Q&A

DO I NEED EXPERIENCE?

You don’t. Our goal is to teach you how to move with strength. We use weights to accomplish that, but the weights aren't the point. They're a tool. Our goal is not gym strength. Our goal is functional strength...

WILL I GET BULKY

Around 85% of new clients, male and female, ask this question. The answer is simple. You are in complete control over how much muscle mass you add to your body. If you want to get bigger, you can. If you want to get stronger without getting bigger, you can…

WILL I HURT MYSELF? 

Over the last 10 years, strength training has certainly gotten a bad rap, thanks to Crossfit, where mechanics and form are absolutely not a priority. Lift Silverlake is the opposite of Crossfit. Mechanics is all we care about. Moving well is all we care about. If you are moving with strength and balance, you don’t need to worry about tweaking anything. Our job is to look for glitches in how you move, and make adjustments, so that you won’t hurt yourself in the gym, or out in the real world.

HOW OFTEN SHOULD I TRAIN? 

It depends entirely on your goals. If you're trying to maintain your current shape, once a week is plenty. If you're trying to make improvements, you may need more. Here's a nutrition analogy: if you want to drop 5 pounds, you can cut 200 calories per day and reach your goal in 3 months; or you can cut 600 calories per day, and reach your goal in 1 month. In other words, the more you do, the quicker you get there.

WHAT IF I HAVE A LOWER BACK ISSUE? 

The lower back is by far the most misunderstood and under-appreciated part of the body. There is persistent myth that the lower back is an inherently weak muscle group. We are told that it is problematic, so we should be careful. We are adviced to move in very specific ways to protect it from too much work. All of this is blatantly false. In fact, avoiding letting your lower back work is the best way to get weaker and weaker, until you finally do hurt yourself…

HOW IMPORTANT IS DIET? 

Diet will always account for around 50% of any successful program. There is no way to out-train a bad diet. Shifting the way you eat can often be more challenging than training, so do yourself a favor and don’t buy into the myth that cutting body fat is complicated. It’s not. It’s very, very, very simple. People like to pretend it's complicated because it gives them an excuse not to do it. You can certainly make it complicated, but it absolutely isn’t...  

CAN I TRAIN WITH AN INJURY? 

It depends on the severity of the injury, obviously. But in most cases, the answer is yes. In fact, our goal is not just to speed up your recovery, but to adjust your mechanics so that you avoid further injuries. We consider this the most important, and most interesting part of our work. We study your mechanics well enough to understand what’s contributing to the injury, and shift the way you move, so that whatever stresses are being put on your body, the load will land in the right place - your glutes, for instance, instead of low back…