Building Strength

Strength comes with effort and consistency. The effort part is straight forward. The harder you work for each workout, for every set, for every rep, the more clear your results will be. A set where you rep until failure will produce more results than a set where you stop with a few more reps in you. It makes intuitive sense.

A piece of advice I would offer in regards to getting motivation easier is to find someone who is hungry to get stronger and make them your workout partner. I have a friend at school who recently decided that he wanted to get in on my workout routine because he wants to be a “Greek God” by summer. He goes until failure for every set. This has only made me more motivated to do those three or four extra reps every set.

Something to note is that time under tension is key to building muscle. If you force yourself to go until failure, your last few reps are going to take longer so those last few reps leading up to failure are actually the most beneficial ones for your results.

Consistency is the number one important thing in seeing improvements in strength. Create a routine for yourself. My personal favorite workout split is probably the most common one: Push, Pull, Legs. Push days include chest, shoulder, and tricep workouts. Pull days include back, and bicep workouts. Leg days include workouts that will hit the glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calf muscles.

My weekly routine looks like this: Push on Monday, pull on Tuesday, legs on Wednesday, push on Thursday, pull on Friday, legs on Saturday, and cardio on Sunday.

Stick to your routine, and remember to continue to increase weight as you continue to get stronger. Since I have done my exercises so many times, I am in tune with how much weight I max out at on each exercise. From week to week I gradually build up to my max and when I reach my max weight I will try to surpass it. This is called Progressive Overloading. Currently, I am seeing good progress and for the past few months have managed to increase my maxes from every three to four weeks.