The definitive guide to strength training How to get strong fast Strength training program

If you want to know how strength training works and how to perform the most popular strength training programs, then this is the article for you.

The benefits of strength training

I was 18 years old when I started working out and my motivation was simple: girls liked muscles, I liked girls, so I needed muscles.

So began my quest for bigger muscles and since then I have made many mistakes and learned some important lessons. One of my biggest mistakes was neglecting actual strength training. Back then, when I didn't really know what I was doing, a typical chest workout for me looked like this:

• Flat bench press on the multi press: 4 to 5 sets of 10 to 12 reps.
• Dumbbell flat bench press: 4 to 5 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions
• Bench press on the reverse incline bench: 4 to 5 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions, in superset with push-ups until muscle failure
• Flying movements with dumbbells: 2 to 3 descending sets until muscle failure.

I was doing workouts like this every day, lasting 1.5 to 2 hours, without realizing that this high repetition pump training should never be the focus of a natural exerciser. Instead, I should have spent less time in the gym and done fewer exercises with heavier weights.

Like many people at the time, I thought that building strength didn't necessarily have anything to do with building muscle. I thought that strength training was about getting strong, but not necessarily muscular. I was quite wrong about that...

Strength training and muscle building

There are three primary ways to stimulate muscle growth (1):

• Progressive tension overload
• Muscle damage
• Cellular exhaustion

Progressive tension overload

Progressive tension overload is the most important of these three mechanisms (2). This concept refers to an increase in tension levels in the muscle fibers and the most effective way to achieve this is to keep increasing the weight on the bar over time.

Muscle damage

The concept of muscle damage refers to microscopic injuries - also known as microtraumas - that occur in the muscle fibers due to high levels of tension. This damage needs to be repaired and if the body is provided with sufficient nutrients and rest, it will rebuild the muscle fibers to better cope with future overloads.

Cellular exhaustion

The concept of cellular exhaustion refers to a variety of intracellular and extracellular changes that occur when muscle fibers contract repeatedly (3). When you push your muscle fibers to their metabolic limits through repetitive actions to the point of muscle failure, you induce large amounts of cellular exhaustion.

These three mechanisms can be seen as separate muscle growth pathways. Each of them stimulates muscle growth, but this stimulation is not equal. This is related to what scientists call the "strength-endurance continuum" (4).

• Heavy training with weights with low repetitions builds strength and results in large amounts of muscle damage.
• Lighter training with weights with higher repetitions increases muscle endurance and results in less muscle damage.

Few people will argue that pump training with high repetitions builds strength as well as training with low repetitions and high weights. Just look at the best strength training programs in the world: they all involve a lot of heavy training.

What surprises many people, however, is that heavy weight training is also very effective for building muscle mass (5). In fact, if you want to reach your maximum genetic potential for muscle growth, you need to do more strength training and less "bodybuilding" workouts.

You might be wondering why fitness model XY performs an infinite number of repetitions and still has an amazing body. The answer is that things look very different when performance-enhancing anabolic compounds come into play.

Want to get muscular? Then you need to get strong

That's the bottom line. This does not mean that training with high repetition numbers has no right to exist in the training program of a natural trainer. But it is most relevant for experienced trainers and it can never completely replace heavy training.

Now that I've made your mouth water enough about training with heavy weights, it's time to go into more detail.

The best strength training programs

If you're used to bodybuilding-style training with high reps and high volume, the transition to real strength training can be a little bumpy at first.

• You'll be moving some intimidatingly heavy weights on presses, pulls and squats.
• Depending on the program you follow, you will probably train certain muscle groups more or less often than before.
• Your workouts will feel less draining overall.
• You will rest significantly longer between sets
• Your training sessions will probably be shorter.

Don't be surprised if once you start your strength training program you want to do more during your workouts...by using shorter rests and increasing the frequency of your workouts and/or exercises. Don't be tempted to make these rookie mistakes.

What you may not realize at the beginning of a strength training program is how quickly systemic fatigue can build up if you try to do too much heavy training too quickly. This can lead to overtraining, which can throw your training and progress completely off track.

Remember that your main goal in your strength training sessions is to get stronger - not to maximize the number of calories burned, the pump or the sweat. This simple shift in your mindset will help you tremendously.

Before you'll be able to do any of the programs we'll cover later, you need to know a little bit about how much weight you can move in different exercises. More specifically, we're talking about your 5RM weight - the maximum weight you can perform 5 technically correct repetitions of a given exercise.

Most programs revolve around the 5RM weight and there are basically two ways to determine this for a given exercise. The first is to find this weight simply by experimentation, which will give the most accurate results.

Alternatively, there are various calculators on the internet which, by entering a training weight and the number of repetitions you can perform with this weight, provide a more or less good estimate of your 5RM weight for the exercise in question.

The best strength training programs for beginners

If real strength training or heavy barbell training is still something relatively new to you, then I usually recommend starting with one of the following tried and tested programs.

Starting Strength

Starting Strength is one of the most popular strength training programs for good reason. This program was published in 2005 by Mark Rippetoe and the third edition of this book is now a staple of bodybuilding literature (6). If you're serious about training with weights, you should read Starting Strength - even if you don't plan to follow this program.

The reason Starting Strength is so appealing to many people - and especially people just starting out with weights - is that it's simple, effective and suitable for a wide range of goals.

• If you want to get strong, Starting Strength can help.
• If you want to build muscle, Starting Strength can help you do that too.
• If you want to improve your athletic ability, Starting Strength will do the job.

The bottom line is that if you're new to strength training or heavy barbell training, you can't go wrong if you start with Starting Strength.

The Starting Strength program

Starting Strength workouts are very simple. They rely on a handful of basic exercises and the focus of the program is to end up moving the heaviest weights possible.

You alternate between two workouts

Unlike muscle confusion programs, in Starting Strength you will only perform two workouts:

Workout A
Exercise	Sets
Squats	3	5
Barbell shoulder press	3	5
Deadlift	1	5

Training session B
Exercise	Sets
Squats	3	5
Bench press	3	5
Deadlift	1	5

No, I haven't forgotten anything here. There are only four exercises for your first Starting Strength training sessions and only six for the entire program.

You will do 3 workouts per week

Your first month will look like this:

Week 1
Day	Training session
1	A
2	Training free
3	B
4	Training free
5	A
6	Training free
7	Training free

Week 2
day	Training session
1	B
2	Training free
3	A
4	Training free
5	B
6	Training free
7	No training

Week 3
day	Training session
1	A
2	Training free
3	B
4	Training free
5	A
6	Training free
7	No training

Week 4
day	Training session
1	B
2	Training free
3	A
4	Training free
5	B
6	No training
7	Training free

You start each exercise in your training sessions with warm-up sets

Warm-up sets prepare your muscles and connective tissue for the heavy training that follows. You perform your first warm-up set with the empty bar and then increase the weight evenly over the course of several sets up to your working weight.

For example, if you perform 5 repetitions of squats with 140 kilos, your warm-up program would look like this:

• Empty bar (20 kilos): 2 sets of 5 repetitions
• 60 kilos: 2 sets of 5 repetitions
• 90 kilos: 1 set of 3 repetitions
• 120 kilos: 1 set of 2 repetitions
• 140 kilos (working set): 3 sets of 5 repetitions

After you have warmed up, you move on to your heavy training.

How much weight should you use for your heavy sets?

Your heavy sets should be performed with a weight that allows you to perform 5 repetitions with good form (and no more and no less).

If you're new to heavy training, it's a good idea to start with a slightly lighter weight than the calculated 5 RM weight and slowly increase as you feel comfortable with the weight.

Rest between sets

Rest 2 to 5 minutes between sets. When you move on to your next set, you should no longer be breathing heavily or feel exhausted from the previous set.

When and how to increase the weight

If you have successfully completed 3 sets of 5 repetitions in a training session, then increase the weight by 2.5 kilos the next time you perform this exercise.

So if you were able to perform 5 repetitions with 100 kilos for all sets of squats in training session A, then increase the weight for squats in training session B to 102.5 kilos.

What should you do if you are unable to complete the specified number of repetitions?

If you are unable to perform 5 repetitions on all sets of an exercise - let's say you can do 5, 4 and 3 repetitions - then stick with the weight you are using until you can do 5 repetitions on all 3 sets.

If you can't do 5 reps on your first set, and can only do 2 or 3 reps on your second and third sets, then the weight is too heavy.

If you reach a point where you have not been able to increase the weight for two workouts in a row, then it's time for a reset. You do this by performing your warm-up sets and then performing a set at 90% of your best 5RM weight for each exercise.

In the second part of this article series, we'll take a look at other popular and proven strength training programs like 5 x 5 and the Texas Method.

By: Mike Matthews