The golden rules of strength training

Disclaimer:

Any medical/health information in this course is provided for general informational and educational purposes only and does not substitute for professional advice. Accordingly, before taking any actions based on such information, I encourage you to consult with the appropriate professionals. The use or reliance of any information contained in this course is solely at your own risk.

This post is for people who want to get stronger out of a desire for more energy, less pain, decreased injury risk, and/or less fatigue.

As Greg Nuckols says, “Training is like having a conversation with your body. You give it the message that it needs to get bigger and stronger via stress on the muscles, bones, and connective tissue.”

And, with the right messaging, the body responds!

That’s pretty incredible.

For people with pain, hypermobility, and fatigue, strength training can be a game changer to feeling better, experiencing fewer symptoms, and having more energy during the day.

When we train, we send a message to our tissues that we need more strength. When these messages are strong enough and repetitive enough, the body responds and builds stronger tissue.

There are a lot of ways to get strong - and they all involve a conversation with the body. However, just like holding a conversation with another person, what you say, how often you repeat it, and when you stop to listen matters.

When we don't respect good rules of conversation, we risk putting in effort without actually gaining strength - and sometimes even experiencing a setback.

If you’re working on getting stronger with me in therapy, you’ll notice that we follow a few golden rules when designing your strength program:

1. Challenge the body sufficiently

2. Pick moves that matter

3. Rest sufficiently

4. Fuel sufficiently

   
   

Let's talk about each one.

Challenge the body sufficiently

There are many ways to make an exercise sufficiently challenging. These include:

• Using heavier weights

• Doing more repetitions

• Changing the exercise angle or range of motion

• Changing speed

  
  

In strength training, you typically repeat a movement until you reach a certain level of tiredness. If you’re not tired at the end of a set of repetitions, something in the above list might need to change in order to keep the level of challenge adequate.

We’ve also learned that you have to repeat that movement across multiple sets in order to tell the brain to make change. This repetition is just like repeating something in a conversation. It stimulates the nervous system to pay attention and work on strengthening the tissue.

Because of this, we usually organize strength training into 6-12 “sets,” or mini-conversations, per week.

Pick moves that matter

Strength training is very specific. If you want to have less pain, more confidence, better strength, or more energy at a certain real-life activity, your strength training selections will need to challenge the muscles/bone involved in those movements.

In conversation, this is like desiring a specific outcome, and tailoring what you talk about to be directed towards that desired outcome.

Just as you would not expect to accomplish progress on a work project with a colleague if you only talk about your weekend activities, we can bring this same specificity to strength training.

Want to get better at squat-like movements? Squat. Want to get better at carrying heavy stuff? Carry heavy stuff.

Good strength training often mimics the movements you do in life (like picking up kids, carrying in groceries, moving furniture, etc). You should be able to see a direct connection between the moves you're doing in your program, and the moves involved in your goals.

Rest sufficiently

The body doesn’t build muscle/bone in the gym. It builds it in the recovery between sessions in the gym.

This part of the conversation involves a pause in talking, and a focus on listening.

While gym sessions matter, rest periods matter just as much. This rest occurs both between sets, and between days in the gym.

Between sets

Between sets, taking 1-2 minutes off allows your body to work hard again in the next set.

This usually results in more work being accomplished over a session than if you blew through the sets.

For example:

Scenario 1 - shortened rest

Set 1: 12 reps, 28s rest

Set 2: 8 reps, 20s rest (still feeling a little tired from Set 1)

Set 3: 7 reps, 30s rest

Total reps: 27

Scenario 1 - full rest

Set 1: 12 reps, 60s rest

Set 2: 12 reps, 60s rest (able to do more reps because of the longer rest)

Set 3: 11 reps, 60s rest

Total reps: 35

More reps were completed in Scenario 2, simply because of longer rest periods between sets. This will likely translate to greater strength gains over the long term.

Between days

It’s also important to rest between days of resistance training for that muscle group. This will also result in more challenging being accomplished over the week.

For example:

Scenario 1 - back-to-back days

Day 1:

Set 1: 10 reps

Set 2: 9 reps

Set 3: 10 reps

Day 2:

Set 1: 7 reps (still a little tired from yesterday)

Set 2: 6 reps

Set 3: 5 reps

Total reps across two days: 47 reps

Scenario 2 - one to five rest days between sessions

Day 1:

Set 1: 10 reps

Set 2: 9 reps

Set 3: 10 reps

Day 2:

Set 1: 10 reps

Set 2: 8 reps

Set 3: 9 reps

Total reps across two days: 56 reps

More work was completed in Scenario 2, because the added rest days between sessions allowed the body to recover sufficiently.

Over the long run, sufficient rest = able to challenge the body more and keep up with repair = more strength growth.

Sleep quality and quantity also matter here, but it's another topic for another time.

Fuel sufficiently

Lastly, there must be sufficient nutrition available for the body to use to build new tissue.

If the body is not receiving enough fuel, it is extremely hard to build muscle, even if you are exercising within the above three golden rules.

Without enough, the body has to cover the difference, and ends up “stealing” energy from healthy tissue to pay the bills.

So, while you are trying to build muscle and bone during exercise and recovery, if you aren’t well-fueled, your body will be tearing down muscle and bone to get the energy it needs to exercise.

It’s like sending a mixed signal in the conversation with your body.

Balancing out that conversation can make a big difference when it comes to building strength.

In summary

In summary, you can get strong with a lot of methods. But, they should follow these golden rules:

1. Challenge the body sufficiently

2. Pick moves that matter

3. Rest sufficiently

4. Fuel sufficiently

   
   

Finally, while we know that resistance training is important for health and likely appropriate at some dosage for almost every community-dwelling adult on the planet, there are many barriers that get in the way of being able to execute an exercise program that follows the golden rules above. These can include:

• Lack of knowledge

• Injury

• Fear

• High life stressors

• Pain

• Lack of access to equipment or spaces

• Lack of confidence, safety, or comfort in exercise spaces

  
  

Need help navigating your own strength journey? We can take all the confusion out of it and help you create a clear path forward.

Just hit “Contact Us” above, and let’s chat!

Cheers,

Dr. Rebecca Salstrand, PT, DPT