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Strength Training 101

I know, I know. I can’t shut up about how important strength training is. But it’s true. Our skeletal muscles are responsible for so many things that science, until recently, has overlooked or not completely understood. Our skeletal muscle system is, essentially, a big ol’ endocrine organ (NCBI). Muscles do the obvious things, like move our limbs, blink our eyes, protect our internal organs (with help from the skeletal system), provide integrity for our trunks, etc. But just as important are the things that muscles do sort of behind the scenes- things like improving insulin sensitivity, providing a glycogen sink, improving bone density, regulating the inflammation process, suppression of tumor growth, etc. In the event of an injury, people with adequate muscle mass heal quicker, especially in the case of older folks. Had the injured been adequately muscled at the time of the injury, the healing process would go quicker, furthermore, the atrophy associated with being sedentary for the duration would have a marginal affect- if there was plenty of muscle to begin with. I could go on. The point is, you’re gonna want those muscles.

You’ve made the decision. You want to start a strength training regimen because that last paragraph was so damn compelling. Well where does one start? Do you have to join a gym? Do you need to hire a trainer¹? Can you train at home? What equipment do you need? How often should you lift weights?

Or, say you have a gym membership, but every time you walk into the gym you get overwhelmed by all the machines, benches, pulleys, racks, weights, bars etc. In the midst of your panic, you pick a machine that no one is using, do it a few times wondering if what you did was worth the energy expended². Then you decide, “Eff it, I’ll just do the stupid elliptical for twenty minutes.” You leave the gym and don’t come back for another month. And when you do go back, you do the exact same thing. Your gym is expensive. You need to stop this. You’re wasting your time and your money.

In this Installment, I want to provide the fundamentals to get started on a strength training program. The concepts will be the same if you’re planning on training at home or at a gym.

Identify your goals.

I recommend setting some short term, medium term, and long term goals. These will look different for those that are true beginners versus those who’ve maybe done a bit of training. Either way, identifying tangible goals goes a long way when planning an effective program. Here’s an example of what that might look like for a true beginner. Remember, this is just an example, your goals will be exclusive to you:

Short Term- 1-3 months

-Get comfortable with equipment

-Get comfortable with the exercises

-Get past the fear of weights

-Become confident with movement

Medium Term- 3-6 months

-See visible changes in musculature

-Get quantifiably stronger with the exercises

-Begin considering strength goals for the next phase of strength training

-Continue building confidence with movement

-Get comfortable with the concept of progressive overload

-Begin considering the nuances of strength training, whether you want to be training for hypertrophy, strength, power, or endurance, moreover what that means

Long Term- 6 months - 1 year

-Be quantifiably considerably stronger

-See more visible changes in musculature

-Set specific goals and timelines for specific weights and exercises

-Become more confident with how to continue to progress

-Set new learning goals for exercise

Assess your availability.

Next step is to honestly assess your time availability for strength training. In my experience, this is where people can sometimes get discouraged. Social media would have us believe that nothing less than 2.5 hrs in the gym, 7 days a week is useful. I’m here to tell you that this could not be further from the truth. In fact, there is research that suggests that one can observe significant strength gains performing a single, full body session per week. I don’t recommend that for many reasons, not the least of which is that the intensity to see real progress has to be very high when the volume is so low. Also, it’s been noted that after initial gains are realized, further gains are much harder to come by. Instead, I’d recommend 2-6 days per week. Here’s the important part: Be very honest with yourself. It’s enticing to err on the high side when starting out. Your excitement is high. You’re inspired. More is better! But, you forgot you have a family. And work. And other commitments. Get out your calendar. Look at openings. If you have 2 days a week, Tuesday and Friday, for 45 minutes, that’s great. You can work with that. If you have every weekday morning for an hour, that’s great. If you have 20 minutes, 2 days a week, you can work with that. It’s all about efficiency. The point is, be realistic so that adherence isn’t stymied by over-ambitiousness. After all, consistency is easily the most important factor for achieving success.

Organize your training week.

The third step is to choose how to break up your workouts. This will largely depend on how you’ve identified your availability. If you have 3 or fewer days to train per week, I suggest doing a full body split, which means you do all movement patterns³ each workout. If you have 4 or more days to train each week, there’s some freedom to split up your movement types. An example would be, if you had Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday available for training, a good split would be to do upper body movements Monday and Thursday, and lower body movements Tuesday and Friday. If there are 5 or more days to train, a popular split is to do a push, pull, squat/hinge regimen⁴. The idea is to allow for ample time for recovery between sessions as well as be able to get each muscle group stimulated two times per week⁵. The goal is adaptation. Adaptation results when enough load is administered to the muscles to stimulate growth, followed by adequate recovery for the muscles to adapt to the novel stimuli.

Choose the appropriate exercises.

Here’s where it gets a bit more tricky. Choosing exercises is going to be determined by where you’re planning on training. If you’re going to be strength training at a large, chain gym, well the world will be your oyster. You’ll have access to all the equipment you could ever want, possibly to your detriment- sometimes too many options has a paralyzing effect⁶. My advice when starting out is- keep it simple. Just because a piece of equipment is fancy, or elaborate, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. If you’re planning on training at home, you’ll likely need to purchase a modest amount of equipment⁷. Don’t let that intimidate you. It’s not as hard as one might think. Retailers sell adjustable weights as well as elastic strength training bands that take up very little space. You don’t need much to get in a great workout.

Here are the essential movements with a corresponding example of a few exercises for that movement. This will be far from exhaustive, but it’s meant to be a primer on how to think about the movements:

Push⁸: Chest Press, Shoulder Press, Push-Ups

Pull⁹: Lat Pull, Seated Row, Pull-Ups

Squat/Hinge¹⁰: Bar Squats, Deadlifts, Romanian Deadlifts, Lunges/Split Squats

These are all compound movements, which means they use more than one joint to perform. The bulk of a workout should be comprised of compound movements for efficiency’s sake as well as functionality. The ones you choose are up to you and your preferences. Suffice to say, if one had little time and just a single dumbbell, one could get a fantastic workout with just three exercises: Push ups of some variation, dumbbell rows, and squats. If you know how to properly do those movements, do 5 sets of 10 repetitions each exercise, and Bob’s your uncle.

Choose the correct starting weight.

Now that the basic movement patterns are understood, figuring out what weight to start at is important. There are many ways to do this. The easiest and safest way is to start with a weight that seems too light. Do a set of 10 repetitions and assess how it feels. If you could have done a lot more repetitions, it’s obviously too light and you must increase the weight. You know you have the correct weight when you reach the desired repetition amount and you feel like you could do maybe 3 repetitions more at the most¹¹. Adaptation occurs when the intensity is enough that when one finishes a set the proximity to failure is close. That said, contrary to what we were told for years, one doesn’t have to train to failure to make gains. One does have to get close though.

In terms of figuring out how many sets and reps to do, one has to consider the usual suspects- time and equipment availability, as well as specific goals. If you’re training for pure strength, keep the repetition range from 3-8 per set. If you’re training for hypertrophy, there’s a lot more wiggle room- 6-20 reps per set. The number of sets is up to you, again, depending on time and equipment. As a rule of thumb, each movement pattern should get 10-15 sets per week.

At some point, the weights will have to increase. Continued adaptation is the result of progressive overload¹². If you continue to do the same exercises with the same weight after it’s no longer difficult, you won’t make anymore progress. That’s the thing with working out- it never gets easy, because when it does YOU MUST MAKE IT HARDER. Embrace that. It feels awesome. Make small increases, just enough to continue getting relatively close to failure.

Switching up your workout.

Many people love to change their workout each session. Many people like to keep their workout the same for long periods of time. Both styles have their merit. Changing the exercises often provides people who get bored easily the novelty of newness. Keeping it consistent for a while provides the opportunity to monitor progress- as one progressively overloads, the weights and repetitions will increase thereby showing, real time, the strength gains. There is no right time to change. One could keep the same routine forever. One can change exercises every session. The point is consistency. Do whatever gets you to the session, be it your house, or the local gym. Consistency is the cornerstone of progress.

1. At the risk of putting myself out of business, you don’t need a trainer. A good trainer will speed up the learning g process considerably. But you don’t need one.

2. It was the adductor machine wasn’t it? Don’t lie. You did the adductor machine and your inner thighs got so sore, you thought you must’ve ridden a horse across the United States and had someone with the Men in Black wand erase your memory. It’s ok. It’s happened to many.

3. I like to think of movement patterns instead of body parts. It’s more practical and it speaks to the human functionality of the movements.

4. The push, pull, squat/hinge split is just how it sounds. You would do push exercises one day, pull the next, squat/hinge the next, a rest day next perhaps, then start over.

5. Most exercises scientists believe muscles should be stimulated twice a week for the best results. You can do three times a week but the intensity and volume might need to be decreased to let the muscles recover.

6. Like a vegetarian being at a vegetarian restaurant with a huge menu- too many damn choices resulting in paralysis and ordering a boring salad.

7. I have a single 53 lbs adjustable kettlebell that I use when I don’t have access to my gym. Believe me, I get everything done. If you’d like help with home equipment:

8. Push exercises include the pectoral muscles as primary movers well as the triceps as secondary movers.

9. Pull exercises include the large and small muscles of the mid and upper back as well as the biceps as secondary movers.

10. Squat/Hinge exercises include all the muscles in the lower body as well as the posterior chain.

11. This is called repetitions in reserve. It’s a great way to gauge/measure intensity.

12. Progressive overload is the concept by which one increases the intensity via more sets, more reps, or more weight than previously to ensure a training effect. Remember, novel stimuli is what promotes adaptation.