What it takes to get strong.

Often times I think hypertrophy and strength are thrown into the same boat or conversation. And I am not mad at that. There are certainly programs that involve both, and the two topics or training goals are related. Which brings us to the first point...

Let’s first start this episode with off with a precursor. “Consistency” is not one of my main points today because that is a given. You’re not maximizing strength in the absence of consistent training. So, there’s that.

The difference between muscle growth and strength

Muscle mass holds the potential for strength

muscle is the engine that allows strength to be demonstrated 

Strength IS a skill

There is a massive neurological, mental and physical piece to building, gaining and maintaining strength

Newby gains

In a very oversimplified sense, to gain strength, we need to stimulate the muscle beyond what it has experienced before.

When a person starts lifting for the first time, anything beyond body weight, or maybe even their body weight alone can elicit that stimulus. There are also massive neurological gains to be made. They are learning a movement pattern and building neuromuscular pathways. Thus in the first 4-6 weeks they likely haven’t built actual strength, rather improved neuromuscular pathways. Which I suppose you could argue is in fact gaining strength. Point is, these much larger jumps in weight lifted and force produced are going to happen early on in someone’s lifting experience. Even as an amateur. These gains can continue for YEARS before a lifter truly plateaus with their strength gains. But that largely depends on the lift.

Say with lateral raises, a lifter may hit 5lbs and realize that is going to be difficult for a very long time. AND the point of this more isolated movement with a long lever is maybe not the lift to drive strength with. Not every exercises is best used for maximal or near maximal strength. Maybe better to push control + capacity with these exercises.

What it takes to get strong

As mentioned earlier you need a greater stimulus than a muscle has experienced to have an adaptation that results in more force produced.

This is in fact the definition of strength. Time is not a factor when looking at strength. It strictly refers to and measures force produced, period. If it takes you 20 seconds or 5 seconds, that is not of value - only the weight lifted.

In theory more muscle could be correlated to more strength if strength is being trained. Remember strength is a skill. A body builder with massive amounts of muscle - even more muscle than someone else may not be as strong as the person with less muscle mass but they’ve trained strength in a given skill. Training the skill is so freaking important when it comes to building strength. That is #2 for what it takes to get strong.

1 is actually building muscle - because, I am a broken record, we need muscle to build strength. #1 and #2 can of course be trained in tandem. A perfect example of strength and hypertrophy working hand in hand. It can and often does happen. Built By Annie is a prime example. I call it strength and hypertrophy programming because that’s what it is. This is also the type or approach of programming I teach inside Pure PROgramming. Simply because most people want to have more muscle and also be stronger. Even outside of sports like body building or power and weightlifting.

Training the skill

If every movement is NOT necessarily best used for building maximal force, what movements should you focus on for strength? Let me be very clear with the fact that there is no black and white rule book. Generally speaking, large compound movements are where we most commonly drive strength adaptations: Multipoint, multi-muscle group movements like squats, horizontal and vertical pressing and pulling, and deadlift variations (sumo and conventional). But you can very much so drive strength in more single joint bias...