People go to the gym for different purposes. Some want to lose weight. Others want to gain muscle mass. There are men and women who start going to the gym with the goal of creating a beautiful, pumped up, sculpted body. A special category of trainees consists of athletes who, during one workout, bench, lift, and pull enormous weights. They are working on increasing strength. Such activities require a thorough multifaceted approach.
Features of strength training
Training to develop strength involves using quite significant weight. Athletes who develop strength are unfamiliar with training with a large number of repetitions and the use of blocks. They don't do isolation exercises. Some movements, of course, can also be present in their training. This is a leg press or lat pulldown in a machine. They are performed as an additional load and not every workout.
Characteristics of strength training:
- A strength training program typically consists of basic exercises.
- Lack of repetition. The maximum number of repetitions performed does not exceed five times.
- Unlike training to increase muscle mass, on the contrary, there are more approaches. There can be up to six or eight in total.
- The rest time between sets also increases. It varies from three to five minutes. In some cases, the pause may last even longer.
- To achieve the most effective training, exercises that develop explosive strength are often used. These include the snatch and the clean and jerk.
- The number of training sessions directly depends on the weight the athlete is working with. If the weights lifted are one hundred percent of your one-repetition maximum, that is, 1RM, this workout is performed once a week. When the working weights are eighty percent of the one-repetition maximum, then you can train more, for example, twice a week.
- Experts advise against performing strength training more than once every four days. Muscles need to be allowed to rest and recover.
- The speed at which you perform the exercises also changes greatly. It decreases from medium to low. What is it for? This is done to prevent the body from getting used to such stress. If he gets used to it, they will become ineffective.
Aerobic exercise is not suitable for training to develop strength, since it pursues completely different goals that are incompatible with training to develop strength.
The main emphasis should be on the correct technique for performing each exercise. This greatly reduces the risk of serious injury. The correct technique allows you to increase muscle innervation, that is, create a large number of nerve endings. The result is a powerful response from the muscles, whose strength becomes much greater.
To develop strength, use the so-called ladder technique. It consists of increasing the working weight with each subsequent approach. In the last sets, the maximum ones are taken. This can be either eighty percent of the maximum or one hundred percent.
There comes a moment when the development of strength stops. Absolutely every athlete faces it. To “break through” a stop in strength development, it is necessary to perform presses with pauses during the movement. If, for example, they perform a barbell press from a lying position, then when lowering they fix it in the center of the amplitude.
The training can be diluted with other exercises. They can be performed with dumbbells or on exercise machines. More details about them in the later part of the article.
Strength development
Block 1. Mobility
Each exercise is performed in one approach.
1. Running in place
Duration: 3-5 minutes.
Warm up your muscles and get your heart rate up.
2. Cat-cow
Number of repetitions: 10.
Get on all fours and carefully round your spine. The head is lowered, the gaze is directed downwards. Then gently arch your back and raise your head, looking forward. This is one repetition. As you exhale, round your spine, and as you inhale, bend.
3. Lumbar rotation
Number of repetitions: 10.
Lie on your back with your arms extended to the sides, feet on the floor, legs bent at the knees. Slowly lower your knees from side to side.
4. Bridge
Number of repetitions: 10.
Lie on your back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor. Tighten your abs and lift your hips up. At the top point you should feel tension in your gluteal muscles. Slowly lower yourself to the starting position. This is one repetition.
5. Side lunges
Number of repetitions: 10 on each side.
Stand with your feet wide apart. Keeping your body straight, begin to lower yourself to one side, bending the knee of your supporting leg. The second leg remains straight. Feel a slight stretch in your hamstring. Return to the starting position and repeat on the other side.
6. Plank
Duration: 45 seconds.
In a plank position, support your body weight on your forearms and toes. The body is straight, the core muscles are tense. To make the task a little easier, you can spread your feet slightly to the sides.
Why and who needs to develop muscle strength?
Such training is relevant for weightlifters, powerlifters and other athletes taking part in bench press competitions. They are also relevant for bodybuilders. With the help of strength training, they overcome the “plateau” in their achievements. In other words, they get rid of a condition where regular training and nutrition no longer allow one to achieve an increase in muscle volume and mass.
Exercises that develop strength are also necessary for other athletes. A striking example is American football players. The bulk of their training consists of exercises aimed at increasing strength. In general, these athletes train to develop absolutely all their indicators, not just strength.
Strength training is important for anyone who wants to overcome a plateau.
Block 3. Circuit training
Instructions:
You have 10 minutes to complete as many sets as possible. Work at a pace that is comfortable for you.
1. Squats
Number of repetitions: 21.
2. Russian twist
Number of repetitions: 15.
Lie down on the floor. Lift your bent knees and upper body off the floor. Hands clasped in front of the chest. Now start turning your body left and right. For balance, the legs are slightly moved in the opposite direction.
3. Burpee
Number of repetitions: 9.
Stand up straight. Now do a squat and lower your hands to the floor. From this position, kick your legs back to get into a straight-arm plank position. Bring your legs back towards you and jump up. Land softly into a squat position. This is one repetition.
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The best exercises to develop strength
To increase strength, it is not enough to lift heavy weights. The muscular frame must develop comprehensively, since a weak “link” in the muscular structure, for example, the lower back muscles, when lifting a lot of weight on squats, completely deprives you of the opportunity to develop in strength indicators, and also threatens serious injury, so every strength exercise is the exercise that works the maximum number of muscles. But that's not all. To develop strength indicators, it is imperative to pay attention to explosive strength, so jerking techniques cannot be excluded.
Here is a list of great exercises to increase strength:
Best Exercises for Arm Strength
Of these, the best exercises for developing arm strength are: bench press, pull-ups, dips, push-ups, standing barbell press. These are basic exercises that, in addition to the deltoids and shoulder muscles, help strengthen other, larger muscles, such as the back and chest. The fact is that to develop strength, you should not perform isolation exercises like barbell curls or French presses. These are narrowly targeted exercises that hone the shape and relief of a particular muscle, but they directly influence the development of strength to a lesser extent.
Best Exercises for Leg Strength
Such exercises are deadlifts, squats, lunges, jumping jacks. These exercises, more than others, help increase strength, including explosiveness, of all muscles in general and give an anabolic boost by increasing testosterone production. Without these exercises, you should not hope to develop the muscles of the arms or other groups.
Remember, developing strength is a complex method that requires the involvement of more muscles and ligaments in the exercise, the development of not only external muscles, but also deep ones. And this will be facilitated not only by dynamic load, but also by static load - maintaining a position for a certain period of time. As you can see below, the training process is also aimed at developing explosive strength, without which it is sometimes impossible to overcome the stagnation of strength indicators. Read about static exercises here →
Developing strength strengthens muscles and contributes to their shortening due to their constant contraction and overexertion. Therefore, it is important to return the fibers to their normal anatomical state and help improve their flexibility and elasticity. To do this, do not neglect stretching your muscles at the end of your workout.
Definition of concept and variety
Strength is a person's ability to exert maximum muscular effort.
The following types are distinguished:
- absolute (maximum)
- strength endurance
- explosive (high-speed)
- home page
- static
- dynamic
- eccentric
Depending on what type of this quality is being developed, the appropriate training methodology is selected. For example, in powerlifting the emphasis is on maximum training, in weightlifting on speed, in arm wrestling a lot of attention is paid to static training, and so on.
However, we note that all these varieties are trained using almost the same exercises. Only the load mode and the technique of performing the movement change.
Tips from Gold`s Gym
Almost all of the above types of exercises are available not only in gyms, but also at home. However, you are unlikely to be able to calculate the correct loads and determine the appropriate type of exercise on your own. And in any of the fitness centers of the Gold`s Gym network, a highly qualified trainer will come to your aid. Together with it, you can choose the optimal set of exercises for developing endurance, and then, if desired, add strength training to it.
Gold`s Gym centers offer aquatic training in the pool, cycling and treadmill training in the gym, as well as many other types of activities. Developing and adjusting individual fitness programs will help you find your ideal figure!
