Getting your strenght levels up requires considerable effort, particularly if you`ve been weight/resistance training for a relative long period of time. The considerable gains you made when starting out on your quest for increased strength have probably reduced almost proportionally to the amount of time you`ve been training. Initially an extra 20 kg on your shoulder press or an extra set of 8 reps on your leg press were not mere dreams, but real life training truths. You simply put the effort in, increased your loading and repetitions systematically and “just got stronger.” But then the pace of change probably began to slow and your strenght increases became more and more incremental. Know the scenario? Then it`s time to give your workouts a wake up call, change what you do and how you approach your strength training. Impress your gym mates and embark on the road to awesome strength.
Become Awesome
We all should know that the basic premise of strength training is the “overload” principle. You progressively add more weight to the bar or weight stack over a period of time, gradually forcing muscles to adapt to the increased resistance. But there are many other ways to stress a muscle in order to fire up the overload principle, and it is these -particularly for the longer term strenght trainer- that need to be considered if greater strenght gains are to be achieved.
Let`s first take a look at the way your muscles work mechanically; doing this will provide a greater grasp on overload and how to train to the max. Changes in muscle size, strenght and power can be affected by the type of muscle action utilised and even the type of equipment you train on. We will primarly concern ourselves with isotonic or muscular contractions involving varying degrees of dynamic movement, as these are the norm for most people training in a gym.
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