Strength
Strength training is a valuable part of your overall plan and is often overlooked and in some cases a misconception that it will build muscle.
It is arguable that all of us could benefit from an increase in strength from the boxer who cant deliver a knockout blow to the pensioner who struggles to climb a flight of stairs.
What is Strength Training
Strength is a simple concept to understand it is typically defined as being the maximum force that can be developed in a muscle or group of muscles during a single maximal contraction.
How to measure it.
In functional terms there are various ways of measuring it one of the most common is the one rep maximum (1RM), used in the gym to assess the maximum lift on a particular exercise. However, for many people, the one rep max is less important than, for example, muscular endurance that is strength applied over a period of time.
The key concept for developing strength is that of overload you must regularly stress the muscle, push it beyond what is has achieved before, in order to make progress.
Push yourself.
The accepted protocol for this is weight training that focuses on low repetitions of heavy weights for example, 4 6 reps per set. For this to be effective, however, it is essential that exhaustion is reached by the end of the set. Simply performing 5 reps of a weight with which you could do easily do 10 reps will achieve very little.
When combined with good nutrition, this is a tried and tested formula for gains in this area.
