5 Easy Tips to Get the Most From Your Strength Workouts

Getting stronger, bigger, more powerful, and endure longer are four very common strength training goals. Although we all express our desired goals differently, we end up actually meeting all four of those mentioned goals. How so? Well, our bodies have the ability to adapt to stress as long the stress isn't too much or applied for too long.

Modern society forces many people to prioritize and manage time. Depending on the amount of time that professional, personal, and social obligations occupy us, we may end up missing the opportunity to devote ample time to exercise. Lack of exercise is a contributing factor for developing obesity, osteoporosis, and heart disease. (Don't confuse that last statement as the only contributing factor) Since time constraints can negatively affect exercise time, it is very important to make whatever time you have EFFICIENT use of time. In order to do so, we need to weed out the unnecessary and focus. Here's five easy tips that will keep you on track to fitness.

1.) GOAL ORIENTED EXERCISES ARE PRIORITY #1: This should go without saying, but your first couple exercises of your strength training bout needs to be spent on enhancing your strength goal BECAUSE that's when your body is primed for an exercise bout. Say for example, you have a goal of jumping higher so you can dunk a basketball. Since Plyometric exercises are explosive versions of a select group of standard strength exercises, you want to get all your jump work at the beginning of each workout. This doesn't mean that you need to run a whole gambit of jumping exercises. Pick 1 or 2 jumping exercises at a time to prevent overtraining and injury. If you choose 2 jumping exercises, make the harder one the first one. Again...we want to prevent injury while enhancing skill.

2.) MULTI-JOINT EXERCISES OVER SINGLE JOINT EXERCISES: Multi-joint exercises activate more muscles and muscle groups than single joint exercises. They help develop more strength throughout the body and you save yourself time. A single multi-joint exercise can work the same muscles as 4-8 single joint exercises. For example, the bench press works the triceps, biceps, chest, and shoulder muscles simultaneously into one single exercise. You can in fact save yourself a significant amount of time from working on isometric exercises like curls, extensions, shrugs, and flys extensions that would yield the similar results as the bench press. The same can be said for Shoulder Presses and Lat Pulls. You work multiple muscles at one time!!!! Start your training using various 3-4 multi-joint exercises and finish with 1-2 single joint exercises.

3.) SLOW DOWN TO GET STRONGER: We've all been to the gym and thought that by doing relatively quick, yet safe repetitions will give us the strength gains we desire. However, you're really cheating yourself by doing that. What I've seen all too often at the gym are people of various sizes using momentum to lift that heavier weight. I'm telling you...don't do it!!! You'll injure yourself and look like a potential viral video victim. If you slow your pace on the non-lifting/lowering portion of the life, you'll get better results.

Let's take a look at a simple body weight squat, unless you're a complete novice, performing 10 simple repetitions is very easy. However, you've only proven to yourself that you can perform 10 body squats in a short amount of time and you probably didn't get a quality set. Try a 10 count body squat instead. From the standard standing position, slowly lower your body so that it takes 9 seconds to get your thighs parallel to the floor. If you get to the lowest portion of the squat prior to 9 seconds, just hold it there until you get to 9. On count 10, stand up quickly to the starting position. Do this for a set of 10 and I promise you, you'll feel a better burn.

Another added benefit of slowing down is that it helps identify breaks in form and weaknesses in a given motion. The majority of musculoskeletal injuries occur during deceleration, things that cause us to stop moving. I attribute a good chunk of these injuries to be influenced by 2 factors: Joint Dysfuncions and Weaknesses within a given motion. I'll address Joint Dysfunctions and a lovely thing called RESET in a future date.

However, I can briefly address weaknesses in a given motion. What do I mean by that? Misalignment of joints during movement. Let's look back at the body squat. If you find that your knees buckle in during the downward motion of the exercise, I am willing to bet you have underdeveloped muscular strength and a joint dysfunction somewhere along your body that is causing your knees to buckle. Now imagine performing plyometric jumps when your knees buckle during a simple squat. It may not happen right away, but repeated stress of this kind increases the likelihood of injury. Why? Because your knees are not properly absorbing the deceleration forces while landing from a jump. Therefore... proper form is extremely important.

By slowing down your movements during a given exercise, you can identify areas of potential misalignment. Your training becomes safer because you know where you need to adjust to improve stability. This however doesn't eliminate joint dysfuntions(more to follow on a future post, I promise)

4.) PLAY WITH REST CYCLES: How long are you supposed to rest between sets to get amazing strength gains? There isn't a straight answer because rest cycles start to explore energy system training. What's nice about energy system focused training is that it better helps muscular adaptations for all athletes: tactical, recreational, and competitive. If you want to increase muscle endurance, 30 second rest breaks are ideal. Anything between 30 and 90 seconds helps to facilitate muscular hypertrophy. 2-5 minute rest intervals help facilitate power and strength gains. Depending on what type of athlete you are, it's good to take these rest cycles into account.

5.) A BREAK IS A GOOD THING: If you find that you're not getting the gains you wish, perhaps you need to take a week or 2 off from your current training regimen. During that time, you should augment your training by focusing on light activities like bike riding, Tai Chi, or an easy walk around the block. The reason I say this is because your muscles need adequate rest to get stronger for you to meet your strength training goals. If you live a busy lifestyle and you find that you are tired all the time, give yourself no more than 14 days but no less than 3 days off from moderate and vigorous exercise. If you exceed 14 days of rest from moderate and vigorous exercise, you'll lose major gains you've made up to that point. However, the time between then, your body is able to recover and maintain your progress with minimal losses(if any).