What is Strength?
Prelude
In an attempt to make health and fitness knowledge more accessible to the broader public, I have decided to turn the Part 2 of my Resistance Training series into several shorter and more manageable articles, each focused on a specific topic. Part 1 of this series was ~7500 words and I fear it scared some of the potential readers away (especially those that need that info the most!). I will still publish all of the smaller blogs into a larger e-book (the actual Part 2) so the more hardcore of my readership can consume it in its entirety. That being said, if you do enjoy these topics, I would encourage you to download the larger e-books as they become released (always free!), as I fill it out with more information and explanations.
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Strength, in the most basic sense, is the ability to produce force against an external object, in a specific context. The specific context piece is a particularly important bit because getting stronger depends largely on what we are trying to get stronger at. For example, if I improve my Bench Press 1 Rep Max from 100lbs to 125lbs, did my legs get stronger? Probably unlikely. However, in the context of my upper body, I definitely got stronger.
This is also useful for determining if a training intervention was actually useful in developing real-world results. For example, if a Powerlifter completed a strength program but his Squat, Bench and Deadlift (the lifts that matter for his sport) did not improve, or got worse, it doesn’t matter if he improved his handstand strength or ability to do chin-ups, he DID NOT get stronger in the context that we are measuring.
The same goes for non-barbell training pursuits. If someone is looking to improve their performance in some specific yoga moves (the specific context) then a program that gets them stronger in some unrelated movements, but doesn’t improve their ability to perform those specific yoga moves hasn’t gotten them stronger, at least in that particular context. A weightlifter, who is very strong at lifting weights probably wouldn’t be the best rock climber, but would you call the weightlifter weak? Maybe weak in that particular context, but not weak at weightlifting, and vice versa with the rock climber compared to lifting weights. Basically, quantifying strength, or an improvement in strength, depends on the measuring stick you use.
However, this can lead to some confusion as to what the purpose of resistance training is if all strength is context-specific. The goal, especially if you are trying to improve health and all-around fitness, is to spend the majority of your training time performing exercises that have a high degree of carryover to other non-related movements. In other words, you want to develop general strength. For example, if I improve my strength in a Barbell Back Squat, I will improve the general strength of my lower half, which will improve my ability to perform a variety of other lower body exercises (lunges, leg press, step-ups, etc.) or activities of daily living (carrying groceries, walking upstairs, preventing falls, etc.). Yet some of these movements that improve from me increasing my squat strength, like walking up the stairs, probably won’t do much to improve my squat, thus it has little carryover and wouldn’t be a good general strength exercise.
So the goal for most people is to perform exercises that improve general strength globally so we get the most improvement overall. Now, once someone has a good base of general strength, you can begin to introduce specific exercises to improve what that person specifically wants to get better at. So for our powerlifter, it will be a diet of squats, bench presses and deadlifts, for our yogi it will be to practice and progress various poses, and for our rock climber, it will be developing grip strength and climbing harder courses. But with all of these individuals, the more general strength they have, the better able they can improve in those specific areas.
Now that we understand what strength is (i.e., force produced in a specific context), the upcoming article in this series will look at how the body actually produces strength. We will look at the anatomy of our muscles, what goes on in the muscle to cause force production, and how the muscle adapts to resistance training to produce more strength.
Catch you soon!