You want to get stronger, right? Building strength requires consistency, intensity, patience, and dedication. Strength is important in your everyday life. From getting out of bed to carrying groceries to picking up your children or your dog. Knowing how to build strength is essential whether you’re an older adult who’s worried about safely getting up from a chair or if you’re younger looking to perform a heavier bench press. No matter your goals, it’s important to know that it takes long-term consistency to achieve results.
A recent study found that it typically takes between 6–15 weeks before you start seeing any strength gains. It is worth nothing that you might actually even notice an increase in strength during the first few weeks. This is typically seen in those that are untrained than those that have been working at it already.
The goal to building strength is to get your body to adapt to lifting heavier loads and this is how you do it.
How to Build Strength
First, in order to figure out if you are building strength, you need to know where you begin. This is best done by performing one repetition (1RM) of the exercise you are looking to build strength in or the muscle you are looking to build strength in. The idea behind the one repetition is to perform the one repetition as heavy as you can.
Studies have shown that increasing strength requires lifting with loads greater than or equal to 60% of your 1RM load. As you increase your load you may produce better strength gains. The goal is to complete 1–8 repetitions until muscle failure.
Here is an example of how you would build strength for you bench press during a workout:
- Perform 80% of your 1RM for 3 repetitions.
- Rest 3 minutes.
- Complete 3-6 sets.
You can do this with a regular bench, then followed by an incline bench press, decline bench press, and chest flies.
It is important to keep in mind that strength training will vary with each person. What you can do will be determined by previous training history, injuries, and age. For example, someone who is 50 may want to perform lighter loads, like 60% of your 1RM.
When planning out your week for building strength, you want to work on focusing on one or two muscles per day with exercises that isolate those muscles. A common split is back and biceps one day, chest and triceps another day and legs a third day. And recovery is very important as well, like taking rest days between workouts and taking recovery supplements.
We recommend RESCUE. RESCUE is our vegan BCAA supplement that you can think of as your favorite superhero sidekick. Take RESCUE before, during or after burning some calories to help repair your muscles and rehydrate. With a light and refreshing taste, RESCUE is there to lift you up for your next big move. Work out hard and recover effortlessly.
