Strength Training is All in the Mind

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.

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If You Can Choose Five Women's Weight Training Routines, These Are Your Five

You probably already know the health benefits of weight training. What you might not know is that doing weights is a shortcut to dealing with women problem areas such as unshapely legs, stomach pouch, jello arms, and lumpy hips and butt.

It is not also foreign that weight training can help you deal with back pain and osteoporosis as you age. It also helps promote an overall sense of well being and mental fitness.

But with all the available weight training routines available and the limited time you have, what're the best ones to do that are easy yet give you the most benefits?

This article shares with you the best of the best weight training routines out there that have worked for millions and millions of women, hundreds personally trained by me.

If you follow them religiously, I can guarantee that you'll get rid of your problem areas and you'll be an overall happier and healthier person.

OK, if you are contemplating on adding weight exercises to your workout, you should know that the best are compound exercises (as opposed to isolation exercises). Compound exercises are those that work multiple muscle groups in the routine while isolation exercises, by the word itself, works out isolated muscle parts in the routine.

Compound exercises is king, because they can save you time as they work out multiple muscle groups at a time as well as being very effective in getting you into shape and making your stronger.

So, given that you already know that compound weight training exercises are the most effective. Here are the five of the best that you need to focus your efforts on.

Press exercises

By press this means bench presses, military presses, push-ups, and all of their variety. Presses work the chest, the shoulders, and the arms. The leg variety includes leg presses, which then improve the quads and the butt.

Squat exercises

Very straight forward. With or without weights you simply go down from a standing position (like you are trying to sit down and to a squat) then return back up. You should go low and have your back straight as you do this. This works the core, the butt, and the quads as well.

Row Exercises

The back, the shoulders, the arms, and the abs are the target of these types of exercises. This includes seated rows, upright rows, bent-over rows with their corresponding variations.

Pull Exercises

Bringing your sexy back, this exercises work on your upper back, shoulders, and arms. Pull-ups and lat pull-downs generally fall into this category.

Crunch Exercises

For your very tight abs and lower back. You do this normally as the last of the five best compound weight training exercise because it doesn't involve much of the major muscle group (which should be tired by now due to the previous four exercises). You can do sit-ups, bicycle crunches, or the captain's chair to do this compound exercise.

So there you have it, you now realize that weight training is great for your overall health and fitness. In addition, among the weight training exercises available compound exercises stand out as the best. And among those compound exercises, the press, the squat, the row, the pull, and the crunch flies over the rest as the five best weight training exercises there is.

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