subject: Strength And Fitness Training Tips For Bodybuilders [print this page] To keep fit you need to have muscular strength. You can massively improve your strength by weight training and using resistance machines within your fitness training routine. As a result of improved lifting technique, balance and muscle recruitment the strength progression of the muscle will be eminent as it adapts to the continuous progressive overload of the strength training. By continually overloading our muscles through fitness strength training, and adding the correct factors in place, we will be able to adopt to the stress thereby becoming stronger. To sustain our strength training we need to incorporate the factors needed in this basic formula which include, smart training methods, rest and proper nutrition. When we overload, we are applying greater stress and intensity to the muscle more than it is normally used to. To keep the stimulus to muscle changing continually, we need to undertake a number of ways to overload our muscles in various points in time, during strength training.
Some of the overloading techniques include increasing the resistance which is the most obvious way to overload our muscles in order to lift more. There are various ways to achieve this. One being micro-loading whereby very small amounts of additional resistance are added over a long term without dropping the number of repetitions performed. A second method similar to the next technique, involves working within a repetition range then increasing the resistance when you hit the upper repetition target. Once we achieve this, the resistance will be increased thus starting again at the lower end of the repetition range, and work backwards by increasing the number of repetitions performed with increased resistance.
The other overload technique involves increasing the number of repetitions with a given resistance. We will increase the number of repetitions performed with a certain resistance thus overloading the muscle with greater time under tension. When we increase the number of repetitions for a given weight this will involve an increase in resistance at some future point, whilst aiming to keep the exercise within a certain repetition range as outlined above.
Increasing the intensity within a workout is also another overload technique. This technique makes the muscle work for a longer period of time and allows less rest period. High Intensity Training (HIT) is an article that covers in much greater detail the high intensity training principals. By increasing the intensity the amount of rest time we have will also be reduced.
The next overloading technique is the one whereby we increase the number of sets for an exercise. This principal increases the work for your muscles during your strength training session. When we perform more sets, we create more work for our muscles than usual.
However, the continual addition of sets should not last too much as they will not prove fruitful in the long term. It is therefore advisable that a fitness strength training session should not exceed a duration of more than 60 minutes. The fitness strength training exercise routines should effectively target all the muscle groups of the body.
