Strength Training WorkoutsKey Elements To Strength Training Workouts

Strength training workouts are designed to help you increase strength and build muscle. These workouts have the added benefit of helping your body burn more calories, since muscle burns more calories than fat. With this in mind, you want to get the most out of your workouts while avoiding injury.

The concept of power muscle burn, strength training workouts utilizes three training approaches within the same workout.

The power stage of strength training leads the workout. These are just what it sounds like – power sets. This is for the major muscle groups, and you will use a 3-5 rep count. Use the same amount of weight for each set until you can eventually do five sets. Once you can do five power lifting moves, increase your weight and start retraining your muscles for the larger weight.

The next stage of strength training includes working your muscle sets in a set of up to 12 reps. The major muscle groups will need 4-6 sets using the same weight for each group, doing two different exercises. The minor muscle groups only need 2-4 sets of each type of exercise.

Burn sets are reserved for isolation movements. Use a weight that you can get 20 reps from, and then work towards 40 reps with that weight. You can rest in between for a short period, and keep going until you reach your goal. Don’t do more than 1-2 burn sessions on your isolated movements.

There is no set number of reps or weight that applies to everyone. If you can’t reach the full amount of reps, or need lower weight, then start with less and keep adding more each week. The key element to strength training workouts is that you are seeing progress. You don’t want target and remain at your minimum ability.

TIME OFF

Make sure that you are taking time off from this type of workout for your muscles to adequately recover. You are asking a lot of your body when you want to make your muscles burn. Recovery is essential, so make sure to divide your workout into a split week with at least two days off.

Remember that strength training workouts focus on building strength, but they are not guaranteed to build muscle mass.  Many of the workouts that focus on building strength (the ones of high weight, low reps) will help to turn body fat into muscle mass, but the endurance exercises (high reps, low weight) will build strength as well as lean muscle.  If you are trying to get ripped with large, visible muscles, you will need to focus on the high weight, low rep exercises.

Disclaimer: Strength training workouts are excellent, but they are the workouts where you are most likely to get injured.  Seeing as you will be working with a lot more weight than you are used to handling, you will be more likely to jerk or strain your muscles.  When doing strength training or any kind of workout that uses heavy weights, make sure to have a spotter or a trainer on hand to help prevent injuries.