Effective Strength Building Strategies

Strength Building Strategies You Can Use Today

This article is part of a series on strength training, starting with effective strength building strategies. The article will outline 3 strength building strategies you can start using today and how to programme strength training that actually builds strength, rather than causes injury.

Why Strength Building Strategies?

Strength is a fundamental aspect of fitness and athletic performance. All things being equal, strong muscles will outperform weak muscles. Additionally, strong muscles are less susceptible to injury and age related decline.

I’m writing this series to help people understand strength training and explain how to successfully achieve an improvement in their strength and performance. I’m including videos so you can see the strategies I use in action. I’ll outline strength building strategies, strength building programmes and how to strength train safely.

The pursuit of strength is often fruitless for gym users – it’s a very disciplined and streamlined approach so it’s easy to get distracted. Strength training also requires a level of mental toughness that some people just don’t possess!

Finally, the most common reason people don’t achieve serious strength is they just don’t know how to train for strength – they think getting stronger is simply a case of adding more and more weight to a bar and performing 3 sets of 10. That works, but only for the short term. It’s very limited.

This series will show you once and for all how to safely and effectively train for strength using tried and tested strength building strategies.

How is Strength Improved?

The mechanism for strength improvement is really straightforward. Our muscle tissue comprises of a series of motor units, which are a motor neurone (nerve) and a group of associated muscle fibres that are stimulated by that particular nerve.

Motor unit = muscle fibres + motor neurone (nerve).

As we train at ever heavier loads, we recruit more motor units as we need more force production from the muscle. Lifting something light doesn’t require much strength so barely any motor units are recruited. As the loads go up, more motor units are required to help lift the heavier weight.

To use a simple analogy, to lift a pen you won’t need help. To lift a car, you’ll need a lot of it.

In the image below, think of each person as a motor unit. A car is heavy, so you need more motor units to lift it. The more motor units we recruit in a movement, the more we’ll be able to lift.

So the more motor units we recruit during training, the stronger we become. By performing heavy lifts rather than lighter ones, we are recruiting more motor units more regularly, creating more fast twitch muscle growth and ultimately improving strength.

In the early stages at least, improved strength is largely down to changes in the nervous system rather than the muscular system.

Employing effective strength building strategies will see you build strength and increase performance quickly and safely.

I’m going to list three strength building strategies I use in my own training and also in the training of some of my personal training clients. They deliver excellent strength improvement results and can be added into programmes easily.

Complexes and Pairs

Mixing exercises up distributes strength and makes the exercise non-conventional. These changes force adaption in the body across a number of different muscle groups.

As a technique, mixing exercises also allows for body parts to rest during the exercise, meaning you distribute load and effort across different muscle groups, allowing you to maintain a high level of work intensity for longer.

Take this snatch into overhead squat triple as an example…

The first exercise, the snatch, isn’t particularly heavy, but it’s a workout for the back and shoulders. For the overhead squat, I’m training shoulder stability, but more importantly I’m training my core and legs. The weight is heavy for me to safely perform a triple overhead squat, so counts as strength training the overhead squat movement pattern.

In the next video, I’m performing a push-pull complex. It’s a heavy weight push press super-setted with weighted pull ups. My chest, shoulders and triceps are working on the push press, then they rest whilst my back and biceps take over on the pull ups.

In both video examples you can see that I manage 4 and 6 reps on the exercises because the load is distributed across different body parts.

I’m still strength training because I’m lifting loads I can only manage 1-3 reps on, but the way the pairs are set up I can manage more volume which translates into more strength and health benefits.

Double Doubles

Short, mid-set mini-rests are a great way of allowing you to overreach your maximum effort in a lift which in turn improves strength.

The approach sees you perform a double with the maximum weight you can, take a few seconds rest and then perform another couple of reps. The mini-break in the middle of the set allows for a partial recovery – just enough to manage another reps or two, as you can see in the video below…

I first heard Alwyn Cosgrove talking about this approach and how he had noticed it made a dramatic difference to the strength of his clients. I started to use it myself and added over 60lbs to my deadlift in three months, which isn’t easy past a certain point.

I’ve dug around the research as to how and why this approach works, but so far it seems science hasn’t reached an answer it’s happy with. What has become pretty clear is that the strength improvement is largely down to a neural (nerve) adaption and not a pure muscle physiology change, but we already knew that.

What is clear though is that this double double approach to strength training is very, very effective and when used properly will result in pretty remarkable improvements in strength.

Use the approach on any strength exercise. In the vide example I used it with snatch grip deadlifts, but it can be used just as well on others.

As a side note, heavy strength training appears to be a pretty poor choice when it comes to adding muscle size. This is training for performance, not for aesthetics.

Heavy Triples

One of the oldest strength improvement approaches that exists is the heavy triple. It’s like good jeans – never in or out of fashion, just an ever-present.

Strength is best improved when lifting towards your maximum weight. Any lighter than a weight you are capable of performing 6 goods reps or so with and you begin to lose any strength-building benefits from the exercise.

Here’s what a heavy triple looks like in practice…

We often focus on singles when training for strength, but lets look at simple maths…

For the purposes of this example, lets assume a person has a one rep max lift of 120kg…

• 1 x 120kg = 120kg lifted.

But what if we drop the weight slightly, still within a strength training range (85-100% of 1 rep max) and perform three reps, rather than a single…

• 3 x 110kg = 330kg lifted.

The 110kg lift is 92% of the 1 rep max and almost everyone will be able to lift around 90% of their 1RM three times. During the work set, the lifter has managed to lift 330kg compared to 120kg.

There is a limit to this because you can’t take the piss on the maths and lift ever lighter weights for far more reps, simply because you then aren’t improving strength, instead you’re improving strength endurance and are never recruiting the high-threshold motor units, nor the sheer amount of motor units that are required for strength improvements.

Heavy triples are an excellent strength building strategy that work as long as you are lifting around 85-90% of your 1RM.

How to programme these strength building strategies…

You can’t just throw these strength building strategies into random workouts and expect to achieve great results – it just doesn’t work like that. To add serious weight to your lifts, you need to work sensibly and with a strategy. These tips will help…

1. Don’t programme heavy days in too often. Strength training is particularly demanding on the central nervous system. What this means is that when we strength train, the nervous system does a lot of the work and needs time to recover. Take at least 2 days rest after a heavy strength day – more if you’re an advanced lifter.
2. Remember central nervous system fatigue is different from cardio or metabolic fatigue. With strength training you may not feel as out of breath as you do with your cardio, HIIT or high volume workouts. This doesn’t mean it’s not working, it’s just a different type of fatigue. Bear this in mind when training so you don’t overdo the training load.
3. Consider movement patterns. Muscle stress is relative to movement, load and recovery. Don’t repeat the same movements too often – for example don’t do a whole session on upper body push movements. I like to balance them out with a balance of upper and lower body pushes and pulls, allowing for overall strength development and recovery.
4. When you lift big, you shouldn’t lift as often. If you are performing heavy lifts, keep your exercise selections simple and to the point. Aim for 3-5 exercises per session on strength days. Think quality, not quantity.
5. Listen to your body. If you are feeling rough or under-recovered, do what you are capable of, not what your programme says you should do. Training programmes are a guideline, not a gospel.

Armed with the information in this article you have the foundations of a strength building programme. Give a few of these a try and see how you get on – I’d expect you to be lifting heavier in the next couple of weeks and within a couple of months you’ll be significantly stronger!

Strength Training Equipment

I’ve been asked a few times about the shoes and wraps I wear in the gym (the ones in the videos). They are listed below and are all great quality – I research all the kit I buy because I’m not in the business of wasting money on second rate gear! I’ve also included the chalk I use…

Next up in the strength building series we’ll go into how to strength train safely. Too many people end up with unnecessary injuries when they strength train – I’m going to show you how to avoid them…

P.S. I’m giving away a FREE eBook ‘101 Health and Fitness Tips’ to everyone who subscribes to my VIP email list. By joining the list you’ll have access to exclusive content, discounts, offers and products from both me and selected partners. Click here to download!