Weightlifting produces many general benefits for the body, such as building muscle, becoming stronger, becoming more powerful, and muscular endurance. In this blog I will be talking about how to accomplish your weightlifting goals, and the weightlifting techniques that are associated with them.
There are four basic goals in weightlifting that I will talk about. The first goal for many people is to gain strength. Strength training involves lower reps, and higher weight. The rep range is usually 1-6, and the amount of sets depends on your experience and program. Strength training uses a lot heavy compound exercises; The most common being the Bench press, deadlift, back squat, and overhead barbell press. Strength training does give you bigger muscles, but it affects your neuromuscular system more than your muscular anatomy.
If your main goal is to build muscle, then you need to focus on hypertrophy training. Hypertrophy training uses a rep range of 8-12, and a set range of 2-5. In order to build muscle, you must tear the microfibers of your muscle by putting your muscles under a load or stress (lifting weight). After your muscles have tears at the micro level, it repairs itself and makes itself bigger than before. Hypertrophy training does this the best, this is because it uses a higher rep range and weights that are heavy. Even though Hypertrophy training is focused on building muscle, you will still gain strength and muscle endurance.
If you are interested in increasing your muscle endurance, then you should be doing a rep range of 15-20, or even higher. With muscle endurance training you usually do sets of 3. Muscle endurance training is great if you need to get better at high intensity or endurance activities such as bicycling, swimming, and running.
The last goal of a lifter is to increase their power. The definition of power is, “the rate at which work is done”. For example, if you can lift the same amount of weight quicker than someone else, then you have more power than them. Training for power is a lot like training for strength, this biggest difference is that your lifts are done quicker. This is accomplished by adding exercises that are very explosive, and have a lighter weight to your workout routine, such as a Power Clean. Power lifting increases your strength, muscle size, muscle endurance, and power, which is why it’s very common in training for football.
In order to see the best results in your weight training, you must first identify what your goals are. In the gym there’s a variety of weight training techniques, and they all have different benefits. If you want to be the biggest guy or girl on campus then you should do hypertrophy training. If you want to be the strongest person, then lift heavier weights with lower reps. It’s all up to you, just get in the gym and start training.
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