How Do We Get Fitter? Strength Training.

Apologies for the complicated nature of last week’s bulletin but the processes we have going on in the body are pretty complex; I’ll try and keep it as simple as possible!

Strength is basically the ability of a muscle or muscles to exert a force. An isotonic contraction results in a dynamic movement (pushing, pulling etc) and an isometric contraction means there is no shortening or lengthening in the muscle (carrying a shopping bag).

Hypertrophy is an enlargement of a muscle that has resulted from strength training and is mainly due to the increase in cross-sectional area of the muscle fibres. Research shows that as the cross sectional area of a muscle increases so does the strength, indicating a positive relationship between size and strength. In untrained muscles, the fibres can vary considerably in diameter, the object of strength training can be thought of as bringing the smaller fibres up to the size of the larger ones. When hypertrophy occurs it is due to one or more of the following:
1. Increased number and size of myofibrils per muscle fibre
2. Increased total number of contractile protein
3. Increased capillary density per muscle fibre
4. Increased amount of strength of connective, tendon and ligament tissue.

In order to improve the strength of a muscle the principle of overload must be applied; for a given amount of time the muscle must experience a workload or resistance more than that normally encountered. The very nature of the overload principle when applied to weight training means that the resistance against which the muscle works should be progressively increased throughout the training period as gains in strength and endurance are made.

If you have any questions on the above, please let me know.

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