Muscular Strength: Training Muscles to Become Stronger

by Alan Tolchin⁽¹⁾
AJT Ventures, LLC

As a general rule, a muscle worked close to its force-generating capacity will increase in strength. The overload can be applied with standard weight-lifting equipment, pulleys or springs, immovable bars or a variety of isokinetic devices. The important point is that strength improvements are generally governed by the intensity of overload and not by the specific method.

Probably the most popular form of strength training involves weight-lifting. With this method, exercises are designed to strengthen specific muscles by causing then to overcome a fixed resistance, usually in the form of a barbell, dumbell, or a weight machine. Human skeletal muscle can generate about 3-4 kg of force per square centimeter of muscle cross-section, regardless of sex. Muscles become stronger in response to overload training. Overload is created by either increasing the load, increasing the speed of muscular contraction, or by a combination of these factors. A load that represents 60-80% of a muscle's force-generating capacity is usually sufficient to produce strength gains.

In today's society, women are successfully participating in most sports and physical activity, however one area that have tended to avoid is strength training. Many women fear that these exercises will develop overly enlarged muscles similar to those observed in men engaged in heavy weight-lifting programs. This is unfortunate because both men and women need sufficient strength to successfully perform sports such as tennis, golf, skiing, dance and gymnastics. A proper program of strength training improves muscular strength in most of these areas in both men and women.

The basic difference between men and women in response to strength training appears to be the degree of muscular hypertrophy. Despite similar strength improvements, increases in muscle girth are substantially less for women. This difference has mostly to do with the different hormonal levels between the sexes. The testosterone level in men is 20-30 times higher than in women and exerts a strong anabolic or tissue-building effect. Women can therefore uitilize conventional weight-lifting exercise without developing overly large muscles. In short-term studies women make strength improvements similar to those of men without the accompanying muscular hypertrophy.

Our capacity for muscular strength is largely determined by both genetic and physiologic factors. In addition the strength capacity in muscle is greatly affected by neural influence from the central nervous system. Increases in strength with overload training are due to improved capacity for motor unit recruitment and changes in the efficiency of firing patterns of motor nerves, ie. increased isolation of muscle.

Article submitted Monday, October 26, 2009 & read 193 times.

This article is authored by Alan Tolchin who is both a physician and a bodybuilder. He has a blog-site called "Customized Bodybuilding Workouts" posting weekly on topics of interest to the bodybuilding-fitness-exercise community. His blog can be found at http://www.customizedbodybuilding.com where you can read his many posts.

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» left by Paul Schroeder (2 years 212 days ago.)

Does falling to the floor and passing into a coma qualify as exercise?
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» left by Greg Gallon (2 years 204 days ago.)

Great article on strength training. The progressive overload principle is something that is lost from many training regiments. If you don't constantly overload your body you won't see the kinds of gains that you would otherwise.
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» left by alan tolchin from NJ (2 years 203 days ago.)

thanks for the compliment on my article ; overload-training is where it's at.
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