MUSCULAR STRENGTH AND ENDURANCE
Muscular strength is the ability to generate force during a maximal effort.
Muscular endurance is the ability to resist fatigue while holding or repeating a muscular contraction.
In other words, muscular strength is how much weight you can lift and muscular endurance is how long you can sustain strength.
Enhanced muscular strength and endurance can lead to improvements in the areas of:
- Performance
- Injury prevention
- Body composition
- Self-image
- Lifetime muscle and bone health
- Chronic disease prevention.
Creating a Successful Weight Training Program
To get the most out of your weight training program, you must design it to achieve maximum fitness benefits with a low risk of injury.
For this course, a recommended weight training program will not be provided. This is due to the high variability amoung students in this class as to how much weight training experience they have.
It is recommended that you contact gym staff if you are doing your weight training in that type of facility to provide input on correct form and proper techiques for weight training.
Improper weight training technique can result in poor results - you could be wasting your time.
Before you begin, here are a few guidelines to consider:
Choosing Equipment: Weight Machines versus Free Weights
Your muscles will get stronger if you make them work against a resistance.
Resistance can be provided by free weights, by your own body weight, or by sophisticated exercise macines.
Weight machines are preferred by many people because they are safe, convenient, and easy to use.
Free weights, on the other hand, are generally preferred by experienced lifters because they provide more variety and can more easily target specific muscles.
Pros of Weight Machines:
- Easy to use: just sit at the machine and start working.
- Safe: you don't need a spotter, someone who stands by to assist when free weights are used and you don't have to worry about dropping a weight on yourself.
Pros of Free Weights:
- Tend to strengthen your body in ways that are more adaptable to real life.
- More variety.
Unless you are training seriously for a sport that requires a great deal of strength, training on machines is probably safer, more convenient, and just as effective as training with free weights.
You can increase strength either way, depending on personal preference.
It's important to note that you can strength train without paying for a gym membership.
Minimal equipment - a few weights and a fitness ball is enough - set up in your basement can do the trick.
Resistance
The amount of weight (resistance) you lift in weight training exercises is equivalent to intensity in cardiorespiratory endurance training.
It determines the way your body will adapt to weight training and how quickly these adaptations will occur.
Choose weights based on your current level of muscular fitness and your fitness goals. To build strength rapidly, lift weights as heavy as 80% of your maximum. If you're more interested in building endurance, choose a lighter weight (perhaps 40 to 60% of max) and do more repetitions.
REPETITIONS AND SETS
To improve fitness you must do enough repetitions of each exercise to fatigue your muscles. The number of repetitions needed to cause fatigue depends on the amounts of resistance: the heavier the weight, the fewer repetitions to reach fatigue.
In general, a heavy weight and a low number of repetitions (1-5) build strength, whereas a light weight and a high number of repetitions (15-20) build endurance.
In weight training, a set refers to a group of repetitions of and exercise followed by a rest period.
Surprisingly, exercise scientists have not identified the optimal number of sets for increasing strength.
For developing strength and endurance for general fitness, a single set of each exercise is sufficient, provided you use enough resistance to fatigue your muscles.
Doing more than one set of each exercise may increase strength development, and most serious weight traniers do at least 3 sets of each exercise.
Frequency of Exercise
For general fitness, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends a frequency of 2 to 3 days per week for weight training. Allow your muscles at least 1 day of rest between workouts.
If you train too often, your muscles won't be able to work at a high enough intensity to improve their fitness, and soreness and injury are more likelty to result.
If you enjoy weight training and would like to train more often, try working different muscle groups on alternate days. Remember, though, that a total fitness program needs to meet all the fitness components, though.
Individuals who focus totally on muscle strength are liable to have very poor cardiovascular fitness. They may be strong of muscle but could die of a heart attack due to poor cardio condition.
Benefits of Weight Training as We Age
Weight training has become a popular workout component for many people. Research was conducted recently on seniors (mostly women) and the impact of weight training. The results were astounding. After only about six weeks of a weight training, the study subjects had greatly increased their strength.
Research has found that we start losing muscle mass beginning in our mid to late 30s. This is just part of the aging process.
This loss of muscle mass has two impacts. First, the reduced muscle lowers overall metabolism. It takes less energy - or calories - to keep a body functioning when there is less muscle. This explains why it often gets increasingly difficult to keep extra weight off as we age. It takes more calories to maintain muscle than it takes to maintain fat tissue.
The second impact is the obvious reduction in strength.
It's important to add a weight training component to any fitness program. It is critical especially as we get older.
You need not have membership in a fancy gym or access to special equipment to incorporate a weight training program.
You can set up a simple program in your home using a few weights along with a regimen of push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups. It doesn't need to be elaborate.
Return to Top of Page
Return to Main Page