Strength Building Basics

Key Points:

• Exercising for strength means lifting heavy, i.e. >70% of your 1 repetition max (close to an 8 or 10 rep max for most people)
• Use the 3-5 rule: 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps with 3-5 minutes rest; 3-5 exercises, 3 days a week
• Big, multi-joint movements are best for strength (squat, bench, deadlift, leg press, etc.)

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Strength Basics

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How do we define physical strength?

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From a biomechanical perspective, strength is a measure of muscular work, meaning force applied, by our muscles, against a load, across a distance.

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W = Fs

Work = Force x displacement

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If we increase the amount of work our muscles can do, we increase how strong we are. To do that, we usually have to increase the amount of force our muscles can produce, since the distance or displacement side of the equation usually doesn’t change much (with some exceptions).

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Keeping the biomechanical lens, we also know that:

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F = ma

Force = mass x acceleration

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So if we can move more weight (mass) without losing speed (acceleration), we are, by definition, producing more force. We could also produce more force by moving the same weight faster, though this gets us more into training for power and speed. Strength training is, by and large, focused on the mass side of this equation.

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Why Does Strength Matter?

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So how does strength help us, and why should we bother training to improve it?

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First of all, life simply doesn’t come at us in convenient, bite-sized chunks. There’s a whole world out there full of awfully heavy stuff, and you never know when you might have to deal with it.

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Lots of those heavy things exist in your own home! When did you last move your couch? Pick up a bag of pet food? Carry your 9-year-old? The weight can add up quickly if we’re not prepared.

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In addition to helping us prepare to handle life, being stronger has notable health benefits. Specifically, in the words of strength coach Mark Rippetoe, “Stronger people are harder to kill”. This has been demonstrated multiple times by long-term studies and systematic reviews showing that people who are stronger die less from literally any cause.

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What this means is that, even if you get diagnosed with something that has a chance to cut years off your life, the stronger you are, the less likely that disease is to kill you.

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How to Build Strength

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So how do we go about building strength?

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We’ve established that this requires us to lift heavy things. But we have a lot of options for how we do that, so what should we focus on?

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Firstly, we should focus on exercises that are big, multi-joint, and simple to make heavier. After all, we’re focused on moving weight, so if we can get more muscles behind the movement, our potential for strength gain is higher.

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This is part of why barbell lifts like the squat, bench press, and deadlift are popular strength training exercises: They’re big, multi-joint, and simple to increase load. Other options include things like a leg press or overhead barbell press. There are also dozens of variations on these exercises, so don’t feel like you have to pick a specific one if it doesn’t work for you.

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Prescription

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So how should we perform our strength exercises?

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Well, we need to keep things heavy, otherwise we won’t actually get better at lifting heavy. Most research supports the idea that untrained individuals need to lift >65-70% of their 1 repetition maximum (1RM) in order to get stronger.

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Trained individuals will likely need to keep their strength training even higher than this (though possibly not by much), since their body needs a stronger, louder signal in order to make room for more strength gains.

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70% of a 1 repetition maximum is probably close to a 10-to-12-repetition maximum for most people. That means if you’re lifting a weight that you could lift absolutely no more than 10 or 12 times in a row, you’re probably around 70% of your 1RM.

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Sidebar: Lifting to Failure

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For strength, specifically, lifting to failure has not been shown to be better for untrained individuals than not lifting to failure. So you do need to train heavy, but you don’t have to lift so heavy that you hit the point of literally being unable to move the weight.

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For the rest of our exercise prescription, we can use a popular guideline, embraced by methods like Stronglifts, Starting Strength, and many others: 

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The 3-5 Rule:

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3-5 sets of 3-5 repetitions (3-5x3-5)

3-5 minutes of rest between sets

3-5 exercises per session

2-3 sessions per week

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Progression

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As you get better at the exercises, you will need to increase weight in order to continue getting stronger. Knowing when to increase weight can be tricky, but here are 2 tried-and-true methods:

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1. Add a small amount of weight each week (2.5-5 lbs for upper body, 5-10 lbs for lower body), as long as you are hitting the reps you want to hit.

1. This is called “linear progression” and is generally only an option for untrained individuals. You will eventually be unable to just keep adding weight each week.

1. At the end of your last set, do as many reps as you can at that weight; if you can do 3 or more reps above the reps you wanted to hit, you can probably add weight.

1. This is called an “AMRAP” set (short for As Many Reps As Possible), used by a lot of programs to help you gauge your fatigue and select weights accordingly (often called “autoregulation”).

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If you’re ever unsure about increasing weight, you can always repeat that weight a few times and see if you get more comfortable with it. As long as it’s challenging and you’re getting better at the lift, you’ll see some progress.

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Training for strength is typically pretty simple: You need to get better at picking up heavier weights. As you get better at it, and if you want to lift a lot of weight, there are more advanced strategies you can use, but the 3-5 Rule used with big, multi-joint movements will get you started and potentially carry you quite a ways.

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If you want more detail on building a strength program that fits you and your needs, reach out and let us know. We specialize in helping people build strong athletic foundations that let them accomplish their movement goals.

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So remember: You can’t go wrong getting strong!

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