Consistently following a strength training programme is one of the best ways to enhance your quality of life and improve your ability to do everyday activities, not to mention increase your overall strength.
How can you ensure you’re creating a strength training programme that motivates you and gets you the results you want?
By incorporating the following strategies into your plan…
Target each muscle group twice a week
How you decide to target each muscle group depends on how many times you train a week. Whether you’re looking to build muscle or to increase your strength, it’s vital to your progress that you’re targeting each muscle group at least twice a week.
Here are a few schedules you could follow:
- 2 times a week – 2 total body sessions
- 3 times a week- 1 push day/ 1 pull day/1 total body day
- 4 times a week- upper body/lower body/upper body/lower body
Focus on your bigger lifts first
At Evolve Coaching & Fitness, we always advise our clients to ensure they’re performing their bigger lifts before performing the more simple lifts that target smaller muscle groups. The reason you should focus on your bigger lifts first is because they require more of your strength and energy.
Your bigger lifts will consist of compound exercises. These exercises will usually indicate how well your strength is increasing because you will be able to lift heavier over time.
Examples of compound exercises:
- Squats
- Deadlifts
- Overhead presses
- Bench presses
- Rows.
Following these compound exercises, you should perform accessory exercises. These are moves that isolate one part of your body.
Examples of accessory exercises:
- Reverse lunges
- Leg curls and extensions
- Skull crushers
- Bent-over rows
- Barbell curls
- External rotations.
Deciding which accessory exercise to perform is dependent on what compound movement you are performing beforehand and on what areas of weakness you may have.
Accessory exercises are a fantastic way to improve anything that may be limiting your progress with your compound exercises. Athletes use accessory lifts to improve any weaknesses or muscular imbalances they have, and to add extra volume to targeted muscle areas.
Let’s say you regularly perform an accessory exercise like external rotations after you’ve performed a compound movement like a bench press, over time you will improve your stability and strength and be able to bench press heavier.
As the demand on your body is a lot higher when you’re performing compound movements, it’s recommended you do them before your accessory exercises. If you try to perform accessory exercises before your compound exercises, you will be putting yourself and your progress at a disadvantage as you will be creating fatigue in an already weak area of your body.
Be patient
Though it might be tempting to veer off from your strength training programme or to add a load of extra movements into it because you’re getting bored of following the same routine, we highly advise you avoid doing this. If you want to see progress, and you want to achieve long-lasting results, you need to follow a workout plan that lasts between 4-8 weeks. This will give you a good amount of time to become familiar with your exercises, to learn how to use the correct form, and to steadily improve your strength. Increasing the amount of weight you’re using when performing your exercises will help your workouts to feel like a consistent challenge.
Don’t forget to rest
Each time you train, you’re actually creating microscopic tears in your muscle tissues. When you rest, your muscles start to heal and grow back stronger, meaning you’ll be able to do the same workout with less effort in the future. Skipping rest days is the worst thing you can do. It can lead to fatigue and incurring an injury.
When you’re following a strength training program, make sure your calorie intake complements the intensity of your training. This will help you to avoid depletion. Although supplements aren’t crucial to aiding your recovery, they can speed the recovery process and help you to get back into the gym sooner and with greater power and energy. Protein is the most useful supplement for muscle recovery. It’s important to note that each individual’s supplement needs will be different.
If you’d like more advice about what you should consider when you’re creating a strength training programme, or if you’ve been considering some personal training support, the Evolve team would love to hear from you.
Our results-based 1:1 personal training focuses on your individual goals. We will provide you with the tools and guidance you can utilize during your personal training sessions as well as in your own time. You will be offered a free consultation where your chosen personal trainer will get to know you as an individual, your background, capabilities and what your goals are. Get in touch with us today.