Strength Training Principles And Practices
Almost any form of exercise will stimulate some degree of strength and muscle development. Unfortunately, misconceptions, myths, and misunderstandings plague the fitness industry, especially in regard to strength training. There is a huge attrition rate among those starting a strength training program primarily because most people are not taught the principles essential for a safe and effective program.
This article is part one of a five part series discussing the very important principles and guidelines of a safe and effective strength training program. Part one will explain the proper methods of warming-up, stretching, and cooling-down when strength training. Part two will discuss the importance of forcing blood to your muscles and proper lifting speed.
The following exercise guidelines are extremely important for your safety and the effectiveness of your strength training program.
Warming Up, Cooling Down and Stretching
Warming-up promotes safety, prevents injury, and increases performance. You should warm up two ways with the purpose of creating blood flow throughout the body and thus preparing your muscles for the workout. First, before beginning your weightlifting session, do some form of cardiovascular exercise at a light, comfortable intensity for about five to ten minutes. Walking or riding a bicycle works well. When you’ve completed" your warm-up, be sure to stretch the primary muscles you’ve been using. For example, if you warmed-up on the bicycle, stretch your quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, and hips.
Then, for the first exercise of each muscle group, do a warm-up set with very light weight for 12-20 repetitions. For example, if your first chest exercise is the bench press,do a warm-up set of very light weight and then continue with your selected chest routine. When you have completed your chest workout and are ready to train the next muscle group, once again do a warm-up set; then continue training that muscle group, and so on.
Stretching provides better physical performance, prevents debilitating injuries, and makes you look and feel better by improving your posture. This is because when muscles are stretched, their elasticity improves, increasing your range of motion and improving the quality of your movements. Never stretch a cold muscle-always make sure your muscles are warm before stretching. When a muscle is properly warmed-up it is better able to become: elastic and relaxes more easily; warming up also circulates blood to nearby tissues and helps remove unwanted waste products from your system.
In addition to stretching the muscles involved in the cardiovascular exercise, you should spend time stretching each specific ‘muscle you have trained in your weightlifting program. This won’t take much more time and the benefits are many. You have to rest between your strength training sets anyway, so you might as well use this time more productively-for stretching. Think about it: what better time to stretch than right after you have targeted blood, to a specific muscle? After you have properly warmed up each muscle group, stretch between sets. Each set requires a resting period-usually between 30 seconds and three minutes (depending on what you are trying to achieve). Use your resting time wisely and stretch the specific muscle being trained. Stretch only after the muscle has been properly warmed-up and about once every two to three sets per muscle group.
By the time you have finished training each muscle of the body, you will have incorporated stretching into your program, and at the best possible time to stretch-right after exercise, when the muscle is warm. This stretching between exercises is a valuable technique and will make a tremendous difference in your health.
The cool-down after strength training is also crucial. Whenever a vigorous exercise session is stopped abruptly, blood tends to accumulate in the lower body. With reduced blood return, cardiac output decreases and lightheadedness may occur. Because muscle movement helps squeeze blood back to the heart, it is important to continue some muscle activity after the last exercise is completed. Easy cycling, walking, or any other cardiovascular exercise at low intensity is an appropriate cool-down activity, as is any other form of cardiovascular exercise. Cool down for about 5-10 minutes at light
intensity, similar to your warm-up.
Importance of Blood Supply to your Muscles
It is important to understand the value and purpose of targeting or forcing blood to the muscles you are training. Many of the principles we teach have the sole purpose of forcing blood into your muscles. When you use proper lifting technique, you will notice blood racing to the specific muscle you are training. And this is exactly what you Want to happen.
When blood is forced into your muscles during your weightlifting program it potentiates the ‘microtrauma’ or tiny little tears in your muscles that we mentioned earlier. When this happens, your muscle tissues repair and rebuild themselves bigger and stronger than they were-if you allow ample resting time. This is why you never train the same muscle group two days in a row; if you do, you cut off the rebuilding process.
You will know that you are using proper form when you feel a warmth, some fatigue, and a ‘burning’ feeling at the end of each set for each muscle group. If you do not get this feeling, you probably need to review the proper form for your exercise. This may be an indication that you are making other common mistakes in your routine that do not allow blood to be fully targeted to the your muscles.
One of the most common mistakes people make is not training their muscle groups in an organised, systematic fashion. Always do every set and every exercise for specific muscle groups together. For example, if your chest routine consists of three sets of bench press, do all three sets, separated by resting periods, and then go on to the next muscle group. Or, if your chest routine consists of two or three different chest exercises, do all of those chest exercises together. Do the Bench Press, then Incline Bench Press, then Flys, for example-until your chest routine is complete. Then you can move on to the next muscle group. Many people make the mistake of doing a set of Bench Press for their chest, then a set of Biceps Curls, then another set of Bench Press, and then on to another muscle group, and so on. This does not fully target blood into anyone muscle group. You are just teasing your chest muscles and then moving on to tease another muscle group without ever targeting enough blood into any muscle group to cause much stimulation for improvement.
Another common mistake is eating right before your training program or eating too soon after your program. This can cause your heart and digestive system to work too hard and compromise the oxygen and nutrient delivery to the working muscles. Eating just before or too soon after your workout will not allow you to get enough blood into the muscles you are training.
Think about this: Digestion takes a lot of blood to work effectively. The more blood your body sends to digest your food the less blood is available to go to your muscles, to rebuild and increase strength. You should wait at least 60 minutes after eating before you start your exercise program.
Similarly, do not eat too soon after ending your workout because you want the blood that you just targeted into each specific muscle to remain there as long as possible. If you eat food too soon after your workout, the blood will be forced out of your muscles and into your digestive system. So wait at least 60 minutes after your program before you eat a meal.
Of course you should not go to your workouts hungry; you definitely want nutrients in your system for performance enhancement and energy, but try to eat an hour or more before workouts, and make sure your meal includes foods that are rich in complex carbohydrates and protein and low in fat sugar and cholesterol.
Lifting Speed
One of the most important elements in weightliftingone that has a big effect on how much blood is targeted to your muscles-is lifting speed. Speed plays a major role in the incidence of injury as well as strength and muscle development. Fast lifting creates momentum and doesn’t promote blood flow to the muscle. Slow movement creates less momentum and less internal muscle friction. Not only does slow lifting require a more even application of muscle power throughout the movement range, it actually promotes rapid blood flow into the specific muscle you are training.
In every strength training exercise for every muscle there are two different parts to each repetition of the exercise set performed. One, the concentric contraction-called the ‘positive’ phase of the repetition-is the part where the muscle is actually doing the work, such as the lifting motion of the bicep curl-from the beginning where your arms are hanging straight down to the point where the weight is lifted up.
The second part is the eccentric contraction-called the ‘negative’ phase of the repetition-is the part with, resistance, because you are returning the weight from the end of the positive phase back to the beginning. In the bicep curl, this is where you let the weight come back slowly to the beginning position, with your arms extended straight down again.
It is more important to let the weight come back slowly on the ‘negative’ phase than on the ‘positive’ phase. Coming back slowly with resistance on every exercise is very, very important because this is the phase that promotes blood flow to your muscles and thus causes microtrauma, building your muscles even stronger during your day of rest. We recommend one to two seconds for each lifting movement (the positive phase), and three to four seconds for each lowering movement (the negative phase). Whatever your actual lifting speed, remember to always come back slower with resistance (the negative phase) for each and every weightlifting exercise. If you find that the weight is so heavy that you cannot come back slowly in full control of the movement, you should lighten the, weight until you can. Many people pay far too much attention to the quantity or weight of the lift and not the quality of the movement performed. Your muscles cannot know how much weight is on the bar or machine, but they will respond very well when you are using good, controlled form and come back slowly with resistance.
Form/Technique
The most common and critical training mistakes may be those of exercise technique. The tendency to use too much weight typically results in poor form, which decreases your ability to get results, and increases the risk of injury. Examples of poor form or technique are: bouncing the bar off the chest in the Bench Press; using hip and back, or extension to initiate Bicep Curls; arching the back or bending backward under Shoulder Presses; using any sort of momentum in any exercise; and training at fast speeds. These mistakes will not send the blood you need into your muscles and will work counter to your goals. Be aware of these mistakes and eliminate them from your program.
Exercise Through Full Range of Motion
Perform each exercise through a full range of motion, with emphasis on the end of the positive phase. Full range exercise movements are advantageous for strengthening the prime-mover, or agonist muscles the muscles directly trained in the exercise, such as the biceps in the biceps curl. Lifting in the full range of motion is also advantageous for stretching the antagonist muscles, the muscles that act in opposition to the agonist. In the Biceps Curl, the triceps is the antagonist. Training in the full range of motion enhances both muscle strength and joint flexibility.
Exercise Selection
It is very important to select at least one exercise for each major muscle group to promote well-balanced muscle development. Training only a few muscle groups or training one muscle group more increases the risk of injury.
Exercise Sequence
Another important element of strength training is exercise sequence. When performing a variety of weightlifting exercises, it is advisable to proceed from the larger muscle groups to the smaller muscle groups. This allows optimal performance of the most demanding exercises when fatigue levels are the lowest and you feel fresh. Another reason, one that is often overlooked, is illustrated by the common example of training both back and biceps. Ordinarily, you would want to train your back first, since it is the larger muscle group of the two; let’s say you are doing the Rear Lat. pull-down. In that exercise, you are indirectly working your biceps, too, since both muscle groups are at work in the pulling motion. This means that your biceps will actually be warmed up and ready to train when you get to them. This is the same for exercises requiring pushing motions such as the chest, shoulders, and triceps. By the time you are done with your chest exercises, both your shoulders and your triceps are warm and ready to train. Of course, you might not always do your ‘pulling’ (back and biceps) and your ‘pushing’ ( chest, shoulders, triceps) motions on the same day-because as you reach a plateau you will want to change your exercises, the order that you do them, and the muscles that you train together, to provide a new stimulus and interest for yourself. This will be discussed soon.
Sets Another important element is exercise sets. An exercise set is the number of successive repetitions performed without resting. The number of sets per exercise is largely a matter of goals, interests and personal preference. We recommend that people treat their first set as a Warm-Up-12-20 reps with relatively light weight (done slowly). Then you can do either one, two, or three more sets -even up to six (strength and power program)dependig on whether you are at a beginning, intermediate, or advanced level and what you are trying to accomplish.
If you are working on your second exercise for a particular muscle group, we recommend that you do either two or three sets for that exercise since that muscle is already warmed-up from the first exercise. Regardless of the number of sets performed, each set-and each repetition-should be done in proper exercise form and under control.
Relationship Between Resistance and Repetitions
It’s important to understand the inverse relationship between exercise resistance and exercise repetitions. When exercising to the point of muscle fatigue, most people can complete about six repetitions with 85 percent of maximum resistance. ‘Maximum resistance’ is the most weight you can lift one time, in good form. Most people can complete eight repetitions with 80 percent of maximum resistance 10 repetitions with 75 percent of maximum resistance and 12 repetitions with 70 percent of maximum resistance. For most people (those seeking muscle strength and tone),8-12 repetitions with 70-80 percent of maximum resistance is a sound training recommendation for strength and muscle development. Most people do not bother with finding their one repetition maximum for each lift to obtain the appropriate weight for each set of 8-12 reperitions. This would get pretty tedious especially when you are learning a new exercise.
Really, the best and easiest way to figure out how much weight you should use on each lift is to begin by taking your best conservative guess. After you have warmed up by using a light weight for 12 or 20 reps, choose a weight for your next set that will challenge you for your goal number of repetitions. If you are not sure what that weight should be, choose a weight that is likely to be too light, rather than making the mistake of going too heavy not reaching your desired number of repetitions. For example, say you are trying to decide the proper weigh for a set of 12 repetitions on the Shoulder Press. Choose light, conservative weight slightly heavier than your warmup and do the set 12 times (repetitions or reps). When you come to your twelfth repetition, if you feel as though you can perform another repetition or two, while still using good form, you might as well do that (to further promote blood flow to the shoulder muscle). Since you know that the weight you chose was a little too light (your 12th repetition was not a challenge), next time choose a slightly heavier weight that will challenge you for all twelve repetitions, or whatever your goal number of repetitions happens to be.
Important Note: Your strength may gradually decline as you progress through your routine. For example, on your first set (after warm-up) of the Bench Press you did 12 reps with 150 pounds-this would force a good amount of blood and fatigue your chest muscles. If for your second set you’re trying to figure out the appropriate weight for 10 reps, you may or may not want to slightly increase the weight. That is, 150 pounds might be a challenging weight for 10 reps because your muscles are a little fatigued from the first set. So, try to be intuitive and pick an appropriate weight based not only on the weight you used on the previous set, but also how fatigued your muscles feel.
It is important that the weight you choose for each set challenges you for all of your desired repetitions, whether the number is 6,8, 10, or 12 repetitions. Similarly, if you choose a weight that does not allow you to perform all the desired repetitions in good form, do as many as you can and choose a lighter weight for the next set. It is a good idea to keep a record of the weights you use on each lift so that when you perform the same exercise at another workout you know what weight to use on each exercise set. In general, if your goal is to get notably bigger and significantly stronger, you will want to do fewer reps with more ‘weight, so 6-10 reps is a good target for you on most exercises. Sometimes, on exercises like the bench press and squats, even as low as 2 reps will be enough. If you are more concerned with creating muscle tone, your rep number should be in the range of 10-15. Most people’s goal is a combination of muscle strength, size and tone; the target number for these folks should stay between 812 repetitions. Remember, however, that whether you are going for 6 reps or 15, always pick a weight that will challenge you for the full set.
Progressive Resistance
As your muscles adapt to a given exercise resistance (weight), that resistance must be gradually increased to stimulate further gains. The key to strength and muscle development is progressive resistance, which is also called ‘exercise progression,’ or ‘the overload principle’. This is the gradual and continual addition of weight to the exercise over time, as the previous weights become too easy to lift, so that your muscles are continually forced to work harder and thus increase muscle strength, size and tone. For example, in the Front Shoulder Press you might start out pressing (lifting) 20 pounds. After two or three weeks you may find that pressing 20 pounds has become too easy, and that you can do more than your chosen number of repetitions with little or no difficulty. The progression principle demands that as soon as the weight you are using is no longer a challenge, you must raise it. You progressively increase the weight you use for a lift so that you continue to make gains in muscle tone, size, and strength. It is important that you increase the weight only if the previous weight is too light; increasing the weight to push yourself harder can result in poor form and definitely increases the risk of injury. Please understand that an increase in repetitions is an increase in strength. Many people think strength gains are only obtained when they increase the weight. But if you have increased the number of repetitions you can do with good form, you have increased your strength and more than likely, your muscle size and tone as well.
Avoid Over Training
If you feel burnt out, weak, and/or sore, you are probably over training. Not providing your muscles with enough rest will often prevent you from making improvements. Training the wrong muscle groups on consecutive days will also counteract your good results. Doing too many sets and exercises per muscle group will also cause over training. Remember that weightlifting, especially in an intense program, produces tissue microtrauma, those tiny tears in the muscles that temporarily decrease strength and cause varying degrees of muscle soreness. It is absolutely necessary to provide ample rest time between successive training sessions. Muscles generally require about 48 hours for the resting and rebuilding process before you work them again.
You should never train the same muscle groups on two or more days in a row (abdominals are the exception). Hypothetically then, you would do your chest, shoulders, triceps, and abdominals on Monday; on Tuesday you would train your legs, back, biceps, and abdominals; you would take Wednesday off to give all your muscle groups extra rest; on Thursday you’d do chest, shoulders, triceps, and abdominals again; and on Friday you’d do legs, back, biceps, and abdominals again. This would allow two days (48 hours) of rest for each muscle between training days.
Those of you who train very intensely, would benefit greatly by taking even more rest time between sessions. A week does not have to be limited to only seven days-you can expand it to eight, nine, or even ten days. Think about it: why not? Day one could consist of chest, shoulders, triceps, (pushing muscles) and abdominals on Monday. Take Tuesday off. On day two, Wednesday, the routine could consist of legs, back, biceps, (pulling muscles) and abdominals. Take Thursday off. On Friday you do chest, shoulders, triceps, and abdominals again-and so on. This is especially important when mixing pushing and pulling muscles for different sessions. For example, if you train your chest on Monday and then triceps the next day, your triceps never really get a complete rest because they are indirectly trained with your chest on Monday and directly trained on Tuesday. But if you split up chest/shoulders/ triceps or back/biceps, working them on different days, you can implement this eight day program for maximum muscle resting time. Remember: always allow your muscles a chance to grow, especially when you are feeling over trained. If needed, give yourself an extra day off to grow.
Never feel guilty about skipping a workout. That extra rest could be exactly what your body needs.
Many people make the mistake of doing too many sets per exercise, and/or doing too many exercises per muscle group. It’s very common for people who want great muscle size and strength gains to simply do too much for each muscle group and over train to the point where they do more harm than good. A common weightlifting recommendation is to do at least four sets for each exercise and at least four exercises for each muscle group. This idea that ‘more is better’ is a big misconception in the strength training industry and is recommended in many ‘muscle magazines’ and other sources.
But when you see Mr. or Ms. Olympia in muscle magazines describing their workouts of four to five sets per exercise and four to five exercises per muscle group, do not be fooled into thinking that if you want their results you have to do what they do. These are professional body builders, quite likely to be on steroids; they can get away with these very intense long programs because their muscles are able to rebuild very quickly. If you are not on steroids-and for the sake of your health I hope you are not-your muscles will not be able to rebuild themselves quickly enough to make gains.
For each of the large muscle groups in the body such as back, chest, shoulders, quadriceps, and hamstrings, two to four exercises for each muscle is enough. For the smaller muscle groups such as biceps, calves, trapezius, etc. one to three exercises are enough. Because your back, for example, has specific muscles that need to be isolated, it is important that of the three exercises you perform, you do one that primarily targets each of the three areas: uppermiddle back, and lower back.
When you’re doing two to four exercises for each muscle group, make sure you don’t duplicate movements of specific muscle groups. For example, it makes no sense to do three sets of Bench Press using a barbell and then do three sets of Bench Press using dumbbells or Push-ups. Each of these exercises requires exactly the same movement and works the same specific muscle. Instead, it would make much more sense to do bench press for overall middle chest (either barbell, dumbbell, or machine); do incline bench press for upper chest; and do dips for lower-outer chest.
One point-maybe the most important of all for ongoing strength training programs-that is absolutely imperative to understand and implement into your training regimen is the need to overcome training plateaus. Ideally, you want to always be going through a momentum phase in which you try something new and ’shock’ your muscles, forcing them to make gains. Eventually however, you will come to a point in your training where you either get bored or stop seeing results.
When this happens it is absolutely crucial that you change What you are doing; this is when you need to get creative by incorporating something new into your program. You can make effective changes in your program in many ways: try new or alternate exercises, change the order that you train your muscles or the order of the exercises, and so forth.
I hope you have found the information in these five part series of articles helpful. You now have the knowledge to achieve the results you desire and the benefits your body deserves. Your greatest challenge, however, is not learning new exercises or the proper technique; it’s not learning how many sets or reps to do or how much weight to use. Nor is it deciding when or how to change your routine. The greatest challenge facing you at this moment is deciding whether you are willing to take action and make strength training a priority.
When you begin achieving great results, the excitement and fun you experience will make the change well worth the effort. Action creates motivation! Good luck: I hope you enjoy all the wonderful benefits of an effective strength training program.