A stronger individual is a better individual.
I’m not talking about comparing one person to another. Whether you’re an athlete or not, just compare yourself now to a hypothetical version of yourself where you’re twice as strong, but nothing else has changed. Inherently, the latter is better. There are no necessary draw-backs to strength.
Common objections to gaining strength include, “I don’t want to get bulky,” “I don’t want it to make me slow,” “I don’t want to get injured,” and “I just don’t care about how strong I am.” The answer to these first three objections is that those aren’t necessary consequences of strength, while the second is just ignorance of the other positive effects of increased strength.
Most “bulky” people got that way because they wanted to be bulky, so they exercised and ate in a manner that brought them their desired result. There are plenty of strong individuals who wouldn’t necessarily fit the bill as “bulky” – just look at lower weight classes in strength sports. Often women fear this more frequently than men, and it’s a simple hormonal difference that women, with significantly less testosterone than men, won’t pack on muscle mass as quickly, while they can still increase their strength via other various mechanisms. And besides, think of all the gym-goers who are dissatisfied by their struggle to gain muscle mass; clearly, just picking up a barbell won’t automatically turn you into a world-class bodybuilder by accident, whether you want it to or not.
And strength doesn’t make one slow either; rather, intelligent programming leads to increases in strength concurrent with increases in speed. An athlete doesn’t slow down because he or she got stronger, the athlete slows down because he or she gained a significant amount of weight very quickly, or neglected any sort of speed work in the off-season, or only lifted at low speeds and neglected explosive movements.
Lastly, injury rates for strength training are astoundingly low compared to injury rates in sports. Intelligent strength training should not only be injury-free, but should reduce the risk of injury in other activities.
But the last reply isn’t an objection, but rather a misunderstanding. It’s usually followed by, “I just want to look good,” or “I just want to be good at my sport.” This is where you have to intercede as a coach and demonstrate the ways in which increasing one’s strength increases the likelihood of the desired outcome.
General Population
For your typical personal training client, “I just want to look good” is the most common motivation. Often people have preconceived ideas of what it will take to better their physical appearance, and usually their goal is to “lose weight”. Of course, we know that their real goal is to recompose their body. Often this does involve a significant component of fat loss, but they don’t understand how to achieve this. Clients often just want to get their heart rate up, sweat a bunch, feel out of breath, because – in their mind – if it doesn’t suck, it isn’t working. They want to “burn calories,” which they have been told has to make them feel like garbage.
I like to explain to clients interested in fat loss that they are burning calories during strength training, perhaps more so than during conditioning. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not making an argument that conditioning is unnecessary – concurrent training is a fine thing, but it’s a separate topic. I explain to my clients that they are expending calories in three ways. First, by simply performing the movements, they are increasing our calorie expenditure. They should know this, of course, as they associate activity with burning calories already. Second, they are burning calories in recovery. Gaining strength is as much about using energy and macronutrients to recover from the stress put on the body, which is not shown to the same degree by steady-state cardiovascular conditioning alone. So later that night and the next day when you’re sitting on the couch, you still have an increased caloric expenditure. Third, by increasing their muscle mass, they increase their resting metabolism in the long run. In other words, even when they aren’t recovering from exercise, they still require more calories just to fuel the system that they have built.
This usually makes sense to a client, but often they’ll still have qualms, because it just doesn’t feel right to them. I usually just point out that the strongest people (even if they aren’t bulky) often have to eat a lot in any given day to maintain their bodyweight, just because of the amount of stress they put on their body moving heavy weights frequently. And of course, you can always use some higher rep ranges and conditioning in your programming to compliment your strength work (85%+ of 1RM), which will help increase caloric output and just generally appease the client.
Athletic Population
For an athlete, gaining strength is even more impactful, as her or his goals are more performance-oriented, and increased strength necessarily increases performance. Sure, increasing your squat might not immediately make you better at throwing a spiral in football, but let’s dial back to the basic elements of an athlete.
Al Vermeil outlined the Hierarchy of Athletic Development as work capacity, strength, explosive strength, elastic & reactive strength, and speed, in that order. Without going into depth about each of these elements, let’s discuss how increased strength improves on all other elements.
Work capacity is (generally) the ability to continue productive activity at various intensities and modalities. You can get as complicated as you like with definitions, but work capacity is the ability to do something and keep going. Increased strength improves this capacity by decreasing the relative intensity. Imagine for a moment that your given task is to deadlift 95 pounds for x5 reps, for as many sets as possible, with 60 seconds rest between sets. This is an extremely simplistic example, of course, but ask yourself which of the following individuals will last longer: the person who can deadlift 185, or the person who can deadlift 405? Of course, there are plenty of other forms of work, but most of the ones that don’t improve by being stronger improve more quickly by metabolic changes involved in conditioning. Remember this is not an argument against any other element of fitness, this is an argument to show that increased strength is inherently positive.
Explosive strength is the ability to express strength with maximal speed. This is often demonstrated in a standing vertical or broad jump, and by Olympic weightlifting (snatches, cleans, jerks). After a certain point, it becomes impossible to increase explosive strength without increasing basic strength, as the only way to increase explosive strength is to either add speed or add weight.
Reactive & elastic strength are the ability of muscles to quickly contract after shortening, and are expressed by countermovement and rebounding off of a fall. This involves neural factors, including enhanced strength reflex via muscle spindles and cortical override of inhibition from the Golgi tendon organs, as well as mechanical factors, via the stretch-shortening cycle and stored energy in the tendon. Increased strength improves both of the above neural factors, as well as increasing the strength and elasticity of the muscle and tendon.
Speed can be defined by acceleration and maximal velocity. The acceleration portion of a sprint are most impacted by explosive strength, while maximal velocity is most effected by reactive and elastic strength.
Not mentioned above are coordinative abilities, proprioception, and agility, which go together. Agility has frequently been mistakenly associated with “foot speed,” but is more greatly affected by unilateral leg strength. Additionally, increased strength increases neural factors involved in proprioception and coordination, which will help in the execution of complex sport-specific movements. Additionally, many of the movement patterns necessary in the weight room are mirrored in sport; for example, using leg strength as an initiator of movement, with the arms moving as a follow-through – this is seen in a push jerk, but it’s also seen in a jump shot in basketball.
Lastly, decreased risk of injury should obviously be of interest to both athletic and non-athletic populations. Strength training increases bone mineral density, decreasing risk of fractures. It engrains proper movement techniques that can be used by the general population while helping your buddy move a couch into his new place without hurting yourself, and teaches female athletes proper activation patterns to avoid valgus knee collapse in power sports. And last but not least, increased strength is associated with increased muscle mass, increased tendon and ligament tensile strength, all of which protects joints from the various risks that lead to injury.
So… gaining strength can help you lose fat, gain muscle mass, improve all aspects of sport performance, and decrease risk of injury in sport and daily life.
Let’s get started.
Bare Strength 