Optimizing Your Strength Training Goals
In fitness or virtually any other endeavor in life, intentionality is key. Having a concrete sense of our goals helps us to focus our efforts in the right places, and get the most bang for our buck with the time we put in. It’s an important lesson for many gym-goers (especially young people) that they can’t just walk into LA Fitness, throw some random weight around, and expect to see the results they want. With a little bit of intentionality, our progress can be expedited, and we can put ourselves on a more logical track toward reaching our goals.
Strength training goals fall into three primary categories: Muscular Endurance, Muscle Size, and Overall Strength
To train each one effectively, there are specific parameters that we should be working in. Let’s start with endurance.
1. Muscular Endurance
Endurance is your ability to sustain effort over a prolonged period of time, and is one of the most reliable indicators of a person’s overall fitness. We need to be able to rely on our muscles to repeatedly give us the output we need, so to train this specifically, the best practices are as follows;
12-20 reps per set
Lighter loads
30-60 sec of rest b/t sets
2. Muscle Size
Also known as hypertrophy, this type of training aims to increase the amount of non-contractile fluid in your muscles. A less nerdy way to say that is “making your muscles look bigger”. Hypertrophy is a good indicator of strength, but the two don’t always go hand in hand. With the pure goal of giving our muscles more size, our training should look something like this;
6-13 reps per set
Moderate Loads
60-90 sec of rest b/t sets
3. Overall Strength + Power
This is simply increasing the load that our muscles can move at one time, with weights close to or equivalent to our one-rep max (essentially our caveman strength). The objective here is to build dense muscle, and the most effective way to do that is with;
1-5 reps per set
High Loads
2-5 minutes of rest b/t sets
Life is better when we have a little bit of direction. So whether you want to increase your endurance, just get stronger, or be the most-jacked dad at your kid’s birthday party, hopefully this provided some helpful pointers.
