What is strength training?
Strength training is performing exercises with the intention of making your muscles stronger. These exercises generally take the form of performing a movement against a resistance, for example your bodyweight or free weights.
How strength training is different to bodybuilding
Bodybuilding and strength training are often mistakenly thought of as being the same thing because they use similar techniques, but there are some key differences in the training methods, the end results and most importantly, the primary aim. In bodybuilding, there is one goal: aesthetics. The aim is to increase the size, definition and symmetry of muscles to build an impressively muscular physique. Bodybuilders increase in strength as they train, but this is only a side effect of their training. In strength training, the main aim is to increase the strength of the muscles. Strength training will also tend to increase the size of the muscles, but not to anywhere near the same extent as bodybuilding.
Factors affecting strength
In essence, strength is a measure of the ability of a muscle to exert a force against a resistance. Although the size of a muscle is often related to its strength, one does not always follow the other. It is possible to massively increase your strength without gaining much, if any, muscle mass and it is also possible to increase the size of your muscles without gaining much strength. Increasing muscle mass will increase your strength because you will have more muscle fibres to exert a force. However, when you lift a weight, you never actually use all the available muscle fibres at the same time. By learning to increase the number you use, you can increase your strength without increasing your muscle mass. The number of fibres activated in the muscle depends on the signal that they receive from the brain. When training specifically to gain strength, your nervous system will learn to activate a greater proportion of the muscle fibres, which increases your strength.
Training the brain
If you want to get stronger, you need to focus on the nervous system because it is this that has a greater influence on your strength than anything else. Unsurprisingly, the best way to train your nervous system is to lift heavy weights. Increasing your strength is primarily about training the connection between your mind and your muscles. By exerting large forces to lift heavy weights, your nervous system will learn to adapt to them. You need to be lifting weights such that you can only manage between two to five repetitions per set. Any more than this and the weight isn't heavy enough. Training frequency also has a big effect. For maximum strength gains you need to train regularly and often.
Most bodybuilding routines train each body part only once per week to allow the muscles to fully recover. Strength training taxes the muscles in a different way so the recovery period needed is not so long; it is primarily the nervous system that is being trained. You should be aiming to train each body part around twice a week. Strength training workouts should be short, but intense. You should not be training to failure. Training to failure will increase the time needed to recover, which will not help you gain strength. Choosing the right exercises is also important for building strength. The most effective forms of exercise for strength are heavy compound lifts and bodyweight exercises. For example, barbell squats and pull-ups.
Summary
You can build up your muscles all you want, but if you aren't focused on the right exercises, your nervous system won't adapt and you won't get stronger. Strength Training is all in the mind.
