I’ve been reading about how to strengthen the organism as opposed to just concentrating on muscles. I now see the importance of this as an athlete.
I want to change my focus to strengthening the whole organism.
How should I go about this?
train the whole body.
Yes, but how?
Squats, deadlifts, bench press, cleans, bent over rows, reverse hypers, lunges, pull/chin ups, core work. Those are your musts.
Then you have things like incline bench press, one arm seated rows, calf raises, snatches, GHRs and so on.
Mainly your heavy compounds (squats/deads) will do the most work as to strengthening the entire body and you use olympic lifts to develop more power. Box squats and front squats should also be done in combination wth regular back squats. ATG squat should probably be the main choice and a transition to parallel and very heavy quarter squats for peaking in strength later on.
As stated above, train large compound, multi-joint exercises and either eliminate(if this is how you train) or reduce isolation movements from the training program.
I hate to use a Vern G. saying but…train movements(exercises with multiple muscle group involvment) and not individual muscles since no one should expect to sprint, jump, etc. optimally by training the body primarily or exclusively(again if that’s what you’ve been doing) with isolation/single muscle or muscle group movements.