything I done. I took the odd posing pic I look back at now and laugh but If your aims are to change how you look that's how you track your progress it was my original aim but only for a short period now it's simply a bi-product of the strength I am continually trying to gain. 
  Obviously both strength training and bodybuilding are both done in the gym but that's kind of where the similarities stop,
If you have a bodybuilding background or are an  aestethically driven gym goer you will no doubt have spend some time doing sets and reps a rigid routine of  a warmup then 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps for each exercise.
The movements you will be used to in the gym are probably mostly isolation of One muscle at a time, one or two muscle groups per session.
The difference with strength training mainly lies with the warm ups and sets and reps but also the isolation movements in the gym while sometimes lift specifically utilised serve as more of a post compound movement exhaustion or a fault correction exercise for a particular compound movement.
Incase you didnt understand that last part I'll give an example you may be used to training your lats (ie lat pulldowns or rows or pullups) as a Main staple in your back training. However in strength training it would be used a supplementary movement to be performed after your working sets for your chosen compound movement that session. (I.e Deadlifts to aid with keeping your shoulders back and fight back rounding)
Your main lift layouts for strength training would be more like 12-20 reps with an empty bar, warmup slowly increasing the weight and reducing the reps till you are achieving single sets of 5-1 reps increasing in weight until the load becomes to much ( that's right if you are working towards a 1 rep max you will be doing multiple sets of singles and doubles) this is the main difference reduced reps increased loads.
With a powerlifting type "split" we will call it so you bodybuilders can relate. It would look something like
Mon- squat + supplementary exercises
Wed- bench or pressing + ''
Fri- deadlifts + "

HOPE THIS HELPS ANYONE TRYING TO MAKE THE CHANGES FROM A BODYBUILDING TYPE TRAINING TO A MORE STRENGTH BASED PROGRAM. :D

 

Lats the way to do it!

In my last post, I wrote about importance of mind muscle connection with strength training of any kind in this post I will speak about the lats and how simply you can create this mind muscle connection and begin to see isolated results even with compound movements in your training which should then show you how important and effective this "connection" is.
To someone who doesnt train this is quite probably jibberish. Your lats will become like an extra limb between you shoulders  and spine and a supporting platform for your triceps.
Once they get to a reasonable size you will completely understand the last sentence.
And this is how you get there.......

When I started training my back a couple years after I started training ashamedly :s
I was training all wrong of course at the time I had no idea I was using the lat pull down wrongly. I was tugging down 100kg
For 6-8 reps and wondered why only my arms seemed to grow from it, because I wasnt a bodybuilder or interested in growing the aesthetic look of my lats I was training them very ineffectively.

All I cared about was shifting the weight because I was under the illusion proudly that a strength athlete should only care about moving the weight. It wasn't ego... It might be with some but it wasn't with me I just wasn't interested in moving light weights and squeezing reps because I thought it was a bodybuilders training for a bodybuilders body.
But let's get something straight bodybuilders target the muscles they are working very well!
They are the best at this because they want to isolate the muscle to cause it to grow.
So instead of being proud I should have watched them and learned since I trained in a gym surrounded and owned by some very very succesful bodybuilders.

Once I learned to
1 roll back my shoulders..
2 tilt my ribcage so my chest was out as far as possible.
3 and pinch my shoulder blades together to the point where they were nearly cramping.
My lats started to grow!!! And the mind muscle connection along with that growth helped me correct my deadlift form,  create a good arch for bench and use the size I had created in my lats as a platform to push my triceps from in all varieties of benchwork even standing dumbell press.
All of which allowed me to start moving greater loads in these areas!

I hope this shows you the importance of mind muscle connection in the lats and training with proper form and not wasting your time in the gym with ineffective training!