Have you ever strength trained before?
Strength training can involve many different types of exercises but what sets strength training apart from hypertrophy and endurance training is the involvement of heavier weights, lower reps and lower sets. Strength training is an important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and has many proven benefits. Adding strength training into your routine can not only increase strength, but can also increase bone density and muscle mass. For beginners, strength training may also have fairly quick visible gains which can be extremely motivating.
What is Recommended
For adults between the ages of 18-64 years old, the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP) recommends at least 2 days of activities that involve muscle and bone-strengthening exercises. This could look like weightlifting at the gym or home body-weight workouts.
Where to Start
It's important to first establish a realistic goal for your strength training because you will experience different gains based on the way you strength train. Do you play a sport and want to advance your performance by being able to outmuscle opponents? Do you want to build your overall strength so you can take a more advanced fitness class? Do you have trouble placing heavy groceries into your car? This will guide how much weight to lift, what exercises to do and how many sets to perform.
What Exercises to Choose
This ties into your overall fitness goals and what you want to achieve in strength training. There are several different types of exercises to consider when planning your workouts:
Core Exercises - Multi-joint exercises which involve movements across more than one joint and target multiple muscles (e.g. push up)
Assistance exercises - Exercises which involve movement across one joint and are muscle-specific (e.g. bicep curl)
Power exercises - Explosive/fast movements (e.g. jumps)
Sport Specific exercises
Balance/Stability exercises
How Often you Should Train
Beginners should train around 2-3 times per week, compared to intermediate exercisers (3-4 times per week) and advanced exercisers (4-7 times per week). Rest is important too, it is best to arrange which muscle groups are exercised to avoid exhaustion and injury. Research has suggested that each muscle group should be worked twice a week and that one should avoid more than 3 days rest between muscle groups.
Best Ways to Order Exercises
There are different ways to alternate exercises in order to maximize your ability to complete a set with proper form and maximal force:
Multi-joint exercises completed before single joint ones to prevent fatigue and injury
Do movements that involve large muscle groups before small ones, for similar reasons
Alternating upper body and lower body to minimize rest time needed between exercises and maximize rest time between muscle groups
Alternating push and pull exercises
Targeting the agonist muscle (the main muscle doing work) and then the antagonist muscle (a muscle that does the opposite of the agonist muscle)
Advanced techniques include supersets, compound sets and pre-exaust sets, but they are not for beginners and will be discussed in a later blog post!
How heavy and how many reps/sets?
The number of reps varies between 6-12 per exercise depending on your fitness goals and training level. For beginners, ACSM and NSCA recommend 1 set, 8-12 reps at 60-70% your 1 rep max (RM) per exercise (This 1RM recommendation is based on multi-joint exercises). For more advanced individuals, reps will decrease but the weight will increase. For people brand new to strength training, single sets to failure are also effective but should be progressed to multiple sets (2-6) and decreased reps (≤6) after a few months of training for increased strength gains. Reps should vary with the weight you lift as well. Generally, the heavier you lift, the less reps you do.
How Long to Rest
Rest between sets should be longer than your usual endurance or hypertrophy training at 2-5 minutes between multi-joint sets and 1-2 minutes for single joint sets. Rest periods allow your body to re-fuel and prepare for the next set effectively. Rest can also vary depending on the weight you lift. Generally, the heavier you lift, the more rest you need.
Putting this all together results in a strength training program that will challenge your major and minor muscle groups and help you build strength and gain muscle mass!
What are some of your favourite strength training exercises? Let us know!
Sources:
https://csep.ca/CMFiles/Guidelines/CSEP_PAGuidelines_0-65plus_en.pdf
Department of Kinesiology. (2020). Kinesiology 204. Waterloo, ON.: University of Waterloo.
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