Muscular strength helps you lift a variety of objects, whether heavy or light.
Muscular strength is essential for everyone. No guy wants to be a weakling and playing the dainty damsel is so over for women. FitDay lists muscular strength as #1 in the 5 components of physical fitness. Strong muscles enable your body to meet the demands you place on it every day, including making it possible for you to stand, walk, and lift objects of varying weight. Additionally, a study published in the Journals of Gerontology found that low muscle strength is linked to mortality.
Whether you want to go all-out and build Superman strength, or just increase your muscular strength to increase longevity and ensure you don’t need help opening a pickle jar, the key is all in how you train. Obviously you will need to participate in resistance training to challenge your muscles and increase strength. The experts say eccentric training is the way to go.
Join the Resistance
Whatever equipment you use, almost any exercise can be done eccentrically by resisting gravity to control the negative part of the move.
Eccentric actions are ones that slow movement down. When you train with eccentric resistance, you can do pretty much any exercise, but you will concentrate on controlling the negative part of the move by slowing it down. Because you will overload your muscles and rely less on gravity during each exercise, you will probably experience more soreness in the day or two after working out. That makes it all the more important to allow enough time for recovery between eccentric workouts. Give each muscle group at least 72 hours before hitting it again. A two day on, one day off regimen works well with eccentric exercise. As an example, you could split your workouts like this:
- Day 1: back and biceps
- Day 2: chest, shoulders, triceps
- Day 3: off
- Day 4: legs and abs
- Day 5: start the cycle over with back and biceps
- Day 6: off
Working through this routine gives you every third day off which allows your muscle groups a full three-day rest after each workout.
Exercising Eccentric-ly
With lat pulldowns, control the bar as it raises up after you pull it down to your shoulders.
Image by LookBetterNaked/Flickr
So, how can you turn any exercise you do into an eccentric one to increase muscular strength? You do it by resisting gravity to slow down the movement during the negative part of the exercise. For example, when you perform push-ups, take your time lowering your body to the ground, then press up quickly in an explosive move. If you are bench pressing, the control part comes when you are lowering the bar to your chest. Take as long as you can to do it, 15 seconds or more. Once the bar touches your chest, immediately press it back up and do another rep.
Eccentric Precautions
Warm up before your eccentric workout by jumping rope or jogging in place. A few dynamic stretches will help prepare your muscles, too.
You should always consult your physician when you start an exercise program or make any major changes to one, and especially if you are recovering from an injury. The ACSM points out that eccentric exercises could worsen joint pain for people with arthritis and other joint issues. Don’t be surprised if you hit failure after fewer reps when you start with eccentric exercises. Warm-ups are always recommended, but especially vital when participating in eccentric-focused resistance training. Also, you should always strive to maintain proper form, but not doing so during eccentric exercise presents a greater possibility of injury.