5 WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR STRENGTH
1) Lift weights in addition to your body. Calisthenics are great. They will only help you become relatively strong. Relative strength, a clinical term, measures what one can do with their body. Strength, also a clinical term, is the ability to produce a maximal force. If someone can do more chin-ups than another they are relatively stronger. Let’s call them athletes A and B. If B out-chins A for 1-repetition (rep) B is stronger. By the way, if B outperforms A for 1-rep B more than likely out-perform A for reps also. The activation patterns are not established for maximal force production unless heavy weights are lifted for low reps. The athletes who do a wide range of reps are generally stronger than those who remain in a single range. Common rep ranges and their focus are:
a. 1-6 – strength
b. 1-3 - power
c. 6-10 – hypertrophy (muscle mass)
d. 10-15 – circulation (both electrical and blood)
e. 15+ - rehabilitation
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| Looking good is great. Her hamstrings would be fuller if she were a strength athlete. |
Endurance is built relatively in the weight room. It is built specifically for one’s event training. Marathon runners get strong enough to run and recuperate quickly in the weight room. They improve their running with technique work and time management skills, including endurance, during their running sessions. These training sessions should be separated for optimal results. Athletes in weight classes improve their strength with lower reps so they do not add mass; just activation ability.
2) Use the above chart to determine the repetitions used for a certain goal. Start with a lower total volume (rep total) daily, weekly, and monthly adding volume over the course of the year. Make an excel spreadsheet and plan your work. The instinctive “training plan” is not training at all. Training is a plan. If we want to get stronger we use repetitions between 1-6. If we are the body weight, we want, we keep reps low and practice for other events separately. Doing higher reps on technical movements like the snatch, clean & jerk, squat, bench press, or deadlift is dangerous and I advise against reps greater than 6 on these. The best weightlifters and powerlifters in the world do high rep work on assistance movements only (Barbell, 2017). Also watch Elliott here (Hulse, 2013). The bottom line in Elliott’s vlog is if you want to look like a powerlifter, be a powerlifter. This is where bodybuilding was born. People wanted to look like weightlifters. It has grown into a more artistic practice since those days. If one wants to be something practice that thing. Be a weightlifter and powerlifter in the weight room. Practice your other activities, especially your primary, separately.
3) Make yourself healthy first and foremost. We have all heard of homeostasis? It’s a noun meaning the tendency of a system, especially the physiological system of higher animals, to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function (website, 2017). There are limits regulated by sensors called mechanoreceptors in each muscle tendon unit. Muscle spindles regulate the muscles length and tension. The Golgi tendon organ regulates the same in the tendons attaching muscles to the skeleton. These limits protect us. If I were to go into a gym and produce the same forces I produced during my best lifts years ago I would literally pull my body apart. More strength is created in the coordination of these structure than any gains in muscular size have ever produced. Neuromuscular coordination creates strength and adding muscle is secondary. Anyway, if a muscle cannot meet the demands of the system the system fails. If a muscle cannot properly regulate the relationship it endures with its antagonist all development in that relationships location ends. The antagonist must be understood on both sides. If the culprit does not or cannot realize the needs involved in the relationship there is a stalemate. And I can’t say this frequently enough, all development stops, the quadriceps are supposed to maintain a 3:1 ratio of strength with the hamstrings at the knees. If this ratio is out of balance to or fro one of two things will happen. 1) an injury occurs as a direct result of one partner not meeting the needs of the situation. 2) the relationship is repaired and development continues. These ratios must be maintained for development to move forward. This is an extremely simplified description of these events. Sometimes there are system-wide involvement requirements and these movements are called full-body movements. The snatch, clean, jerk, squats, bench presses, and deadlifts fit this description but to name just a few.
4) Eat nourishing foods. I say this all the time if mother nature did not make it do not eat it. Cake, bread, breading on fried food, candy, chicken nuggets, deli meats, cheese, Hungry Man Dinners, jelly (unless you made it at home), broccoflower (look it up, its freakish), and anything else we alter with more than natural elements like fire, plants, and seasonings. If health is an imperative don’t eat man made “foods”. I live in Maryland. I love fried chicken and will continue to eat it. I adjust the rest of my meal planning when I have some of this delightful creation. I know some who would rather die than quit chocolate. Eat chocolate. Do not consider it food unless you are stranded on a dessert island. Eat plenty of food and eat it in preparation for what you will do. If I train agility and become more agile in a vertical path, will I be more prepared if a car is not stopping at the crosswalk than if I train agility afterward? Eat for what you will do not for what you have done. This is how Americans got so fat.
5) Do not compare yourself to others. I was an elite powerlifter in my competitive days. I never cracked the code for elite international status. I knew of some things I could have done to improve my performance but chose another path because I was diabetic. Drugs are part of sports. I knew more than 10 people who died over the last decade who used those drugs and none of them were my age. Most were younger. Who cares if you are the best at the Wheaton Athletic Club? Most people don’t care if you are the best in the world if your passion is different than theirs. Follow your passion. Love it. Do it. Stop talking about it unless someone asks you about it. My point is, I would not trade my experiences in lifting for anything. I wish I were still competing and may again.
Doc
Get stronger!
Works Cited
Barbell, W. (2017, January 5). You Tube. Retrieved from You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2TgPE7uxNQ
Hulse, E. (2013, January 1). http://www.youtube.com/user/elliottsaidwhat. Retrieved from You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFHmofPNFWI
Website, D. (2017, January 16). homeostasis. Dictionary.com. Retrieved from Dictionary.com: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/homeostasis
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