Strength – physical strength in this case, has one of the greatest influences on how we interact with our external environment. By definition, strength is simply the capacity to produce force. Our bodies produce this force via the neuromuscular system and the complex network of motor units and lever systems that compose it. Requirements of this force production vary throughout most of our day-to-day life. Performing a squat with 300 lbs. demands 300 lbs. of force production from the muscles responsible for hip and knee extension. Likewise, pull-starting that old push mower on Saturday requires the same necessary force production from the shoulder extensors. The point is, whether you are training for a powerlifting world championship or just trying to pick up your toddler without your back crying foul, strength matters.
No matter your level of strength aspirations, the process of getting to your end goal is comprised of a series of physiological adaptations. The first adaptations to take place are within the neuromuscular system. The body begins to place a priority on activating more motor units with greater speed and efficiency. This means that training for strength not only increases force production, but also increases traits like balance and stability. This becomes apparent to anyone who does a squat for the first time and feels off-balance and wobbly, only to perform the same exercise weeks later with more weight and no shakiness present. Similar compound exercises done standing on BOSU balls or other wildly unstable surfaces to train balance are just plain unnecessary (unless you’re someone who routinely finds yourself having to move objects while standing on such a surface during your daily life – I’ve not yet met such a person) and usually only increase the potential for injury. Most initial strength gains are solely via these neuromuscular adaptations, yet continued overload also brings a more visual change – the addition of new muscle mass.
For many of us formerly underweight dudes, it is the primary reason we ever awkwardly stumbled into a weight room freshman year – to get JACKED. And although none of us ended up looking like Arnold in his prime, many of us added a relatively substantial amount of muscle through showing up and following the simple rule of adding a little more weight to the bar every workout. As far as I can remember from that time, me and the guys I trained with never did any overspecialized routines, super-high volume bodybuilding programs, and certainly didn’t adhere to any ideas of “confusing muscles” (I was confused enough about the world at age 14). We only followed our coach’s prescription of compound barbell lifts (usually bench presses, cleans, and plenty of squats) with the goal of getting stronger, which was typically met by sets of 5 or 3 reps. Dumbbells filled in the rest of our assistance exercises – mostly rowing and the occasional direct arm work that we all longed for… how else are you going to look like Arnold?
The lesson of this anecdote is this: even when training purely to get stronger, muscle mass is an eventual by-product of the process. This is because after your muscles have increased the efficiency at which they innervate and contract, they turn to the next best thing to maximize force production – increasing cross-sectional area, or in 14-year-old terms: getting JACKED. Think larger engine = greater potential horsepower. And although more advanced trainees will need to rely on higher volumes and more sophisticated training to continue building significant muscle to fuel new horsepower, the point is that you can still grow quite a bit from pretty simple, to-the-point strength training. Aside from any aesthetic goals that this muscle growth may help with, it is also helpful to your metabolism in the long run. Muscles are the body’s largest consumers of energy, so with more muscle mass, you become much more efficient at burning calories while, uh… basically living your life.
And no ladies, strength training will not make you look like a pro bodybuilder, unless you plan to take plenty of performance-enhancing drugs while doing so. That is a topic for another time and could be a whole post in itself, so I’ll digress for now.
I’ve defined strength as the capacity to produce force against our external environment, so when we train strength it is commonly done so by loading stress in the form of weight on the musculoskeletal system. This added weight on the body not only has a training effect on the muscular components of that system, but the skeletal portion as well. Although it was once thought that bones were more of a static structure, we now know that bones are a living tissue, meaning they adapt to internal and external stimuli. As we grow up, our bones adapt to the additional force of gravity placed upon them by increasing their density, thus becoming stronger. So what happens when you take the normal weight placed on your axial skeleton and add 100 lbs. to it by performing 100 lb. squats? Your bones adapt and become stronger. 200 lb. squat? Even stronger. 400 lb. squat? Yup, stronger still. The same principle holds true for connective tissue like tendons and ligaments.
Now, I’m not saying that you should walk into the gym tomorrow and load up 4 plates a side in the squat rack and take it for a ride in an attempt to build the strongest bones ever. The take-home is that getting stronger through incremental loading creates a gradual increase in bone density, which may just save you from your next potential injury, either in the near future, or later down the road.
As we age, it is a common theme that we start realizing how many seemingly mundane daily tasks we take for granted. Things get more difficult, risk of injury climbs, and we eventually become less independent, at least in some endeavors. Staving off the probability of things like falling, osteoporosis, arthritis, even back pain – can make a huge difference in maintaining control over daily activities or preventing an injury with devastating after-effects. Remember some of those physical qualities that strength increases? Force production, balance, stability, bone density and connective tissue health? Seems like a pretty cut-and-dry prescription.
Keep in mind that as we become elderly, it probably won’t be possible for us to build these traits up at the same rate we could at a younger age, and at a certain time, it’s likely that the goal will shift to simply maintaining these traits for as long as we can, or even just slowing the process of degradation that occurs naturally with old age. At any rate, not only getting stronger, but staying as strong as possible into the golden years is an active fight against frailty, which will not only improve the quality of your life, but may save it one day as well.
Along with all the physical benefits of increased strength, there is also a psychological change that seems to take place in many people. I really don’t mean to sound too cliche here, but I’d be lying if I said that many trainees don’t report a significant boost in confidence and self-esteem throughout their progress. I don’t have any sort of statistical figure available for this, and I realize it’s highly subjective, but I estimate the correlation between training progress and mental fortitude is too large for anyone to just write off. I also recognize that this phenomenon is bound to happen when anyone makes noticeable progress in any sort of endeavor (not just fitness-related) that he or she is putting time into, but I feel it is worth mentioning because I have seen it happen time and time again. I’ve never ceased to be surprised at the amount of clients I work with who come to me on day one and proclaim that they’ll never be able to [insert strength goal]. Now some people are just humble by nature, don’t get me wrong, but to me there is a difference between humility and plain lack of faith in one’s self. This usually leads to me asking them the question of: “What’s stopping you?” Sometimes it’s only due to impatience or not trusting the process, but often it comes down to a distorted perspective of goals.
The simplest way I can break down initial goal perspective is this: When you start strength training and get under the bar for the first time, make your first goal to learn and get consistent with great technique, no matter your starting point. As you start moving forward from there, don’t focus your eyes too far ahead on the horizon. Try to see every 5 lbs. added to the bar, every additional rep, or every week with no workouts missed as their own little milestones. Continuously reaching these small goals culminates over time to huge gains in progress. If your best deadlift is 225 lbs., don’t even worry about 275 or even 250. Worry about 230, because 230 is technically unconquered territory, and when you push past that limit, you gain that much more confidence that you have another victory under your belt. Once you do get to 275, think about all the confidence you’ll then have accumulated from redefining your limits so many times.
Stepping on the treadmill every day and doing your “mandatory” 20 minutes is easy and thus unchallenging. From the standpoint of mental strength, unchallenging things have little to no effect. On the other hand, walking into the gym and telling yourself that you’re literally going to do something that you’ve never been able to do before works wonders for your mind. It’s always tempting to look at someone else who is light years ahead of you and think, “there’s no way I’ll ever get to that.” And I’m telling you, maybe you won’t, but you’ll never know if you never get rolling, and with patience, consistency, and the right mindset, you may just surprise yourself.
So now that you know just how important it is to train for strength, at least in some aspect, I’ll conclude with my remarkably basic outline for getting started:
- Keep your exercise selection simple for as long as you can. It’s ok to add some variation to break up monotony and make training more enjoyable, but you don’t need to major in the complex right away. Get strong at the basic compound movements like squatting, picking things up, pressing, and pulling. Using a barbell is preferable for maximizing the stimulus of these movements (think loading parameters on squats, deadlifts, bench/overhead press, etc.), but if you don’t have access to one, then try doing variations of these movements with dumbbells, kettebells, or other free weight options. In short, do the best you can with what you got. Always use a full range of motion with these exercises in order to stimulate the maximum amount of motor units.
- Follow a linear progression until you get stuck. Many people can make great progress for a while just by routinely adding weight and not manipulating any other training variables. Start out day one with a weight you can perform textbook technique with, leaving a couple reps in the tank each set. Gradually add weight from there, whether it be every workout or every week. When you do start to plateau on your linear progression (and you will, as everyone does eventually), hopefully I’ll have some more content out by then to point you in the right direction!
- Prioritize strength. It can be hard to hone in your focus on one goal at a time, but if you are truly setting out to get stronger, your training needs to reflect that heavily (no pun intended). Adding in some conditioning or mobility or active recovery between strength training sessions is perfectly acceptable in most circumstances, but beware becoming the person who’s training goes in every possible direction to support their myriad of antithetical goals that are miles apart from each other. This is the equivalent of trying to chase two rabbits and both getting away, although much worse… because it’s now an entire herd of rabbits and they’re all still stronger than you. Prioritizing strength also means keeping recovery in check. You adapt outside the gym, so if you’re truly “all in,” your nutrition and sleep have to support that. If it’s a priority, you’ll follow the requisites.
Feel free to comment with any questions or thoughts; you can also contact me directly at strengthscrolls@gmail.com
Thanks for reading!
Strength Scrolls 