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Strength training is something I and others talk about a lot, so itâs time to go over exactly what that means.
Not all weight training in the gym is strength training. Strength training is not about looking good, it is about increasing strengthâââthe ability to manipulate heavier and heavier resistance. Itâs more about how you perform than your size and body composition. And when you train with this goal in mind, much of the complexities that people give to lifting weights go away.
Progression is Key
It might seem backwards, but the best way to increase your ability to move heavier things is just to move heavier things.
You will begin with some amount of load, and increase it by a small amount from session to session or week by week. As you get stronger, you will also need to coordinate backing off and decreasing the load to handle the way non-beginners adapt to exercise.
So the first building block of our strength training program is just that: a progression scheme. For novices, this is fairly simple:
Perform an exercise as laid out in the program.
If you successfully perform the exercise for this session, increase the load a small amount (5lbs or 5%, typically) for the next session.
If you are unsuccessful, do not increase the load for next session, but if you are unsuccessful a second time, decrease the load by a moderate amount (10lbs or 10%, typically) for next session and follow standard progression.
If you find you are unsuccessful often, only increase the load if you successfully perform the exercise for all sessions in a given week.
Thatâs basically it. I know we havenât gotten into any of the details about what it means to perform an exercise, but this is the most important building block of a strength programâââregular progression and increase in resistance.
How Heavy and How Much?
In order to increase your strength, you need to use a load that sufficiently challenges your strength. Over many years, and with many trainees, strength coaches have come to a rough consensus that performing exercises for around 3â8 repetitions is the ideal approach for increasing strength. Everything works, but this range is optimal.
What does that mean though, those 3â8 repetitions? If I can do something 100 times, should I stop at 3 so I get stronger? Not at all. Repetitions ranges in exercise programs often refer to a number of repetitions that approach failure. You donât ever want to collapse in a pile of goo under the weights, so you need to be able to determine by feel if you can complete one or two more repetitions of the exercise. Thatâs when you want to stopâââwhen youâre pretty sure you can do one more, but not two. This is what it means to approach failure.
Itâs also important that you practice these movements multiple times whenever youâre at the gymâââwe call these âsetsâ of the exercise. You perform a number of repetitions, and the rest. Thatâs one set. The correct number of sets is a tricky thing to determine, as thereâs not a lot of scientific studies on the matter. Most strength programs constructed by professional coaches that have shown results use between 3 and 5 sets of each exercise.
Approaching failure will vary and feel a little different as you do each set. Fatigue will build up, and a movement that you could confidently perform for 7 repetitions on the first set, might become 6 on the second, then 5, and so on.
These concepts form the second building block of our strength program: a specific set and repetition scheme. Because thereâs a lot of ways to vary those, letâs remove some choice from the equation:
For each exercise, you will perform 3 sets.
In each set, you will perform up to 5 repetitions. Stop if youâre not confident you can complete the next repetition.
Each set will be followed by 1â3 minutes of rest. Shorter rest is not better when strength training. Rest as long as you need.
Donât try to gut out an extra rep youâre not confident in it. Thatâs how you get hurt.
If you hit 5 repetitions in each set, consider the exercise successful for the purposes of our progression scheme.
Thatâs it. Now you know how to perform an exercise and when to progress. Next, weâll talk about what exercises you need to do.
And With What Exercises?
This is where it gets a little more complicated. You have choices in what exercises to do, but theyâre limited to a few broad categories. In each category, you need to make sure the exercise you choose can have load addedâ with dumbbells, a barbell, a sandbag, weighted vest, dip belt, or whatever. If you canât load the exercise incrementally, you canât use the progression scheme, making it a bad choice for strength training.
There are four categories you want to choose exercises from, and they are as follows:
A squat, where the hips and knees bend to move the torso up and down. Good choices are: barbell squat, zercher squat, dumbbell squat, or kettlebell squat. I recommend the classic barbell squat.
An upper body push, where you push weight away from the body or push the body away from an immovable surface. Good choices are: bench press, overhead press, weighted pushups, or weighted dips. I recommend weighted dips.
An upper body pull, where you pull weight toward the body or pull the body toward an immovable object. See: barbell rows, weighted pullups (any grip), dumbbell rows, or upright rows. I recommend weighted pullups.
A hip hinge, where the hips and knees bend to fold the body over, moving the hips horizontally. See: good morning, power clean, conventional deadlift, and sumo deadlift. I recommend either conventional or sumo deadlifts.
There are some ways in which these can be combined:
Adding a push press to the power clean is a good way to efficiently combine an upper body push with the hip hinge.
A trap bar deadlift sits somewhere between a squat and a hip hinge, effectively combining the two movements into one.
A muscle up requires some athleticism to begin with, but you can add weight to it and combine an upper body push and pull.
Ultimately, exercise choice is personal and based on your goals, but I would recommend one of the two plans:
Barbell Squat, Bench Press, Barbell Rows, Conventional or Sumo Deadlift
Trap Bar Deadlift, Weighted Pullups, Weighted Dips
The former is a classic barbell program that youâll see all over the place, while the latter is my favorite set of strength exercises, and the core of most of my programming.
tl;dr
If you want to try strength training like this, do the following:
Train two or three times a week, with at least one day if rest between sessions.
Choose four exercises (a squat, a push, a pull, and a hinge) and do the same exercises each session.
For each exercise, perform 3 sets of 5 repetitions with one to three minutes of rest between each set.
Progress the load from session to sessionâââsomewhere between 5â10lbs based on your performance.
Donât get discouraged if you miss the repsâââthatâs how you learn your current limits. Use the rules for reducing the load, and it will help you overcome those limits in a few sessions.
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