There are countless possible reasons for working out, but a goal that most people have in some form is to get stronger and to get stronger without breaking themselves in the process.
A surefire way to get stronger is to lift heavier weights. That shouldn't be ignored as the best way to get stronger! If you always use the 10lb dumbbells, you will never get stronger. You can't increase your ability to lift heavier weights if you don't lift progressively heavier weights.
That said, there are other ways to get the most out of your strength training. I'll be sharing 3 of those today!
1. Form
Check out the diagram below. You'll notice that in between the extremes there is a range of "Safe and Effective" and "Safe, but not effective". We should shoot to have our working sets of strength work be in the "safe and effective" range.
Every movement that we do has certain points of performance. By dialing into those as much as possible, we maximize the effectiveness of the movement! This means little things like driving our knees out on a squat to get more out of our glutes. This means bringing the shoulders down on pulling movements to get more out of our lats and mid-back rather than toasting the traps.
If you can do strength training with absolutely perfect form, you likely aren't going to go hard enough to see results, but by focusing on form, you can get into the "safe and effective" zone where we maximize the strength stimulus of the movement while minimizing the risk of injury.
2. Tempo
Time under tension is an often overlooked variable of strength training!
Think about it this way, do you think you'll get stronger by spending .5 Seconds each rep under a heavy barbell while squatting or by spending 7 seconds each rep under that same bar?
As a general rule of thumb, think about a 4-2-X-1 tempo when doing strength training. This means spending 4 seconds on the way down of the movement, pausing for 2 seconds at the bottom of the movement, driving out of the bottom powerfully (the X) and pausing for just a second at the top.
The slow tempo on the way down challenges your ability to stabilize and control the weight.
The pause at the bottom allows your muscles to get ready to go in the opposite direction. Think about driving your car at 75MPH and then suddenly shifting into reverse. Probably not a great thing to do, right? The pause at the bottom of a lift allows your body to shift into neutral before shifting into reverse.
3. Range of Motion (ROM)
Last but not least is consciously working to improve your ROM when doing strength training. A big driver of hypertrophy (muscle building) is muscular tension.
By going as deep as possible into movements, you put a really awesome weighted stretch into the muscles. Not only does this multiply the strength benefits by adding so much tension, it also provides you with a lot of mobility benefits as well!
We get stronger by lifting heavier weights. At the same time, if you only ever focus on lifting heavier weights, you might miss out on the huge benefits that these 3 factors can have on improving your strength and your fitness overall! It's about finding a balance of working hard, but also working smart and effectively.
