Directions on Basic Strength Training
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Strength Training 101

Every movement you make—from simple walking to talking on the phone—involves your muscles. Muscles are unique. They have the ability to relax, contract and produce force. They are ‘metabolically active’, meaning that the more muscle you have, the more calories your body uses at rest and during exercise. Your muscles respond quickly to strength training, which helps them to become larger and stronger.

If you don’t know anything about strength training, this is a great place to start. We’ll tell you everything you need to know to begin and even offer a few tips for experienced exercisers.

What is Strength Training?

Strength training is the process of exercising with progressively heavier resistance for the purpose of strengthening the musculoskeletal system (the muscles that hold our bodies up). It is also referred to as weight lifting, weight training, body sculpting, toning, body-building or resistance training.

Strength training can be done with a variety of equipment such as resistance bands, stability ball, hand weights, machines or body weight.

Benefits of Strength Training

Regular strength training increases the size and strength of the muscle fibers. It also strengthens the tendons, ligaments and bones. This has a positive impact on your physical fitness, appearance and metabolism, while lowering your risk of injury and decreasing joint and muscle pain.

Since muscles are metabolically active tissue, the more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism is at rest. That’s why strength training is an important component of weight loss and weight maintenance.

Without consistent strength training, muscle size and strength decline with age. An inactive person loses half a pound of muscle every year after age 20. After the age of 60, this rate of loss doubles. However, muscle loss can be avoided. With regular strength training, muscle mass can be preserved throughout your lifetime and any muscle lost can also be rebuilt.

4 Principles of Strength Training

The four principles of strength training are guidelines that will help you strength train safely and effectively reach your goals.

1. The Tension Principle: The key to developing strength is creating tension within a muscle (or group of muscles). Tension is created by resistance from weights (like dumbbells), specially-designed strength training machines, resistance bands, or using the weight of your own body.

3 Methods of Resistance:

1. Calisthenics (using your own body weight): You can use the weight of your own body to develop muscle, but using body weight alone is less effective for developing larger muscles and greater strength. However, calisthenics are great for improving general muscular fitness and our current level of muscular strength. Examples include: push-ups, crunches, dips, pull ups, lunges and squats, to name a few.
2. Fixed Resistance: This method of resistance provides a constant amount of resistance throughout the full range of motion (ROM) of a strength training exercise. This means that the amount of resistance/weight you are lifting does not change during the movement. For example, during a 10-pound curl, you are lifting 10 pounds throughout the motion. Fixed resistance helps to strengthen all the major muscle groups in the body. Examples include: Exercises that use dumbbells (free weights), resistance bands and tubes and some machines.
3. Variable Resistance: During exercises with variable resistance, the amount of resistance changes as you move through the range of motion. This creates a more steady effort throughout the entire exercise. For example, when lifting weights, it is harder to lift up against gravity and easier to lower the weight down with gravity. Specially-designed machines (like Nautilus and Hammer Strength brands) take the angle, movement and gravity into account so that the release of a biceps curl feels just as hard as the lifting phase of the curl.

2. The Overload Principle: In order to build strength, your muscles must work harder than they are accustomed to. This “overload” will result in increased strength as the body adapts to the stress placed upon it. Everyone begins at a certain level of strength. To become stronger, you must regularly increase the tension (weight or resistance) that your muscles work against, causing them to adapt to a new level. As the muscles respond to each overload, they will grow in size and strength.

2 Types of Strength Overload:

1. Isometric (“same length”) A high-intensity contraction of the muscle with no change in the length of the muscle. In other words, your muscles are working hard but the muscle itself remains static. Isometric exercises are good for variety and some strength maintenance, but they don’t challenge your body enough to build much strength.
2. Isotonic (“same tension”) When you lift weights or use resistance bands, your muscles are shortening and lengthening against the resistance. This challenges your muscles throughout the entire range of motion. However, the amount of force the muscle generates will change throughout the movement (force is greater at full contraction/shortening of the muscle). Unlike isometric exercises, this type of contraction does help build strength.

3. The Specificity of Training Principle: This refers to the fact that only the muscle or muscle-group you exercise will respond to the demands placed upon it. By regularly doing bicep curls, for example, the muscles involved (biceps) will become larger and stronger, but curls will have no effect on the muscles that are not being trained (such as your legs). Therefore, when strength training, it is important to strengthen all of the major muscle groups.

4. The Detraining Principle: After consistent strength training stops, you will eventually lose the strength that you built up. Without challenging them with more weights (overload) or lifting the same amount (maintenance), muscles will weaken in two weeks or less! This is the basis of why individuals lose muscle mass as they age—because they are detraining by exercising less frequently.