A few more tidbits about strength training …

In my last two blog posts, I’ve answered the question of how many days per week should you work out each major muscle group (find that post here) and provided you with information on structuring your personal strength training program (find that post here). Let’s wrap up this discussion with some other tidbits about strength training to round out a base of knowledge on the topic.

Wait … what is strength training?
First, let’s be reminded of what strength training (also referred to as strength conditioning, weight training, or resistance training) is. The National Library of Medicine defines strength training as “any physical movement in which you use your body weight or equipment (e.g., dumbbells and resistance bands) to build muscle mass, strength, and endurance.”

There’s a stereotype that strength training is just lifting heavy weights to build big muscles, but that’s not the case. The National Library of Medicine identifies multiple types of strength training, which include:

• • Muscular hypertrophy. Also known as muscle building, this type of strength training uses moderate-to-heavy weights to stimulate muscle growth.
  • Muscular endurance. This refers to your muscles’ ability to sustain exercise for a period of time. Training to increase muscular endurance usually involves high reps using light weights or body weight.
  • Circuit training. During this form of full-body conditioning, you cycle through various exercises with little to no rest between them.
  • Maximum muscular strength. This type of exercise involves low reps (usually 2–6) and heavy weights to improve your overall strength. It’s best reserved for experienced exercisers who have mastered their form.
  • Explosive power. This training combines power and speed to improve your power output. It’s usually employed among trained athletes to improve their ability to perform explosive movements in their sport.

Strength training DOESN’T automatically translate into “using weights”
Just as there is more than one type of strength training, there’s more than one way to exercise in a strength training program than just using weights. The National Library of Medicine suggest that any (or none) of the following can be used for a personal strength training regimen:

• • Body weight: using your own body weight and the force of gravity to perform various movements (e.g., pushups, squats, planks, pullups, and lunges).
  • Free weights: equipment not bound to the floor or a machine, such as dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, or objects around the house.
  • Resistance bands/loop bands: rubber bands that provide resistance when stretched.
  • Weight machines: machines with adjustable weights or hydraulics attached to provide resistance and stress to the muscles.
  • Suspension equipment: consists of ropes or straps that are anchored to a sturdy point in which a person uses their body weight and gravity to perform various exercises.

Who is strength training for?
EVERYONE!

Physical fitness is NOT an “either/or” choice between strengthen training and cardio exercise, it’s a “both/and” for optimal fitness and health. Just as everyone needs the benefits of good cardiovascular exercise, we all also need the benefits of strength training, which include:

• • Increased muscle mass makes it easier for the body to more efficiently burn calories, and thus, to maintain a healthy weight. Yes, folks, building lean muscle is a very effective tool in your efforts to lose weight!
  • Strength training increases the strength of your bones, muscles, and connective tissues.
  • Strength training helps protect you from preventable injuries, thus reducing risk.
  • Increased energy – increased strength generally translates into more usable energy.
  • Prevents muscle loss. One fitness expert notes, “We lose about six pounds of lean tissue (muscle) every decade starting in our 20s. The loss is even greater for men over 50 or menopausal women; it accelerates to about ten pounds of lean tissue lost per decade. Ouch. Lean tissue has an impact on almost every system of the body. From your metabolic rate, to glucose metabolism, to gastrointestinal time, to your heart, lungs, and to your moods, retaining muscle is vital for your health and wellness.”

Actually, there are four types of exercise we need to have a well-rounded personal fitness program; you can read about that in a previous blog post here.

Know what your goal is.
To design an effective and efficient personal strength training program, you have to know what your goal is. Is it to improve your muscular endurance? Or to “build” muscles? Or some other goal, or a combination of things? Once you launch into your program, track your progress; if you’re not beginning to see gains toward your goal over a reasonable period of time, you likely need to make some changes in what you’re doing or how you’re doing what you’re doing. Measure your results to know what you need to do to further your progress. Correct as you go.

How long should you rest between reps?
One excuse people use to not join a gym or engage in a personal exercise program is the claim that doing so takes too much time. The truth is, many people waste a lot of time by working out ineffectively, and especially by wasting a lot of time between sets. Doing a set of 10 to 12 reps and then losing five or 10 minutes scrolling through your social media wastes your time and makes your workouts less effective.

So how long should you rest between sets of repetitions?

Here’s some general “rules of thumb” to follow”

• • Up to 30 seconds when using light weight/resistance with more repetitions.
  • 30 to 90 seconds when using medium weight/resistance and doing 10-12 repetitions.
  • Up to 2 minutes when using heavy weight/resistance and doing 5-8 repetitions.

Even if you’re doing what I suggested in my previous post structuring a personal strength training program and are doing three different kinds of exercise for each muscle group, and doing 3 sets per different exercise, using the rest period guide above means you can complete a thorough, effective, and efficient workout that will eventually yields desired gains without spending hours at a time in the gym.

When doing both cardio exercise and strength training in a single workout, which should you do first?
As I mentioned before, whether a person should get cardiovascular exercise or do strength training isn’t an “either/or” but a “both/and.” If you’re doing both in the same workout, that will take more time, so some people opt to do strength training on different days than they do cardio workouts, or to do “two-a-day” where they do both types of exercise on the same day but at different times.

However, you can do both cardio exercise and strength training in the same workout period. If you do, which should you do first? There are multiple arguments for doing cardio first, and multiple arguments for doing strength training first. What should be the determining factor is what your goals are for exercising. Here’s some guidance from the American Council on Exercise:

• • If your goal is better endurance, do cardio first.
  • If your goal is burning fat and losing weight, do strength training first.
  • If you want to get stronger, do strength training first.
  • On upper-body strength training days, you can do either first.
  • On lower-body strength training days, do strength training first.
  • If your goal is just general fitness, do either first, but maybe start with the one you like less.

Scotty