5 Things I Wish I Knew About Compression Strength When I Started Training It
Compression strength is something that I’ve found to be heavily misunderstood, too easily simplified, and often trained incorrectly. I see too many people getting frustrated that they can’t make progress with it. This seems mostly down to a lack of easily accessible information around what it really involves and best practices for training it; and these days it’s totally normal to learn things from Instagram where you’ve got a video demonstration with no teaching cues and no modifications for different abilities. Yes, I share videos of different compression drills I enjoy, but unless I’m talking you through how to do the movement, I don’t recommend trying to learn from those.
I’ve been on a bit of a mission to try and make compression strength more accessible and easy to understand, as well as training it in a way that is actually useful for your goals. I want to help people to learn good technique for different exercises, but also to be able to figure out what works best for their body. Because it’s never one size fits all when it comes to training anything.
In this blog post I’m sharing 5 things that I wish I had known about compression strength when I first started training it. I’ve learnt these things over a decade of exploring, training and teaching compression strength. A lot of this seems like common sense but when you’re brand new to something or quite early on in your training journey, some of these points aren’t so obvious. So I hope you’re able to take away something useful from this!
1. Leg lifts are not the only way to train compression strength.
While leg lifts definitely have their place and are important for certain skills, they are not the only way to build compression strength. It's important to train compression in a range of different ways for example, hanging, supine, and crawling.
And while leg lifts are on of the simplest ways to train compression, they are also one of the exercises I see people doing incorrectly. For example, if you let your body tip back as you left your leg, the exercise becomes infinitely less effective. This is where modifications come in super handy, for example doing them sitting against a wall to keep your body still, or placing a yoga block behind your pelvis for feedback.
2. You need to train compression strength as part of whole body movements, and not just in isolation.
This is what makes compression strength more useful for those bigger skills you're trying to achieve. We need to know how to recruit those muscles while simultaneously using other parts of our body for things like inverts and press handstand.
One of the stepping stones I love to use to help with this is locomotion. There are a variety of locomotive movements that I teach which I modified to focus on compression. It’s an amazing way to build up the body control of engaging compression strength as you also move the rest of your body. Locomotion is so accessible and yet rarely taught for improving something as specific as this.
There are also skill specific movements, where you train compression strength in a way that translates to your bigger skills. If you only ever trained leg lifts, it might be harder for your body to connect that movement while also in a handstand for example.
3. Compression strength is important for being able to walk and move well as we age.
Understanding this would have changed my view on why I was training compression and my goals. I prioritise longevity as part of my training and so making sure I have good compression strength to help me age well helps me to stay consistent with it.
The same muscles that we develop for big skills like press handstand are what we use to be able to walk, run and jump. Think about how great it would be to never have any issue climbing up a set of stairs no matter your age, because you prioritised training that specific strength and flexibility in your hips.
4. It can actually be fun to train compression strength.
I find it's often approached as an afterthought, just throw some leg lifts in at the end of conditioning. But when you really understand how to train it in interesting and creative ways, you can make something that normally feels like a slog become really fun and enjoyable to practice.
Again, this comes back to having more drills and movements in your repertoire, as well as knowing what your goals are, and why you want better compression strength in the first place. The more accessible this training is, the more motivated I’ve found myself and my clients to be. Which brings me to my final point…
5. Compression strength training CAN be made more accessible.
I've worked really hard to figure out how to make compression more accessible to more people, because it's often taught in a way where you actually need to have a certain level of strength and flexibility to start with. It took a long time to understand how to modify exercises, and I wish I'd known to do this years ago!
Something I thought about was if someone had NEVER done a leg lift in their life, and had no idea how to engage their hip flexors specifically for compression (you know that intense crushing sensation), how would I teach it to them? And this was the catalyst for focusing on accessibility. I now have an exercise called “squeezing the block”, which is compression strength 101. It works, and I love having this drill and many others in my tool box.
It’s been so much fun to really immerse myself in coaching compression strength this year, especially as it becomes more and more important for my own aerial and handstand practice. And I look forward to continuing to share my thoughts and tips around this unique form of strength!
If you want to dive deeper into your own compression strength training I highly recommend checking out my 4 week self paced program The Compression Strength Sessions. This is where I teach everything I’ve discussed in this blog post, and is a fantastic way to jump start your compression strength training.
If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch!
