Most of us don’t do enough strength training to realize this This may have health benefits. The American College of Sports Medicine has issued a new guideline on strength training which gives more realistic advice than what you may have heard about strength training elsewhere. In addition to underscoring the amount of training we need, the new guidelines also bring some surprises in the form of debunking many of the long-standing “rules” of strength training. Among them: Training to failure isn’t necessary, and unstable surfaces aren’t necessary for improving your balance.
I keep seeing fitness professionals celebrating these new ACSM guidelines as a vast improvement over previous advice. Certainly the new version has become more specific about how to achieve various benefits of training (such as strength vs. muscle size), but it also tells us how No Giving more thought to details. I’ll explain the main points below, and then you can read it Press release and this Full list of guidelines.
Why strength training matters
If you’re interested in fitness, here’s what you should know Cardio and strength training are both important—You can’t just do one thing and ignore the other. But even if you’re only interested in health benefits, strength training is important.
I’ve written about this before Benefits of gaining muscle massThat includes improving your metabolism, overall health and ability to remain active and independent as you age. The ACSM notes in its paper that resistance training (its preferred term for what I call strength training) has positive effects on health outcomes including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, depression, and sleep quality.
How much strength training to plan
As all exercise guidelines tell us, we should all do some strength training. (especially, Here are the latest US guidelinesWhich recommends that we all do strength training twice a week.) The ACSM agrees with a minimum of two times per week, per muscle group. This means you can do a full-body workout twice a week, or split your workouts so each muscle gets worked at least two days.
Six things not to overthink during strength training
I think some of the most interesting things in the new ACSM guidelines are where it tells us what No to worry about. According to the evidence the authors reviewed, there are a lot of things that are not conclusively supported, and you can safely stop worrying about it:
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Training “to failure” is not necessary. You do not need to continue exercising until you physically can no longer do so. You Needed Work hard enough, but it’s important not to reach the point of failure.
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Instability training is not better for balance. You don’t need to stand on unstable surfaces to train your balance; As people get stronger, balance gets better, whether they used stable or unstable surfaces for training.
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time is not important under stress. Some gym bros will tell you that the time your muscles spend exercising is the most important thing, and thus slower repetitions are better than faster ones. The ACSM review found no benefit of maximum time under tension for strength or muscle growth.
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No beginner/intermediate/advanced routines required. ACSM concludes that the same basic advice applies to everyone. it doesn’t mean you to pass An advanced lifter trains the same way as you did as a beginner, but it also means you can keep doing what works for you as long as it works.
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Whatever equipment you use for strength training is fine.. Gym workouts, home workouts, resistance bands, bodyweight exercises – anything that gives you a good strength workout is fine. You should be sure that you can perform challenging sets of exercises with whatever you choose, but there is no inherent reason to prefer a barbell instead of resistance bands at home.
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Progressive overload is not always needed. This will come as a shock to many fitness lovers! Gradually increasing the difficulty of your workouts is one way to get stronger, but it’s not always necessary to get basic health benefits. That said, if you’re a beginner Very Starting with light or easy exercises, you will need to increase the difficulty to make sure you are training hard enough.
Ultimately, the guidelines emphasize that doing something is better than doing nothing, and finding something you’ll stick to is more important than optimizing the details of your routine. Only 30% of us do strength training twice a week, and that number may drop to 10% for older people.
What do you think so far?
How to Meet Your Strength Training Goals, According to the ACSM
Here is the basic description that ACSM gives for different goals:
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for strengthLift heavy weights for at least 2 to 3 sets per exercise (at least 80% of your one-rep max).
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for muscle gain (hypertrophy), aim to achieve 10 sets of strength exercises per muscle group per week.
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for power (explosive), use a load that is between 30% to 70% of your one-rep maximum, and try to move the weight as quickly as possible during the concentric (lifting) portion of the exercise.
If you’ve never thought about these things separately, let me explain them:
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Power This is probably easiest to overlook, but according to exercise scientist Jason Sawyer Told Medical News TodayThis is one of the things older adults lose fastest, and are rarely trained for. Strength refers to how much or how fast you can contract a muscle. Box jumping is an exercise that works on your leg strength; Standing barbell squat as quickly as possible is another strength exercise for the legs.
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Strength It’s almost exactly what it sounds like—the ability to handle heavy weight or exert a lot of force. The stronger you are, the easier it will be (to put it in real-world terms) to carry a bag of baby or dog food or cement.
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overgrowth Refers to muscle building. We all lose muscle mass as we age, so some amount of hypertrophy training is helpful to counteract that trend. Muscle tissue is good for our body, including our metabolism, as I’ve told you before.
You can work on all three of these areas using a variety of exercises and weights, but you may find it easiest to focus on one of them at a time.
