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strength training

W

wannabstrong

New member
how do i improve strength without gaining mass?
bodyweight training?.
Any articles or useful advice is greatly appreciated.

cheers mike
 
That is a tough one, to gain strength you really need to gain muscle as well. Do you carry much bodyfat? Maybe you can trade some fat for some muscle?

What are the reasons for you not wanting to gain weight?
 
It depends what level you're at. If you're a regular beginner who never lifted anything heavier than a Nintendo control before in his life, and if you have a healthy diet but one without a heap more calories than you need, then the first few months of resistance training won't build much muscle at all.

Like Ricky Ponting has smaller muscles than me, but he can throw the ball faster and further, why? He knows how to exert his strength to best effect. When you begin weight training after being sedentary, it's much the same - you're not really getting more muscles, you're learning to exert your existing strength to best effect.

After those first few months, though... either you add muscle, or you stall in your lifts. So it depends just where you are now, and how far you want to go. To bench your bodyweight you don't have to get bigger unless you're a complete runt now, to bench 150% your bodyweight you'll have to get bigger unless you're pretty hefty now.
 
Kyle, I would have thought the first few months would be the biggest gain and from there on in it would build alot slower.
 
strength gains are mostly neural at the beginning. therefor weight is relatively low. strength can be gained alot quicker than muscle at the beginning. i definitely don't think that you need muscle to get strong, but there will be a point when neural gains will have plateaued and new muscle will be needed to facilitate further strength gains.

if you a beginner, eat at calorie maintenance. and train between 3-5 maybe 6 reps and 3-4 sets. mainly focusing on the big lifts.
 
so heavy weight with low reps?
Whats a calorie maintainance?
I've been doing 100 reps of low weight and adding more weight as i gradually go... whats that good for?

cheers mike
 
wannabstrong said:
so heavy weight with low reps?
Whats a calorie maintainance?
I've been doing 100 reps of low weight and adding more weight as i gradually go... whats that good for?

cheers mike
Click to expand...

yeh,

to find calorie maintenance you need your BMR, maybe search google for a calculator or look it up, it should tell you how many carlories you use every day. eat at that level.

100 reps of low weight is endurance type stuff and will not get you stronger. you need to lift heavy.

why do you need to not gain weight?
 
Lifting heavy ass weights makes you strong.

Eating lots of food makes you big.

Either one can be done without the other. However the results are much better when the two are combined.
 
I got 2772 calories. That is higher than most of those things give me, but it is actually pretty acurate for my body.
 
Josh_GTiR said:
Kyle, I would have thought the first few months would be the biggest gain and from there on in it would build alot slower.
Click to expand...
Potentially, yes. Note that I said, "if you have a healthy diet but one without a heap more calories than you need".

I phrased it that way because the way the OP phrased the question, it sounds like they are wondering if you have to get bigger to get stronger, and vice versa.

The other thing is that for a formerly sedentary beginner, strength gains are fairly steady and predictable in the first few months. That's why 5x5 works, but 3x10 works, too, and lots of other programmes.

Physique changes are not so steady and predictable, you get lots more bursts of dramatic change followed by a stall. That's partly because the body is a funny thing, but mostly because people are rarely as consistent with their diets as they are with training.

But Nick expressed it best.
 
NPR said:
Lifting heavy ass weights makes you strong.

Eating lots of food makes you big.

Either one can be done without the other. However the results are much better when the two are combined.
Click to expand...

^^ This is correct - I am cutting atm (losing weight) and my strength is still going up.
 
Assuming the OP is or was skilled at lifting, he can't have one or the other, to get stronger, the muscle needs to be bigger.

its vague (OP), but depending on why he is working out and what for would depend on his template, for example, if he was a marathon runner, adding muscle tissue would be counterproductive.
 
Some weight gain would occur unless he was extremely fat than he could get stronger without gaining further weight.
 
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