Basics of Strength Training- Part 1
THE WHY
Strength training can bring great benefits to our overall health, such as:
Increased energy
Improved postured
Increased muscle mass
Stronger bones and joints
Assistance in weight management
Stronger pelvic floor
Reduction of stress and improvement in sleep
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends at least 2 sessions of strength-promoting exercise throughout the week. And, fortunately, this recommendation has been added to the physical activity guidelines of most countries around the world.
Brief comment before we begin: I will get technical in this section and probably at other points in this article. But I promise it is worth it.
Strength-promoting exercise, which I will call strength training from now on, independent of whether it is done at a gym lifting weights or using any bodyweight training like calisthenics or gymnastics, has been shown to have a well-established association with reductions in all-cause, cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, and cancer-related mortality and contributing to living longer.
In a study that analyzed data from The Health Survey for England and the Scottish Health Survey it was found that among those who perform strength training twice a week, there was a 23% less risk of death during the length of the study (data was taken from surveys starting in 1994 and participants were followed until 2011)
When we specifically think of muscle tissue (or muscle mass) and muscle strength, we need to consider how these two change as we age and how important it is we keep both.
Another study by researchers at the University of Indiana has proven that the most important factor in living a longer, healthier life and reducing the risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease is having greater muscle strength.
We may think that more muscle mass equals more strength, but this is not always the case. Of course, the percentage of muscle mass will differ from person to person based on their training, including type, frequency, and intensity, and their lifestyle, as well.
Sedentary periods in each person’s day and non-training specific activity (leisure physical activity) are also correlated to muscle mass and function (strength), and it has been shown that in less-active adults, replacing one hour of sedentary time with “activity of light or moderate-to-vigorous intensity was significantly associated with 18% and 42% lower mortality, respectively”
We’ve heard before the term “sarcopenia” (Clark and Manini) This is the term used to describe the age-related reduction of muscle mass. And now, we can introduce as well the term “dynapenia”, used to describe the age-related loss of muscle strength (Dynapenia (pronounced dahy-nuh-pē-nē-a, Greek translation for poverty of strength, power, or force) is the age-associated loss of muscle strength that is not caused by neurologic or muscular diseases)
Findings from the Indiana University study, show that muscle strength is an important component in defining sarcopenia, as the loss of muscle mass alone does not fully reflect the loss of muscle function. It is the combination of loss of muscle mass and loss of muscle strength that creates these debilitating conditions in older adults and can be life-threatening.
All in all, maintaining muscle mass as we age is crucial to help us withstand disease. Working on muscle strength together with the maintenance of muscle mass is critical as we age to improve quality of life, extend it and reduce the risk of all-cause mortality.
THE WHAT
As I briefly mentioned above, and you will see more on this below, we can choose from lifting weights and pumping iron at the gym (or at home!) or doing a form of bodyweight strength training.
When it comes to body weight, some examples of activities that can help us develop muscle mass and strength are calisthenics, rock climbing (indoors or outdoors), gymnastics, and aerial sports, such as pole fitness, silks, and aerial hoop.
In this article, I will focus on strength training with weights. However, the principles I will describe here can be applied to bodyweight training as well. The only difference will be the equipment used.
In the coming sections, we will discuss what equipment we can use, how and when to progress, repetitions, sets and frequency of training, as well as rest and recovery times and a few other nuances.
CHOOSING EQUIPMENT: WHERE TO START?
Chances are if you’ve never been to a gym before, you can get easily overwhelmed by the amount of equipment to choose from.
You’ll most likely find equipment like resistance machines (RMs), machines with cables and pulleys and free weights (dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, and plates)
And of course, the cardio equipment, like treadmills, cross-trainers, and rowing machines.
When it comes to strength and hypertrophy (muscle-gaining) training, the reality is that there is not a one size fits all approach. Well, pretty much with everything that relates to exercise, nutrition and health there will not be one approach that is best for everyone.
Resistance Machines (RMs) are incredibly useful as they will help you set up in the best position to do the exercise and make the most out of it. They remove a lot of the stability game as your body will be supported by the machine, while only one group of muscles is doing the hard work. And they generally allow us to push or pull more weight than free weights.
However, the RMs in any commercial gym have a very general design and they may not fit every BODY properly. If you struggle to get an exercise done in an RM or feel your body wiggling and trying to adjust all the time, it may well be because the RM is not adjusted properly, or it just has one setting.
If you look closely, most RMs will have some sort of lever you can pull at different parts of it to adjust hight or distance. For example, a leg press (pic below) machine has a lever you can pull to adjust the seat and make it as comfortable for you as possible.
Unfortunately, not all machines have them, and some are fixed in a position.
Machines that work with cables, usually use a pulley system that allows the cable to move around as you perform the movements. This lets the weights come up and down on the stack
Cable machines add the component of having to work on the stability of your body as you do an exercise.
Cables are incredibly useful as they allow us to perform movements with more freedom and we can set up the machine and our body positioning to ensure we move in the most effective way for the group of muscles we are trying to work on. Due to how much we can adjust them and our position, they are fantastic for upper-body exercises but also for lower-body, especially glute work.
One of the main issues with cable machines is that it can be hard to find stability when we need it.
Let’s say we are doing a very heavy pull down and we will need our free hand to hold onto something so we can pull with the other side without compensation, it might be tricky to find something to hold onto!
Ideally, we want to use both, RMs and cable machines to extract their benefits and optimize our results.
And of course, these are not the only 2 modalities you can use when it comes to weight training.
From experience, if you are a beginner, I would recommend sticking to these, unless you don´t have access to them, such as when you train from home.
Free weights can be an amazing tool, I personally used to train only with free weights, even at the gym. But experience and research led me to shift into more machine and cable training, with some free-weight for certain exercises.
Once again, a combination of all the tools is a great way of making the most profit from your sessions. However, not all tools are good for everyone at any given time of their training. That’s when hiring a coach could come in handy 😉
Elements like barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells are especially useful when we don’t have access to machines. If you are training from home, you can do most exercises with these and some resistance bands.
Free weights can be fantastic to work on the stability of the joints as you work on your strength and hypertrophy.
Stabilizing a movement with nothing or very little to hold you (if you do movements assisted by a bench you can find some stability there) can be a real challenge. And it is a pro as it is a con.
The added element of adjustability and needing to stabilize joint movement will not allow us to lift as heavy as with a machine in most cases (let’s not include powerlifters here who train specifically for that)
So, if you have the opportunity to exercise at a gym, combining these with the machines will be the best choice to cover all your needs and optimize your sessions.