Strength Training - Smith Performance Center

Athletic woman holding her shoulder in discomfort, with a quote emphasizing how exceeding tissue capacity through high exercise demands can lead to recurring injury from exercise.

Tissue Capacity vs. Exercise Capacity: Why Most People Miss the Mark

Craig Smith April 4, 2025

You’re Doing the Work—So Why Does Your Body Keep Breaking Down? You show up. You put in the effort. Whether it’s running, lifting, group fitness, or weekend hikes, you’re trying to stay active. But despite the commitment, you keep dealing with recurring injury from exercise. Pain shows up, progress stalls, and your body feels more unpredictable than it should. This isn’t about motivation. It’s about biology.The real issue is a mismatch between what you can make yourself do and what your body is built to tolerate. At Smith Performance Center, we call that gap the difference between exercise capacity and tissue capacity the rehab standard—and it’s one of the most overlooked problems in rehab and training. What Is Exercise Capacity? Exercise capacity is your ability to push through effort and accumulate work over time. It’s what most people think of as “fitness.” It includes: Exercise capacity reflects what you’re capable

A speaker at Smith Performance Center giving a lecture on exercise barriers and habit formation. The discussion covers evolutionary mismatch, injury risks, shifting barriers, and the gap between knowledge and action in fitness adherence.

The 4 Reasons Exercise is Hard to Start and Maintain

Craig Smith July 29, 2024

Starting an exercise program usually begins with a detailed look at your goals and a plan to achieve them. Showing up consistently is assumed. After decades in the health and wellness industry as a personal trainer, strength coach, exercise physiologist, and physical therapist, I’ve seen firsthand that the problem isn’t your goals, program structure, or knowledge of the importance of exercise. You already know regular exercise is crucial. Nor is the problem finding a place to work out, scheduling gym time, or getting the right equipment for home. The real issue is execution: showing up and doing the work. Exercise is hard to start. Exercise is hard to maintain. Why? There are four major reasons: Evolutionary Mismatch We did not evolve to exercise; we evolved to conserve calories. Our ancestors developed in an environment with limited access to calories. The body’s ability to conserve energy allowed humans to survive periods

The Importance of Protein Consumption for Resistance Trained Individuals

Craig Smith April 22, 2024

Congratulations, you’ve embarked on the journey of resistance training. As you delve into the realm of exercise, one of the first topics you will hit is to up your protein intake. Unlike a few areas that may seem superfluous, it is an important area to get the right nutrients, with protein taking center stage. Here’s a brief overview to ensure you maximize the benefits of your training regimen through adequate protein consumption. Amount To optimize muscle growth and recovery, aim for a protein intake ranging between 1.6 to 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight daily. This can be confusing, since we do not use the metric system on a daily basis, so we will show both grams to pounds ratio and grams per kilogram of body weight. Metric Imperial Example kg to lbs 1 kg 2.2 lbs 180 lbs man weighs 81.6 kg g to oz 1 gram

How to use On Demand Supplement Workouts within your normal exercise routine

Craig Smith March 18, 2024

At SPC, we’re excited to announce that our supplemental workouts will be available on our On Demand platform. However, we understand that there may be a learning curve associated with incorporating these workouts into your routine. That’s why we want to ensure you have the resources to make the most of this valuable tool for future reference. If you’re unsure about what the supplemental programs entail, we encourage you to check out our blog post, ‘ The 4 Types of SPC Supplemental Workouts.‘ We will go into each aspect of the workout, why, and when to add the supplemental workouts. Understanding the Structure: Components of a Workout A single workout, at the most simple level, should include a prep component and a workout component. But this misses other aspects that often occur at SPC. Let’s define these components first: Prep: Getting your body ready for exercise. Skill Development: Learning or

The 4 Types of SPC Supplemental Workouts

Craig Smith March 11, 2024

The foundation of our programming is the strength workout. Building upon this foundation using a progressive overload approach is essential for long-term strength and fitness gains. Incorporating supplemental workouts can provide variety, target specific muscle groups and movement patterns, develop new skills, and enhance overall fitness and performance. Supplemental workouts can serve various purposes, such as addressing weaknesses, improving mobility, treating recurrent injuries, reducing risk for falls or simply adding diversity to training. They include exercises like mobility drills, corrective exercises, accessory movements, and conditioning work. By integrating supplemental workouts into your programming, you create a more well-rounded and balanced training regimen. This approach not only helps to prevent boredom and plateaus but also allows for continuous improvement and adaptation over time. We want to review the types of supplemental workouts in this article. The 4 types of supplemental workouts We have 4 types of supplemental workouts: We will explain

Optimizing Your Strength Training: Understanding the Importance of Deload Weeks At Smith Performance Center

Craig Smith November 17, 2023

In the realm of physical fitness, the drive to push our limits often overshadows the significance of rest and recovery. Enter the concept of “Deloading” — a strategic and essential practice that can be a game-changer in your strength training regimen. As we engage in rigorous workouts and demanding physical activities, our bodies undergo stress, breaking down muscles and tissues. Yet, it’s during periods of rest that our bodies repair, adapt, and ultimately grow stronger in response to these stresses. The Deload week, a planned phase of reduced training volume, intensity, or frequency, serves as a pivotal component of a well-structured training program. Its purpose is simple yet profound: to allow the body the necessary time and space to recover, prevent overtraining, and boost overall performance. Understanding when, why, and how to implement a Deload week can significantly impact your training outcomes, ensuring sustained progress, and minimizing the risk of

Optimizing Your Strength Training: The Role of Open Clinics at Smith Performance Center

Craig Smith November 17, 2023

At Smith Performance Center (SPC), our primary aim is to facilitate a healthy and active lifestyle for all our members. One of the tools we employ to overcome potential barriers to consistent exercise is the utilization of open clinics, which play a crucial role in addressing pain and injuries. An open clinic session lasts for 15 minutes and serves four primary purposes: The genesis of the open clinic concept dates back to January 2018 at Smith Performance Center. Initially conceived as a space for members to report new injuries, discomfort, or movement issues, these sessions soon became integral to our strength training approach. On the first weekend, our physical therapist triaged six people. Now after five thousand sessions, we recognize their significance in supporting a healthy lifestyle. Why do open clinics matter? Injury prevention, often a cornerstone in healthcare and fitness, presents challenges. Being active inherently involves a degree of

The 4 Primary Goals In Strength Training When Struggling With An Injury or Pain

Craig Smith November 7, 2023

Goal setting is one of the most important, yet tricky aspects of training. Our team believes that goals are secondary to developing habits and systems that you can do day in and day out. We call this an exercise habit and it is a critical aspect of becoming an exerciser. However, goals can help to shape your training, increase motivation, and improve decision-making during the course of workouts. When you are returning from an injury or dealing with a particularly irritating pain, we believe your goal is very specific. You need to exercise without your body feeling terrible. While this sounds obvious, one of the most common training mistakes our coaches see clients make is too much focus on performance while ignoring a recurring injury or pain. If you have pain during your running, biking, lifting, etc., you will not achieve performance goals. We strongly believe there are 4 goals

The Injury Types That Are Mismanaged During Activity Progression

Craig Smith August 1, 2023

The rehab standard is simple; the limit to your exercise is not how hard you can work out, but rather working as hard as possible without going past your tissue capacity. Our team sees violation of the rehab standard as the most frequent cause of failure during activity progression. A client will feel great and start to progress their workouts. There is no symptoms during the exercise and often no symptoms the same day, but the next day they feel horrible. We know that in activity progression, you need to understand the type of tissue that is healing, the specific exercise, and volume. We also need to consider the type of injury: chronic, recurrent, and acute. Chronic Injury For chronic, we mean is has been present for a long time. When you have a chronic injury or chronic pain, there are two issues: your exercise capacity is lower because it

The 6 Functional Exercises Tested During a Movement Assessment

Craig Smith May 2, 2023

A mistake in exercise programming that our team encounters is a heavy emphasis on variety in exercise, instead of movement pattern mastery. Our team does not focus on an endless array of exercises. The focus is on building depth in foundational movement patterns. These patterns make up every movement you perform when lifting. If these foundational movements are missing, advanced exercises will be wasted on poor form. You need to own the basic movements first. During the movement assessment, the 6 foundational movement patterns are assessed with 6 functional exercises from each movement pattern category. The movement assessment is where our strength coaches determine what may cause issues in your program: accountability, rehab standard, location/time, coaching need, and comfort level. The 6 functional exercises help our coaches determine your coaching need, if you have a tissue capacity issue (rehab standard), your comfort level with free weights, and what is the

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SPC Archives

Category: Strength Training

Tissue Capacity vs. Exercise Capacity: Why Most People Miss the Mark

The 4 Reasons Exercise is Hard to Start and Maintain

The Importance of Protein Consumption for Resistance Trained Individuals

How to use On Demand Supplement Workouts within your normal exercise routine

The 4 Types of SPC Supplemental Workouts

Optimizing Your Strength Training: Understanding the Importance of Deload Weeks At Smith Performance Center

Optimizing Your Strength Training: The Role of Open Clinics at Smith Performance Center

The 4 Primary Goals In Strength Training When Struggling With An Injury or Pain

The Injury Types That Are Mismanaged During Activity Progression

The 6 Functional Exercises Tested During a Movement Assessment

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Updates from Smith Performance Center

How to Find the Real Cause of Pain: Our 4-Pillar Diagnosis Process

Understanding and Managing Flare-Ups During Rehabilitation

Triathlon Injury Rehab: How SPC Phases Prevent Setbacks