Training To Optimize Muscular Strength
You can’t effectively train to optimize all three goals of strength, hypertrophy (muscle growth) and fat loss!
As a recap, building muscle (hypertrophy) and increasing muscular strength are considerably different.
Muscle mass is essentially the amount and size of muscle fibers that you have, which makes up a cross sectional area.
Muscular strength is the ability to recruit those muscle fibers.
These path towards reaching these goals aren’t completely isolated from one another as there is some carryover between the two, but it’s still more efficient to focus on one goal at a time.
In this article, we’ll explore training to optimize the goal of getting physically stronger.
The Central Nervous System and Muscle Fiber Recruitment
As stated earlier, strength is not largely dependent on the size or number of muscle fibers you have, but your ability to recruit those available muscle fibers to get them to do what you want.
Muscle fiber recruitment lies under the responsibility of your central nervous system (CNS). This means that muscular strength (how “strong” you are) is primarily a neurological function.
In order to get stronger, you have to become more efficient at recruiting those muscle fibers.
The number of muscle fibers that you can contract simultaneously, the rate at which you can contract them, and various other factors are all instrumental in the determination of one’s strength.
Neural efficiency is the reason that bodybuilders and powerlifters look so different. The strongest people are often not the largest, and vice versa. You’ll also see smaller people that are disproportionately strong.
The CNS is also highly variable, depending on the situation that you’re in. If it senses danger, your autonomic nervous system can subconsciously shift your body into a sympathetic state, or “fight-or-flight”. Since survival is paramount, muscle fiber recruitment approaches its optimal levels and can result in unrealistic feats of strength. Like lifting a car to save a baby!
The reason that a drug like caffeine is so effective as a workout supplement is because of its stimulatory properties. Caffeine largely works by increasing neural activity, which essentially artificially shifts you into fight-or-flight mode. Caffeine can enhance focus and muscle-fiber recruitment, making your stronger in the gym, at least in the short term.
Now, that we understand why the central nervous system plays such a fundamental role in strength training, how do we train it?
Training For Strength
We know that our primary goal is to subconsciously improve muscle fiber recruitment, but the key word here is subconscious – Meaning it’s out of our direct control.
You can improve the efficiency of this neuro-muscular system by training a certain way.
When you train for strength, yes, you are training your muscles because they are lifting the weight, but the CNS is a prime trainee in the process. We actually want to reduce the amount of stress on the muscles, so that the main focus can be on this CNS adaptation.
The objective with strength training is to increase muscle fiber recruitment WITHOUT inducing muscle damage.
This may seem counter-intuitive, but think of this way: the muscles are the “tool” for your nervous system to do work. If you damage the tool, then the brains behind the operation can’t do its job as effectively.
In order to minimize muscle damage, while still maximizing this CNS adaptation, you’ll want to focus on the following queues:
- Lift Heavy – The 1-5 rep range is where CNS adaptation peaks
- High Intensity – You’ll want to lift close-to, but not all the way, to failure to train the CNS. I’ll discuss training to failure more in the next section.
- Explosive Concentric – You’ll want to lift the weight as fast as possible to recruit the maximal amount of muscle fibers. This will enable to lift the heaviest weight possible.
- Fast Controlled Eccentric – You’ll want to lower the weight quickly, but under control to minimize TUT*.
- Point A to Point B – Rather than feeling the muscular contraction, you’ll want to follow the movement of the weight, so that the weight can get from point A to point b as quickly and efficiently as possible.
- Lower Volume – Keeping the number of sets and reps down will reduce TUT*, muscle damage, and allow you to keep intensity high.
- Long Rest Periods – It takes your CNS longer to recover than your muscles. 3+ minutes (depends on variety of factors, including the amount of weight lifted, the complexity of the exercise, etc.) is a good place to start.
*Minimizing time under tension (TUT) is an important consideration to reduce muscle damage. The longer your muscles have to contract to move the weight, the more they will fatigue and damage. This is good for hypertrophy (muscle growth), but can detract from the primary goal of CNS progression.
The Importance of Recovery
We want to stimulate, but not annihilate the CNS, so that it can adapt and progress. Excess fatigue is not only unsafe (focus and form tends to break down when we’re tired), but sub-optimal to recover from.
Recovery is important for any type of exercise, but even more so when it comes to strength training. The CNS takes longer to recover, both in between sets and workouts, than your muscles.
There’s a fine balance between intensity and recovery, and it’s highly individual, so you’ll have to find it for yourself. Making gradual progress overtime is a good way to stay on track. Progressing too quickly will likely lead to burnout.
Training to failure is something that should be AVOIDED like the plague when training to optimize strength. It offers very minimal benefit (1 extra rep or 2), but considerable detriment when it comes to recovery.
Stopping a couple reps shy from failure allows you to stay fresh, preserve intensity, and enables you to lift more weight overall, either in that workout or the succeeding ones.
Exercise Selection
Since our goal is maximize the amount of weight that is lifted, selecting exercises that reinforce that goal is important.
The Foundational Exercises
Barbell exercises are key, and should be the foundation of your strength program. The bar helps take stability out of the equation and allows you to lift more than twice the weight you would be able to lift with dumbbells or kettlebells.
This is why the barbell bench press, squat and deadlift are considered “the big three” and selected as the cornerstones of strength in powerlifting competitions. These exercises allow you to lift the most amount of weight as possible in each of their respective movement patterns.
Other bi-lateral compound/multi-joint exercises like weighted chin ups/pull ups, barbell rows, overhead presses are other great exercise choices for strength to utilize the other planes of motion.
Accessory Work
Next comes accessory work to bring up your weaknesses and lagging muscle groups. These should be secondary to your primary strength-focused exercises, and should not inhibit recovery for your main foundational exercises.
This is where unilateral, isolation/single-joint, and machine exercises come into play. They allow you to bring up weak points without causing as much joint stress and impact to your central nervous system.
Simplicity Is Key
Each exercise is highly technical and should be considered a skill. Practice is crucial in order to get really good at each exercise. This means performing each exercise frequently, so that they skill can develop more quickly.
Before you can expect to get great results from a strength-standpoint, you’ll have to become proficient at performing the movement. Also, since the goal is to move the weight from point A to point B, skill becomes even more important.
Doing too many exercises and mixing up your workouts too frequently can be a bad thing! If you have too much variety, you can never truly get good at an exercise.
Stick to a few basic exercises that feel good, work for your body, and allow you to progress. If you reach a standstill, there are many ways to manipulate variables before needing to change up your exercises.
The foundational exercises, or close variations thereof should remain mostly the same. Accessory movements are where you can experiment and mix it up. Remember though, there’s no need to introduce an exercise unless it provides a novel benefit!
A Sample Strength Training Routine
Now that you understand the principles of what your objective should be when training to optimize strength, you may be wondering where to start.
As I mentioned in the last section, simiplicity cannot be overstressed enough for strength training routines. Sticking to the basics is important.
Here’s a sample program, based on the proven Starting Strength methodology:
Workout A
Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
Barbell Squat | 3 | 5 | ~3-4 minutes |
Barbell Military Press | 3 | 5 | ~3 minutes |
Barbell Deadlift | 1 | 5 | ~3-4 minutes |
Workout B
Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
Barbell Squat | 3 | 5 | ~3-4 minutes |
Barbell Bench Press | 3 | 5 | ~3 minutes |
Barbell Deadlift | 1 | 5 | ~3-4 minutes |
*Note: this is just a sample routine, intended for beginners/intermediates. This is a good place to start for many people. Sets, reps, and rest periods can be varied depending on individual needs.
For this program, it’s intended to alternate between Workout A and Workout B. There should be 3 sessions each week. Here’s a sample 2 week schedule:
Week 1
- Workout A – Monday
- Workout B – Wednesday
- Workout A – Friday
Week 2
- Workout B – Monday
- Workout A – Wednesday
- Workout B – Friday
Warming Up
Warming up properly is fundamental for a safe and productive workout. Not only does it prevent injury, but it primes your body to lift more weight.
The warm up should be highly individual and I won’t get into it too much here, but it should be tailored to your specialized needs.
Once you bring up your body temperature, mobilize, and activate your desired muscle groups, it’s time to prepare for each exercise.
For your 3 foundational barbell exercises, starting with the empty bar, you’ll want to perform ~10 reps of the exercise. Then you can gradually add weight to the bar in 50-100 lb increments, depending on how much weight you use for your first working set.
This not only acclimates your muscles for the given exercise, but it turns on your CNS, so that it “fires” those muscles more effectively. It also allows you to get more practice in for the technical movement!
Progression
The primary objective for any training program is to ensure that you’re making measurable progress over time. With strength, it’s pretty easy to track because you either get stronger or you don’t.
It may be tempting to overstep your bounds and bring too much intensity, but please don’t overdo it.
Your muscles are easy to burn out on their own, but your CNS is even more impressionable to high amounts of stress (both internal and external). It’s crucial to keep progress slow and steady, so that you can succeed in the long term.
As long as your adding weight or reps on a weekly basis, you’re on track. Adding reps too quickly (ex. pushing too hard and going to failure) may give you immediate satisfaction, but can detract from your long-term progress.
Train hard (but not too hard) and train intelligently if you want to get stronger. Good luck!