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There are numerous benefits to developing extra strength. So here it is: Building strength in 10 steps.
First Build Strength
When you start strength training, your goal is often to achieve more muscle growth. To develop muscles, you need to train with heavy weights to continually stimulate the muscles. For this, you need to build strength, allowing you to exert increasing resistance on your muscles. Therefore, start with light resistance. First, make sure you can perform the exercises at a normal pace and correctly before increasing the weight. The goal is to train muscles, not to move the weight as many times as possible.
There are various exercises you can do with your own body weight (calisthenics) for various muscle groups. Whether this is suitable depends on the resistance your body weight provides. If you can only do one push-up with the greatest effort, it is wiser to do a comparable exercise with less resistance using weights or machines. It may also be that you can easily do 100 push-ups (aimed at muscle endurance), so that this exercise will not help you much in building strength. Of course, you can make it easier or more difficult for yourself. For example, choose a position to involve your legs in pulling up, just enough to do about 15-20 repetitions. Or do push-ups on one hand if the normal push-up is too easy.
Many commonly done exercises include:
- Push-ups
- Pull-ups
- Crunches
- Squats
- Lunges
- Dips
When you start exercising with dumbbells or barbells, it’s important to be able to perform the execution completely controlled. If you can do this without any problems, also analyze the tempo at which you perform the exercises for yourself. You can increase the intensity by performing the exercises more slowly and holding the weight at the highest point for a moment.
Know the Pros and Cons of Machines
As indicated in the opening of this post, it is important to stimulate your muscles with exercises that cause your muscles to grow. In the gym, you have the choice to do these stimuli with weights, such as barbells and dumbbells, or with machines.
Machines force you to achieve muscle contraction in a fixed way and limit your freedom of movement. The freer movement of barbells and dumbbells requires the muscle to work much harder to stay balanced. This means that more muscle fibers are recruited, you grow faster, and the muscle learns to move more efficiently. “More efficient” is only beautiful if you want to learn how to lift a weight as easily as possible. It can also be a pitfall because you may learn techniques to make it easier instead of harder.
Machines also often provide the opportunity to go to the extreme without anyone to help you when you can’t finish a repetition. Many chest machines, for example, are convenient when training alone because you can go to the extreme without having to worry about the bar rolling off your chest.
Don’t Forget to Train Your Legs
How often do you see in the gym the wardrobes with colossal shoulders and arms? And the same wardrobes pale in comparison in the summer when you see them walking on the beach in their shorts because they have trained their upper body all year round. One of the main reasons for training your legs is, of course, symmetry. After all, the legs are also part of your body.
Another advantage is that the leg muscles are very large. The more muscle mass you activate, the more growth hormone your body releases. Your upper body also benefits from this.
Muscles Grow When You Rest
Many people think that muscles grow when you are training in the gym. In fact, during the training, you give them the stimulus to grow, but the actual growth occurs when you rest. Therefore, it is important that you also have your rest in order, in addition to your training and nutrition. If you don’t, you don’t give the muscles a chance to recover and you will make less progress.
So, there’s no point in training biceps every day just to feel that “muscle pump” continuously.
Provide Your Body with Sufficient Energy
Training a lot requires energy. That’s why you see that many active athletes and bodybuilders consume more calories than an average person. Therefore, make sure you also consume more energy. Don’t do this recklessly by stocking up on Snickers and M&M’s now, but choose complex carbohydrates. These carbohydrates have a low glycemic index, which means they are broken down more slowly and release energy gradually over a longer period. Examples include whole wheat pasta and brown rice. Also, ensure good fats such as omega fatty acids and MCT oil.
Buy and Prepare Your Meals in Advance
It has already been mentioned above, but the result of your workouts is also determined by your rest and nutrition. To get the latter in order, it is important that you eat well. Often this is neglected because we live in a society where everyone is busy. Therefore, buy your meals in advance and plan them carefully. Take the time to do the shopping you need for the whole week on the weekend, or in the evening when you are free. Many items such as meat and fish can be frozen. Prepare the meals for the week, so you can take them to work in Tupperware containers.
Take Enough Proteins
It cannot be emphasized enough, but proteins are the building blocks of many cells in our body, including muscle cells. If your training intensity is up and your rest is in order, but you haven’t had enough building materials in your diet, you will never get the most out of your workouts. Therefore, it is important to take enough proteins. Ideally, get as much as possible from food. In practice, however, it usually turns out to be necessary to supplement this with supplements such as protein powder.
