Strength is a foundational component in what we work to develop at Resilient Fitness and it's a word that you hear used often in a gym setting. But what exactly is strength? What are the physiological characteristics of a ¨strong¨ person and what allows them to have that quality? Today we are going to explore strength down to itś definition and the various physical components that enhance or inhibit strength.
The definition of physical strength is as follows:
¨Physical strength is the measure of an individualś ability to exert force on physical objects.¨
While this is a little vague in terms of the nuances of strength, it gives us a good idea of what specifically we are talking about when we talk about strength - our ability to produce and exert force against an outside body, whether that be the ground, a grocery cart, a set of stairs, or a rowdy kiddo. There are a number of physical characteristics that enhance one's ability to produce greater force and exert that on the outside world.
Total Muscle Mass: we will start with an easy one! It should make sense that someone who carries more muscle mass would be able to produce more force. However, there are some caveats that are worth noting. Your ability to produce force within the confines of a specific movement will depend more on the muscle mass surrounding the joints involved in the movement. This means that someone that carries a lot of muscle in their lower body may not necessarily be able to produce a lot of force with their arms and shoulders if the relative amount of muscle in those parts of the body are not as great. The other caveat ties in with the next characteristic for strength.
Neural Drive/Activation: Nerd Alert! The brain plays a large and underappreciated role in strength and force production. Neural Drive is a fancy term for your brain's ability to activate and use the muscle available to it when performing a movement with resistance. Without getting into the weeds too much we will try to explain what this is exactly. Any time you move in space, your brain is sending signals out to your limbs telling them to move, which in turn leads to the activation of muscle to make it happen. Well, these signals vary in amplitude and frequency. Meaning the signal can be small and slow, or large and fast! If you are looking to activate a lot of muscle in order to produce as much force as you can and exert it on the outside world, the signals your brain sends out to the rest of your body need to be both big/strong as well as fast! Your brain's ability to send these massive signals out to the rest of your body is something that requires, you guessed it, TRAINING. Someone that strength trains and performs high-force movements with a degree of speed incorporated, is training their brain to improve it’s ability to send big signals to the joints involved and to do so quickly. This person, over time, will be able to utilize more of their muscle at a given moment than someone who has not trained their brain to do this before.
Coordination/Control: another underappreciated component of strength is coordination and control. Having big muscles and massive brain signals is great, but this does not necessarily automatically lead to strength. If you can imagine a huge orchestra with all the best musicians and loudest speakers in the world to play their music, but no conductor there to bring it all together, what you end up with is simply noise. In our case, a person’s ability to activate muscles in the proper order, maintain their balance, and coordinate their movements in a healthy manner will bring the muscles and brain signals together to produce - FORCE!
Enough of the science, am I right? Why is this important?
Any physical activity or movement requires some amount of force production, and the truth is that individuals who have developed a healthy degree of strength will have an easier time doing these daily activities than someone with inadequate strength. Carrying groceries into your house, moving furniture, playing a sport or walking up a flight of steps at the airport all require a certain amount of strength. While most folks are physically able to do these things, the relative difficulty of these tasks will be lower for someone that has developed their strength abilities. This is where strength begins to tie in with our levels of daily activity and ability to sustain energy and focus throughout the day.
Someone with a high level of strength can get through daily activities using a lower relative amount of effort, which also means they can continue to do more ‘work’ throughout the day where a less strong individual would need to stop, or increase the potential for an injury if continuing to perform physical work with a highly fatigued body.
How do we address strength at Resilient Fitness?
One of the major ways we go about developing strength with our members is through the exercises we prescribe. Whether taking part in a Kettlebell Class, Barbell Class, or 1-on-1 Session, you will likely be performing compound movements that utilize multiple joints and engage muscles throughout your body. By programming these types of exercises we are forcing our brain and body to ‘recruit’ and engage large muscle groups across multiple joints at one time, which in turn elicits a greater recovery response, leading to higher levels of adaptation by our brain and body.
Examples of these types of compound movements are: back squat, deadlift, bench press, pullups.
Another way we work to develop strength in our clients is by emphasizing speed during the concentric portion of a movement. The concentric portion of a movement occurs when the primary muscles involved in the action are shortening in order to produce the force necessary to sustain the movement, usually against some form of resistance. By emphasizing speed and a faster rate of force development we are pushing our brain to activate the muscles more quickly (with stronger and faster signals) and to selectively utilize the larger muscles to do so.
Nerd Alert! There are different muscle fiber types that make up our muscles and each one has different qualities that allow it to operate a certain way. The muscles that specifically function to produce large amounts of force at a faster rate are Type II muscle fibers. These are the fibers that your brain will activate when attempting to produce a large amount of force in a short amount of time. Muscles containing a large proportion of Type II fibers tend to be larger in size. These play a major role in strength development.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, we have provided some valuable insights into what we are referring to when we talk about strength and why we feel it is so important for our clients trying to live the healthiest and fullest lives possible. Whatever your goals are and whatever drives you to work with a trainer or attend our group classes, we believe strength can play a role in living the life you want to live.
Ready to train with us? Contact us today to schedule a complimentary intro session.
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