Strength Training Workouts

5 Strength Training Tips for More Muscle and Power

Strength training workouts are a little different than muscle building programs. While strength and muscle building go hand in hand you can alter your weight training program to focus more on one or the other.

If you're looking for pure strength training workouts, you need to do things a little differently than all the muscle building routines you see in the magazines or the routines used by the bodybuilders in your gym.

Most people in the gym, even the really serious one's, are much more interested in gaining muscle mass and burning fat than they are about getting seriously strong. So you don't see a lot of strength training routines being used.

Here are some strength training tips for you that you can incorporate into your workout and then a sample strength program is listed below.

1. Keep Your Reps Low

When focusing on strength, your max rep number per set will be 5. You want to focus on pure strength, while maintaining good form, which is less likely with higher reps.

2. Longer Rest Periods

Your rest periods will be longer than typical muscle building programs. At least two minutes between each set and as long as five.

When I am right in the middle of a set of strength training workouts, I usually keep mine at three or four minutes between sets.

3. More Sets

While you may perform two all out high intensity sets of 10 to 12 reps with muscle building techniques like drop sets and supersets for building muscle mass, you'll do a few more sets for your strength training program.

You'll also forget about intensity techniques like drop sets. You'll stick to straight sets for most of your strength training exercises.

You'll most likely only go to failure on your last set or two, while performing five sets of an exercise.

4. Basic Exercises Only

You'll focus on the big strength builders like squats, deadlifts, military presses, bench presses, barbell curls and close grip bench presses.

Save the isolation exercises for your bodybuilding routines.

5. More Rest Between Body Part Workouts

You can take more time between body part hits when training for strength compared to building lean muscle.

Strength training workouts could look like this:

Monday (Chest, Shoulders and Biceps)

• 5 x 5 Decline Bench Press
  
• 5 x 5 Seated Military Press
  
• 5 x 5 Barbell Curl
  

Rest two to three minutes between sets.

Here's an example using the decline bench press. Say you can decline bench 200 pounds for five reps.

• Warm Up
  
• 95 x 5
  
• 135 x 5
  

• Work Sets

• 155 x 5
  
• 185 x 5
  
• 200 x 5
  
• 200 x 5
  200 x 5
  

If you can't get five reps on the final set, keep the weight the same until you can. If you get five reps on the last set, add five pounds to the bar for the next workout.

Wednesday (Legs)

• 5 x 5 Barbell Squat
  
• 5 x 5 Stiff Legged Deadlift
  

Friday (Back, Triceps)

• 5 x 5 Deadlift
  
• 5 x 5 Chin Ups (add weight around your waist if you need to)
  
• 5 x 5 Close Grip Bench Press
  

This is one of the simplest strength training workouts that you'll see but it works. Remember, we're talking about focusing on building strength, not maximizing our muscle building progress.

There are plenty of muscle building articles available, including strength training tips. Click Here ==>>Stength Training Workouts and Muscle Building Tips