Weight-resistance training involves repeated lifting of an increasing amount of weight over time. By using your muscles to resist the opposing force of the weight, you condition your muscles in three main ways: by improving neuro-muscular efficiency, by building muscle tissue, and by establishing movement patterns. Weight-resistance training can give you better coordination, increased strength, greater endurance, and improved flexibility.
“Use it or lose it” is a rule that applies to muscle capability. You perform some weight-resistance activity by standing up and sitting down, by taking something off a shelf or bending over and picking something up. Your body supplies the weight that is being lifted. But this isn’t enough to condition muscles to perform at higher levels. Your body adapts to the amount and kind of activity you ask it to do, whether that is more activity or less.
Weight-resistance training is a structured way of getting your body to gradually adapt to increasing amounts of effort. You lift weights that challenge your current level of strength a little bit. You continue at that level until it seems easy. You increase the weight you are lifting so you are challenged again and then repeat the process again and again. Your miraculous body adapts to the ever-increasing workload.
There are many styles of weight-resistance training based on the type of weight used, but the training principles are the same regardless of style. What matters is 1) that there is resistance, 2) that you can incrementally increase the effort required to resist, and 3) that the resistance can be counteracted by a specific muscle or group of muscles.
The resistance itself usually comes from your choice of equipment. You can train using free weights, either hand weights (dumbbells) or barbells. You can use special machines which allow you to control the amount of resistance (weight) and to position your body so you’ll use proper form for a particular muscle or muscle group. Your body motion that causes the weight to be lifted when using a machine might be one of lifting, but it might also be pushing or pulling. You can also use your own body weight to supply resistance, as when doing pushups.
The increase in effort can be achieved in three different ways. You can increase the amount of weight the body is resisting by lifting heavier dumbbells, putting more weight plates on a barbell, or setting a machine to use more weight. You can increase the number of times the weight is resisted (lifted) by changing the number of reps (repetitions of a specific movement) and sets (groups of repetitions with rest between the groups). You can increase the length of time the body resists the weight by slowing your lifting speed.
When most people first start training, they are able to handle more weight quite quickly, even though muscle growth can’t be seen or felt. Those early gains in strength and conditioning are neuro-muscular. You become more efficient as the coordination between your brain and nervous system and the muscle tissue you already have improves.
Muscles gain size and strength when they are pushed beyond their current comfort zone. This is known as overload. You can overload our muscles a little, to where the last three repetitions are hard to do. You can overload them a lot, to the point of muscle failure where it’s impossible to do another rep with good form. Muscle soreness a day or two after a workout is usually a side effect of a hard weight-resistance training session. This is because you actually damage your muscle tissue, creating tiny tears in the muscle fibers called microtears. Exercise science theory contends that the repairs the body makes to the microtears cause the subsequent increases in muscle size and strength.
The body needs time to repair the damage. That’s why rest between hard weight training workouts is so important. Strength gains are actually made during recovery, not while weight is being lifted. Recovery times vary for each individual depending on genetics, age, and current fitness level, but all bodies need to recover from the overload.
To achieve the best result the overload has to be applied to a specific muscle or muscle group working in a specific way to achieve a specific goal. Specific. That’s the key. You have to use good form to make sure the same muscle gets used on every repetition; otherwise you’re spreading the load around and no one muscle gets overloaded. For example, assume your goal is to condition your tricep, the main muscle on the back of the upper arm. If you just grab a hand weight and start lifting your arm, chances are you’re using your tricep a little bit, but you’re probably also using your hand, your forearm, your bicep, your shoulder, and your back.
Your body will do the adapting, but you, perhaps with help from a trainer or physical therapist, have to choose your specific goals, decide which muscles you want to condition, and select specific exercises. You have to learn some basic anatomy so you know where a particular muscle is. You have to learn which movements cause that muscle to contract in isolation, meaning that particular muscle is doing most of the work. You have to use good form on every repetition to maintain that isolation. You have to direct your mind to the muscle being trained. The more focused you are, the better your results will be.
Targeting specific muscles conditions them for the demands made on them by specific sports. For example, cyclists need strong triceps, but bicep strength is not as important for them. Shoulder strength isn’t such a big deal for runners, but it’s important for people who play racquet and throwing sports.
All the repetition with your mind concentrating on good form has another benefit. It conditions your muscles to move in the ways they’ve been trained without your being conscious of controlling the movement. This is sometimes referred to as muscle memory. It’s one of the reasons athletes have weight-resistance training programs tailored to meet the muscular demands and motions of their sport. They want their conditioning to lead to performance-based fitness and “playing in the zone,” not just good looks and good health.
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Category : Health&Fitness
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