Building Strength
Truly dedicated weightlifters all have someone or something in our lives that motivates us to work out a little harder.
Competing with someone that’s much further ahead in progress can demotivate anyone, but the biggest competition is really ourselves. Exercising on your own forces you to make improvements without looking to anyone else for encouragement.
Progressing in strength should be one of your main goals, as increases in strength is one of the primary indicators for muscle growth.
What Is Progressive Overload?
Progressive overload is the gradual increase of stress during exercise, with the goal of increasing the size of your muscles. The purpose of this method is to create enough substantial muscle breakdown to force our muscles to grow larger.
Overloading your muscles is not only restricted to heavy weights, progressive growth can result from various other methods (see How to Increase Your Workout Intensity).
Muscles can be further stimulated by increasing workload volume. Volume refers to the total amount of repetitions and combined resistance moved during each set.
An alternative for someone looking to train with an injury or avoid lifting dangerously heavy weights is to adjust the volume of the workout. If the workout volume is already too high, you can remove the number of sets or perform alternative exercises around the injury.
Doing biceps curls like theses would be pointless without knowing which rep ranges to stick with.
When you’re progressing your workouts, you should aim for very slow, incremental growth over an duration of time.
Slow growth is always better than quick growth simply because it’s a much steadier method to track progress over time.
If you progress too quickly, you’re likely to suffer from an imminent injury from training with weights that are too heavy. This is probable to occur if you’re adding more than 10% of the weight to your lifts each week.
It’s common to notice over time strength not constantly going up week after week with every exercise. Every so often your strength will plateau, but this will be temporary as your muscle fibers adjust and grow over the course of your training.
To make sure your on target for your strength/muscle goals, review the previous week’s work to focus on what changes will be needed for the next week.
Progressive Overload Goals
A slower, steadier approach over an extended period is the best approach for weightlifters. It’s better to work hard for results that you can keep than having to diet every summer to lose unwanted fat every year.
Progressive growth in strength should be based on something definite, and that’s your strength numbers.
Everyone starts as a novice in the beginning and eventually progresses to elite levels of strength over time.
The breakdown in weight lifting levels goes as follows:
Beginner, intermediate, and elite.
The three levels of training are all based on your numbers in strength when it comes to power.
Here are the targets for each level of strength for males:
Novice
Bench Press – 1.2 x body weight Deadlift – 2 x bodyweight Chinups – 1.2 x body weight
Intermediate
Bench Press – 1.5 x body weight Deadlift – 2 x body weight Chinups – 1.5 x body weight
Elite
Bench Press – 1.8 x body weight Deadlift – 3 x body weight Chinups – 1.8 x body weight
Advancing from novice to elite strength levels isn’t determined by luck or genetics, you just have to maintain enough consistency over enough time to build elite levels of strength.
Progressing to intermediate levels of strength can be done over the course of 3-5 years of steady strength growth and elite levels starting years 7-10.
Elite levels of strength can demonstrate a weightlifter performing chin ups 2x heavier than his body weight with ease! That’s insane.
Keep in mind that those 7-10 years are successful years of doing the right things, not just regularly going to the gym.
The Wrap Up
Progressive overload training stimulates our muscles to grow faster by slowly increasing the resistance or workout volume. It takes several years to reach weightlifting goals of intermediate or advanced levels of strength, but you can ensure that you reach these strength numbers by keeping a training log of all your workouts and keeping meticulous track of all your sets and repetitions.
What else do you want to know?
Why You Should Be Tracking Your Workouts
Ways to Increase Intensity in Exercises
What Are Compound or Isolation Exercises?
What Should Your Strength Goals On A Diet?