| "You can't ever get too strong"... as an athlete who is serious about meeting and exceeding your goals for your sport. To reach your personal goals you must be willing and able to train year round. Today in athlete competition you can not expect a championship performance after only a few months of training each year. It takes commitment and dedication.
There are two main goals of a strength development program, they are to enhance your athletic performance while also lessening the chance for injuries.
A rational athlete must understand that once they have established a goal, it is crucial that you successfully achieve that goal. To achieve a goal in athletics you must also seek out the most productive, or time-saving methods to achieve the goal. Your motivation is not to look like a "body builder," but to enhance your athletic performance with a solid strength training program.
It is a fact that anyone, no matter what your genetic endowment, can expect improvements in their existing physical condition. The key is to train specifically for your sport.
The Intensity Factor
Properly defined, intensity refers to the percentage of possible momentary muscular effort being exerted. It is only on the last repetition of a set carried to a point of momentary muscular failure that an individual is forced to exert 100 percent of their momentary ability.
Executing that last, almost impossible rep causes the body to dip into its reserve abilities. Since the body has only a small amount of this reserve to draw upon before depletion occurs, the body protects itself from future assaults on its reserves by enlarging upon its existing ability through the compensatory buildup of more muscle tissue.
Only high-intensity training can force the body to resort to its reserve ability sufficiently to stimulate an adaptive response. Repeating tasks that are well within your existing capacity will do nothing to spur growth. Ending a set before failure, just because of an arbitrarily chosen number of repetitions have been completed will not cause you to develop strength.
Carry a set to the point where you are forced to utilize 100 percent of your momentary muscular ability is the single most important factor in increasing strength. Working to a point of momentary muscular failure, where another rep is impossible despite your greatest effort, ensures that you pass through the "break-over point," or that point in the set below which growth will not be stimulated, and above which growth and strength will be stimulated.
Brief, high-intensity training stimulates the body in a way that no amount of lesser intensity training even closely approximates. To make this point fully clear, compare the cause-and-effect relationship between intense exercise and muscular strength to striking a stick of dynamite with a hammer to cause an explosion. Only one hard, well-placed blow from the hammer is required to stimulate an explosion, and no number of lesser blows will do the job. Likewise, only one set of high-intensity exercises is required to stimulate growth in a muscle, with no amount of lower intensity exercises having the same effect.
Perfect Form - Perfect Results
Many athletes who strength train are in the habit of sacrificing form for weight. This method of training involves four distinct and essential elements for good form.
Use slow, strict repeititions in both the lifting and lowering portion of each exercise
When you are moving too fast through exercises, inertia - and very little of your muscle power is doing the work. So, you are not really getting much from the exercise. Plus, fast lifting is very stressful on your connective tissue. Each repetition should be performed in a slow, controlled fashion throughout the range of motion.
Bring your opposing muscles into play
Always strive to make the exercise harder by actively pulling with the antagonistic muscle group during the lowering or negative portion of the exercise. This technique stimulates more muscle fibers for greater strength and growth.
Lock out on all exercises
To get the most from every repetition, lock out each time - but without resting between each rip. Locking out activates more muscle fibers and allows you to work a muscle through its full range of motion. By locking out, you also work your synergistic muscles (those muscles which assist or stabilize the muscle producing the primary action.)
Put mental effort into every repetition
To accomplish all of the above and then some, you must exert tremendous mental effort. The degree to which you can push yourself physically depends on your power to concentrate - the more concentrated your efforts, the closer you can get to achieving your goals.
Training to Failure
To stimulate increases in muscular strength, it is imperative that you regularly attempt the momentary impossible. For example, if you can bench press 225 pounds for 10 reps, but never attempt the 11th, your body has no reason to enlarge upon its existing capacity. It is only by regularly attempting to go beyond your existing capacity that inroads are made into your body's reserve capacity, and since reserves are limited, the body compensates with increased size and strength of the muscle tissue, so that the same workout in the future will not use up the precious, limited reserves.
Proper Weight Selection
It is suggested that you select a weight for each exercise which allows for the performance of approximately 6-10 repetitions in the manner described above. Never terminate a set, just because a prescribed number of reps has been completed. The range 6-10 reps is offered as a guideline, because fewer than six reps will not tax your reserves sufficiently, and more than 12 reps could cause you to terminate the set due to cardio respiratory insufficiency before the muscular failure is reached.
It is absolutely essential that you do not select a weight which is so light that the last rep (one that is within or close to the suggested range) requires anything less than 100 percent of your momentary ability, nor so heavy that you are forced to sacrifice proper lifting form. If you cannot hold the weight in the contracted position without having it fall aback, it is too heavy. Since all of your skeletal muscles have greater ability in holding a weights that they do in lifting them, you should be able to hold a weight that you lifted by the force of muscular contraction alone at any given point in the range of motion. If you cannot hold the weight you selected in the contracted position, then you did not lift it, you threw it.
Warming Up
Before starting a workout, it is important that you spend some time warming up the muscles that are to be trained. It is not necessary, however, that you stretch all the major muscle groups, perform aerobic exercises, or engage in any more exercise (even light to moderate exercise) than the minimum muscles and joints that you are working that day.
Remember that over-training means doing more exercise that the least amount required to achieve the desired results. This applies to warming up as well.
Warming up the muscles you are working is beneficial because it not only brings extra warmth, blood and oxygen to the area, but it also activates various enzyme systems, all of which contributes to the muscles being able to contract more intensely, and with less likelihood of injury.
Final Thoughts
Keep a training journal. Record the date of each workout, the amount of weight used for each exercise, and the number of repetitions performed. You should be getting stronger - as evidenced by an increase in repetitions, weight or both on a regular basis. As long as you are getting stronger you are on the right track. Even a one rep increase is significant.
Exercises can be changed periodically as long as you continue to adhere to the basic principles. No training program can guarantee how much strength can be developed, this is a matter of genetics. Utilizing the training principles above, however will help you ensure optimal progress and the actualization of your full physical potential.
The key to success in trainining is intensity. It is not about how much time you spend, but the quality of the time spent in training. Don't be fooled into thinking that more is better when it comes to strength training. Our goal is to become the best athlete you can be. You do not have to sacrifice hours of time each day from your life to become strong. You just need to be disciplined, committed, consistent while training efficiently and intelligently to get the job done.
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