
Strength matters
About strength
Strength is the ability to exert force on physical objects. More simply put, strength is the ability of moving heavy things around and you can measure it by the amount of weight you can lift.
Exerting force on things is our natural way of interacting with the environment. It is one of the most important physical attributes we, as humans, posses. Your physical performance and your skills are directly correlated with your strength. Neither one can be improved without increasing strength. Why? Because both need frequent exposure to the stimuli that produce adaptation.
You improve strength and become stronger by strength training. Strength training is nothing more than using specific exercises to make the body adapt to increasing amount of force production through lifting heavy things.
Strength training
Strength training is the ability of increasing strength by gradually lifting heavier weights. Is not about increasing frequency but about increasing the amount you lift.
All you need for strength training is a barbel and weights. This is preferable to other fitness equipment, dumbbells, ropes etc. as it is closer to the natural movement of the body — standing on your feet and lifting heavy things.
The process of strength training has several phases:
- the stress phase — lifting heavy weights puts more stress on your body and force it to adapt (muscles, bones, central nervous system)
- the recovery phase — this doesn’t have to reduce to no physical activity. On contrary, low to mild physical activity such as walking, slow running or swimming at a relaxed pace will help recovery — the so called active recovery
- adaptation phase — your body and nervous system become stronger as an adaptation to external stimuli
For all 3 phases to occur is necessary to met several conditions meaning:
- weights must increase — without increasing weights your body will adapt and will stagnate. Your strength and as a byproduct your physical performance and skills will plateau or even regress
- habits must form — the process takes time and needs repetition. Complex movements such as dead-lifts, snatch and clean and jerk have to be practiced, repeated. Also, habits are not related only to the stress phase but also to the recovery phase, mainly to the eat and sleep repeating process
Activities that require significant force-production differ from sports such as golf and musicianship in that strength acts as a limiter on skills — you can apply only a limited amount of force. If the activities that must be performed depend also upon strength for their execution, then strength must be enough or the activity will not be optimally performed.
As a consequence the stronger the man/woman performing the activity the greater the ability to improve skill and increase physical performance. Without strength neither one of them can reach full potential.
Why strength training is different than both machine-based training and “functional” training? And why it matters more in improving strength, helping improving skills and performance? The answer is more complex but in few words both of the mentioned trainings have important shortcomings:
- machine-based training — short range of motion translated in an unnatural movement and uneven use of the body/muscles
- “functional” training — variation, too much variation that cannot bring enough consistency to improve skills and performance. In addition, being on the other extreme of the training spectrum vs machine-based training, it increases the risk of injuries
About the functional and machine-based training and why they aren’t very useful in improving skills and performance and why their use should be limited only to those who are not willing to improve their physical conditioning, in another article.
