What is Strength Training?
I spent years becoming established as a strength training practitioner — formal education; graduate school; training thousands of client sessions; training teams and athletes at the high school, collegiate, and professional levels; reading every relevant book and all of the published scientific research; and, maybe most importantly, spending time talking to and learning from wise teachers in our field.
Once I was relatively established, I spent the early years of my career debating, trying to convince, and sometimes arguing over how to strength train. I wanted to open people’s eyes to ideas around movement speed, reducing total volume, employing machines, avoiding dangerous exercises like power cleans, and emphasizing how we could strength train so much more safely.
These were important discussions because these variables matter. I’m certain I positively influenced many athletes, coaches, trainees, and faculty. I’m also positive that I made some enemies. With age and experience comes a bit of wisdom and tact (at the time, I lacked both).
Next, I transitioned into arguing, compelling, and teaching that we need to strength train, not just sweat. We were in an era of going to a fitness facility, gym, or studio and getting in a “sweat sesh.” Moving your body and sweating was important, but it didn’t seem to matter what you did. Of course, it does matter. We shouldn’t just move our body and sweat; we should strength train (we should move our body as well — but all exercise isn’t created equal).
Today, with a new awareness that strength training is the most important thing we can do, we need to be clear on what strength training is (and what it isn’t).
Not only do people now understand that strength training is the paramount exercise priority, but fitness business concepts are aware of it and — in some cases — have tried to reposition their marketing to make their offering more strength-training-like.
So the question remains: What is strength training? And what needs to be prioritized?
Strength training involves our muscles contracting against an external resistance (a free weight, machine, band, or even our body weight).
Our muscles produce force in order to overcome the external resistance — we lift the weight (concentric muscle contraction), pause in a contracted position (isometric contraction), and lower the weight under control (eccentric contraction).
The resistance has to be meaningful enough that we fatigue our muscles and come close to or actually reach muscle failure: the point at which we can’t do another repetition.
This tension that we place on our muscle leads to mechanotransduction. This is the key process — the process where the tension we experience from lifting weights is transformed into chemical signals that stimulate muscle growth (and more than muscle growth) — a cascade of metabolic changes.
In order for this to happen, we need to follow a few basic principles:
We need a heavy enough weight so we reach failure (or close to failure). It turns out that failure can occur at 5 reps, 15 reps, or 35 reps, but we need to get there (or pretty close).
We need to employ Progressive Overload. Over time, we need to make the stimulus more demanding. In practical terms, this means we need to increase the amount of weight we lift or perform more reps with a given weight (we could also lift the same weight slower or reduce the rest time in between exercises).
We should perform exercises for all of our major muscle groups.
We need rest in between our workouts. Ideally 2-3 days.
From a nutrition standpoint, we need enough protein to facilitate the muscle building process.
This is strength training. I still think we should study and obsess over all of the variables that make our strength training more effective, but the above bullet points are a good summary of the foundational tenets.
That leaves us with another question: What exercise is not strength training?
Running is not strength training.
Cycling is not strength training.
Pilates is not strength training.
Yoga is not strength training.
Walking with a weighted vest is not strength training.
These activities all have their place (they are not “wrong”), but they are not intended to and cannot replace strength training. This isn’t controversial. We can still love them and do them.
Take Home Message: Prioritize strength training. Do all of the other things that you also enjoy doing, but don’t miss out on strength training.
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