A List of Exercise Techniques to Make You Stronger

Strength is a very desirable trait in many sports and can make physically demanding everyday tasks much easier and often safer. Strength, which can be defined as the amount of force your muscles can exert against a resistance, can make pushing an opponent off the ball in football easier or mean you can lift a heavy grocery bag out of the trunk of your car without hurting yourself. Getting stronger doesn't happen by accident. If you want to increase your strength, you need to include certain techniques in your workouts.

  1. Lift Heavy Weights

    • Your body adapts to the type of exercises you perform and the amount of weight you lift. In fitness terms, this is called specificity. If you lift light weights for high repetitions, you will develop muscular endurance, but if you want to gain strength, you need to lift heavy weights with low repetitions. Typically, strength training requires sets of one to five repetitions using challenging weights. Although the weights need to be heavy, heavy is a relative term, and while one lifter may need to use 300lbs, a less advanced lifter might only need 120lbs. The weight should feel heavy to you as you'll be the one lifting it. Despite using heavy weights, all exercises should be performed using good form to minimize your risk of injury.

    Progressive Overload

    • Lifting weights places stress on your muscles. Your muscles adapt to that stress by becoming stronger. If you want to further increase your strength, you need to expose your muscles to greater levels of stress. This can be achieved in a number of ways. You can lift more weight, perform more repetitions, perform more sets, reduce your rest period between sets, or select different and more difficult exercises. You strength will quickly plateau if you repeat the same workout over and over. If you want to get stronger, you need to look for ways to work harder.

    Recovery

    • You muscles only get bigger and stronger when you rest. This means that you need to not only train hard, but pay attention to recovery also. Training hard every day may seem like a good idea, but a program like this can leave you weaker rather than stronger. Make sure you include two to three days of rest per week, avoid training the same muscles on consecutive days, and also get plenty of sleep to give your muscles time to recover from your workouts.

    Compound Exercises

    • The best exercises for developing strength are the ones that allow you to lift heavy weights safely. Compound exercises such as squats, bench presses, deadlifts, overhead presses, rows and chin-ups involve working multiple muscle groups simultaneously. Compound exercises allow you to develop strength far more effectively than single joint isolation exercises such as leg extensions and hip adductions. Build your strength workouts around compound exercises and, if you include them at all, only use isolation exercises toward the end of your workout and as supplementary or assistance exercises.

    Build a Stronger Core

    • A chain is only as strong as its weakest link and the same is true of your body. Exercises such as squats, deadlifts, bent over rows and overhead presses, relies on your core strength for how much weight you can lift. Core is the collective term for the muscles of your midsection and if these muscles are weak, your lower back will lack stability. Poor spinal stability means that you may have to stop your set earlier or lift less weight than you might otherwise want to and this will limit your strength gains. Strengthen your core by performing specific core stability exercises such as planks, ab wheel rollouts, single-arm farmer's and waiter's walks and, if you use one, only wearing your weight lifting belt for your heaviest sets.