So, I thought I would do a thread on the basics of strength training. It is not intended to be comprehensive, nor is it intended to imply that one form of exercise is better than another. It is purely intended to help those get familiar with the basic concepts and terminology of strength training.

What is strength training?

Well, it is intended to make you strong…yep, pretty obvious. However, there are a few terms that are used interchangeably in everyday use but they really have slightly different meanings such as resistance training and weight training. I will be using the generic term of strength training here to encompass them.

Strength training is a means of stimulating the development and improvement of muscle strength by increasing the ability to resist force through the use of, inter alia, free weights, machines and your own body weight. Strength training is primarily an anaerobic activity.


Benefits of strength training.

When properly performed, strength training can provide significant functional benefits and improvement in overall health, including increased bone, muscle, tendon and ligament strength, increased bone density, increased metabolism, improved body composition and generally making you feel like a badass.


Compound and isolation lifts

Compound lifts utilize more than one joint and as such work several muscle groups at once. For example, squats require the use of the hip, knee and ankle joints. It works a host of muscle groups but primarily glutes, quads and core.

An isolation exercise is one where the movement uses only one joint, such as leg extensions.

Both have their place, however, due to the fact that you are using a number of muscle groups for compound lifts, these often form the foundation of a majority of lifting programs.


Rep ranges

Different rep ranges cause a different type of stress on the body and it reacts differently to each.

The lower rep range (1 – 5) causes neurological adaptations, which is your body developing its ability to activate muscle fibers by increasing the frequency of neural impulses sent to the brain as well as improving intra- and inter-muscle coordination. Basically it makes you stronger but does has a lesser impact to your muscle mass.

The mid rep range (6 – 12) the impact is more on the metabolic and cellular level where you gain muscle mass but strength gains are not as significant as you would get in the lower rep ranges. This is the general rep range for hypertrophy, or mass gains.

The higher rep ranges (13+) stimulate muscle endurance primarily with only a small amount of hypertrophy and very little strength and as such is not considered strength training in the strict sense of the word.

Note, that there is no hard and fast line between the effects of the above, but rather a continuum. Also, the number of sets plays into how much is strength v hypertrophy v endurance. For example, you can do 5 sets of 6 reps for a total of 30 lifts, or you can do 10 sets of 3 lifts for a total of 30 lifts. If you do them to an equivalent level of failure, the time under tension will be the same. The number of sets does not automatically turn it from strength to hypertrophy due to the rest periods between sets, but it does have a bearing on where in the continuum the routine lies.

So, in summary:
1 – 5 reps = strength
6 – 12 reps = hypertrophy
12+ = endurance

So, the appropriate rep ranges really depend on your goals as well as your overall lifting program. Most ‘standard’ programs focus on the upper end of the strength range so benefits of both strength and some hypertrophy are gained.


Some tips:

- Form is of importance all the time. Do not push to increase weights if your form is not good.

- Warm up your muscles before lifting by doing a short amount of cardio (less than 10 minutes). Stretching is not required and should not be done ‘cold’ in any event.

- When you get to lifting heavier weights, with the compound lifts, make sure you do sufficient warm up sets.

- If you want to do cardio in the same session, do it after lifting.

- Put the ‘big’ lifts (heavier strength range compounds) at the beginning of your session.