Sports Fitness Training

Muscular strength refers to the amount of force a muscle is capable of exerting. The most common way to assess strength in a resistance exercise program is to measure the maximum amount of weight you can lift one time. This value is known as the one repetition maximum, and is written as 1 RM. Muscular endurance is defined as a muscle’s ability to exert force repeatedly without fatiguing. The more repetitions of a certain resistance exercise you can perform successfully(e.g., a bench press of one-half your body weight), the greater your muscular endurance.

Principles of Strength Development

There are three key principles to understand if you intend to maximize muscular strength and endurance benefits from your resistance exercise program. Unless you follow these principles, you are likely to be disappointed in the results of your program.

• The Tension Principle The key to developing strength is to create tension within a muscle. The more tension you can create in a muscle, the greater your strength gain will be. The most common recreational way to create tension in a muscle is by lifting weights. While weight lifting is one method of producing tension in a muscle, any activity that creates muscle tension-for example, riding a bike up a hill-will result in greater strength.

• The Overload Principle The overload principle is the most important of the three key principles for improving muscular strength. Everyone begins a resistance training program with an initial level of strength. To increase that level of strength, you must regularly create a degree of tension in your muscles that is greater than they are accustomed to. This overloading of your muscles will cause your muscles to adapt to the new level of overload. As your muscles respond to a regular program of overloading by getting larger(hyper trophy), they become capable of generating more tension.

Some women avoid resistance exercise because they fear that they’ll develop large “bulky” muscles, while others are frustrated because their weight-lifting efforts in the gym don’t produce the same results as in their male friends. The main reason for this difference is the hormone testosterone. Before puberty, testosterone levels in blood are similar for both boys and girls. During adolescence, testosterone in men increase about tenfold to its adult level; testosterone in women remains at prepubertal levels throughout adulthood. Women’s muscles will hypertrophy from regular exercise but typically not to the same degree as in adult males. The difference in maximum attainable hypertrophy between men and women is not currently known.