Lets say you have a brand new car, new tires, new interior. Everything is perfect except...theres no spark plugs. Does that shiney new car serve its purpose? No, you pretty much have a giant paperweight. The same thing goes for your body. What do i mean you ask? Simple, working out your big show/mirror muscles is great but not at the expense of the smaller "spark plug" motor muscles. This is where knowning how to properly progress from exercise A to exercise B and eventually C comes in handy.
For example, I train a big 300+ linemen right now. In order to get his strength on part with his size, his former trainer just jumped straight to heavy lifting with the goal of him benching 225 easy and maxing at like 315.
All good understandable goals for someone his size but where did he go wrong? By ignoring progression, he jumped too far in into the workout and plateued early on. When I started training him, we went straight to things like pushups/pull up circuits. His first response? "eh I'm not too good with pushups." So he was training to bench 225 but isn't even comfortable doing pushups? Not only is that a stalled workout waiting to happen, its pretty much a injury waiting to happen.
People tend to skip progressions because the earlier stages can be too hard if their not used to them, such as him with pushups, or in some cases too easy so they just jump again. But like the spark plug scenerio, your body needs those early steps so your smaller muscles are strong enough to keep up with your bigger muscles. Heavy ifts for your pecs and deltoids are fine and dandy until your shoulders give out if you any rotator cuff exercises. Same with your VMO muscles in your knees.
Break your goals into phases instead of going straight to the big boy weights. Your gains will be more consistant and your body will thank you for it. Start with body weight stabilization exercises (light weight 12-25 reps and then progress to hypertrophy (medium weight 6-12 reps) and then a strength phase (heavy weight with 1-12 reps)... After you go through strength phase, deload and go back to stabilization but alil heavier and build a better body.
Study like a rookie, Train like a pro, Play like a hall-of-famer.
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