Blog #8: Kickstarting a Strength Training Program
Thanks for tuning in to another blog post from Session 41 LLC, a Naples, Florida based personal training company designed to prevent injury and get you feeling and moving better. Blog #8 discusses how to get started in strength training.
What is Strength Training Exactly?
Strength training is a form of exercise based around the concept of progressive overload. Progressive Overload is defined as the process of systematically loading the body, allowing for recovery and adaptation, and then increasing the stressor over time. The old adage describing this concept is the Legend of Milo. The story revolves around Milo of Croton, a 6th Century B.C. Greek wrestler, who trained by lifting a baby calf every day. The legend has it that as the calf grew in size each day, so did Milo’s strength, and, eventually, it resulted in one man being able to lift a full grown bull overhead, an impossible feat of strength. This story has become widely popular in fitness industries and marketing, which is why you will often see many strength books and gyms mention the name “Milo”. What Milo does with the baby calf is exactly all that is done with strength training: progressive overload and adaptation.
But strength training, in reality, is a little more complex than that. If one were to really lift a baby calf overhead every day, there would come a point where they could no longer handle such load. The reason is because the baby calf would grow at a faster rate than the athlete could adapt and the fact that muscular adaptations tend to be cyclical. As such, strength training takes time, and the path to greater load adaptations is not linear. And bulls are just really heavy!
Getting Started
Although everyone is different and has varying starting points, here are some general principles published by the American College of Sports Medicine:
Ease into strength training with 1-2 nonconsecutive days per week
Start with 20-30 minute sessions and build up to 1 hour
Perform fundamental exercises targeting all major muscle groups (Rows, Pressing, and Squats)
Choose a resistance level that allows for 10-15 repetitions and 1-3 sets
Rest 1-2 minutes in between sets
Warm up and cool down with light intensity aerobic exercise before and after
The higher repetition count (10-15) is designed to give muscle and especially connective tissue enough of a stimulus to strengthen but not too much so that it becomes overloaded, which would likely happen if you abruptly went from doing nothing to performing 1 rep maxes. It is just a way to prepare the body for more load in the future.
What Got You Here Will Not Get You There.
The entire purpose of your body’s response to strength training is to better prepare you against that very thing in the future. This is known as the Principle of Specificity. It states that the body will adapt to the exact demands placed upon it, no more and no less. For instance, if you brush your teeth with your right hand, your right shoulder has become accustomed to supporting your arm for the duration of that activity. Now if you try to do that same thing but left handed, you will likely find your shoulder more quickly becoming fatigued because it is exposed to a new stressor. In essence, if you do the same thing all the time, you will not respond any differently.
Thus to progress, you would need to eventually change one or multiple parameters to see continuous improvement. This may mean increasing the number of repetitions, weight, sets, exercises, decreasing rest times, or choosing more challenging exercises. The specific parameters you change will alter the adaptation you incur. For instance, higher repetition counts and lower weight result in greater muscular endurance, while placing less of an emphasis on maximal strength, and vice versa. An increase in volume (Weight x Reps x Sets) is known to result in greater hypertrophy, the increasing of muscle fiber size. Increasing the weight gradually will stress the muscles’ and connective tissues’ capacity for load tolerance. We need all three adaptations, muscular endurance, hypertrophy, and strength, which is why many programs tend cycle back and forth between them.
So start with the aforementioned plan, but when you feel like you are getting stuck, experiment with altering one or multiple variables in your training (reps, sets, weight, tempo, exercise selection, or rest intervals). You are often your own best coach because you can gauge exactly how you respond to changes.
To hopefully simplifying things just a little bit,
Ethan
About the Author:
My name is Ethan Gendron, and I am a Certified Personal Trainer and founder of Session 41 LLC, a Naples Florida based fitness company. I am certified through W.I.T.S., an NCCA accredited institution. I have years of experience working with clients of all ages and backgrounds, ranging from seniors to children. My firsthand experience in training and competing in triathlons has given me insight into the practical application of biomechanics, mobility, and strength training for performance enhancement. I have a background in injury prevention, not by choice, and am passionate about helping others avoid chronic pain. No matter your current fitness-level, I believe everyone should think of themselves as an athlete and, therefore, train like one.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this blog for informational purposes only. Use information discussed here at your own risk. One should always consult a qualified Healthcare Professional before beginning any exercise program. Content published by Session 41 LLC should never be used as a substitute for proper clinical attention.
