Strength Training is definitely your weapon of choice, if your goal is to improve either with muscular strength or muscular hypertrophy. But what if you’re losing some results because of minor mistakes in your training protocol.
The following are the Principles of Strength Training that you must keep in mind, when you get into Strength Training to optimise your results:
1. Principle of Specificity: This is broadly about training specifically for a particular goal. The way one trains for improving muscular strength is not same as the training style for muscular hypertrophy. Even if one selects the same set of exercises and movements for both the goals, there will still be certain parameters that will be needed to be optimised specific to the individual’s goals. Parameters like Rep Ranges, Rest Periods between sets, weights used for sets will be varied for different goals(i.e different for strength and hypertrophy).
2. Principle of Individuality: A training protocols, even when two different individuals are working with similar intensity and follow the same diet plans will not bring out same results for both the individuals. Two different individuals can have different biomechanics, different genetics, different somatotypes and different physical conditions at the same time. To explain this, we consider two different persons X and Y. X is genetically gifted with great biceps and shitty genetics for calves and Y is genetically gifted with calves but has shitty genetics for biceps. They both get 6 working sets of both the muscles in a week. The results will be, X will see a better growth in his biceps and poor results for calves and vice-versa is true for Y. So, even if they both follow the same program, the results are quite different. In addition, X can require more intensity than Y for calves to match the results of Y and Y may need more intensity than X to bring in similar results as X when it comes to biceps.
3. Principle of Progressive Overload: In the layman’s terms, it just says to build up for greater challenges with time. This can be done by gradually increasing the level of challenges during your training. Improvements with Strength Training can only be dynamic and progressive when one continuously increases the intensity of workouts. This can either be done by increasing the resistance keeping the rep range constant, or by increasing the rep range keeping the resistance constant, or by increasing the number of working sets performed for a particular exercise in a workout session, or by decreasing the rest periods between the sets, or by simply increasing the Time under Tension during the sets.
4. Principle of Variation: If you’re someone who follows fitness and fitness related content on the web, I am sure you must have heard this line, “Our body is smarter than we think.” and honestly I cannot agree more. If one trains under a particular training regime for years, they will see stagnant results and no progress eventually. The body adapts to the challenges of the training protocols with time and now doesn’t even consider it as a challenge, hence it doesn’t have a reason to progress further. To avoid this, we bring in minor changes like changing training cycles (switching between strength and hypertrophy phases in few months, i.e. Linear Periodisation) or changing in stimuli to avoid a plateau.
5. Principle of Maintenance: There will be a certain limit till which we can push our bodies. If for some reason, we have reached that limit, we cannot progress further, we have to maintain what we have achieved with our hardwork. To maintain and preserve our previous results for a particular fitness component, one must continue with previous training while he can bring in some newer protocols for training other components of fitness and improve in them.
6. Principle of Reversibility: As simple as it sounds, there will be reversal of your progress, even to the very starting point once you discontinue your training. To keep moving forward, we must ensure we are training consistently without fail. So, the next time you take off from your workout sessions, be very clear in your mind, you are surely gonna lose some strength and size. The longer is the break, greater is the loss.
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