How to Gain Strength – Improve Your Body

How to Gain Strength

Whether you are an expert in training or beginner, your aim is to boost your strength. There isn’t any magic pill that will make you able to lift heavy weights overnight. It takes time, devotion, energy and will to put into it. But, if you are a determent in it, I can guarantee, you WILL see results.

Here we will talk about the importance of strength, can you achieve more strength then most of the population, how to actually gain more strength, and if not, what are you doing wrong.

Importance of Strength

We all know the importance of this. Our skeleton could not be carrying our weight without our muscle structure. We use our muscles and accordingly our strength in everyday life. Whether it is walking, singing, washing dishes, doing laundry, cleaning the house, performing our daily job… So many things that we need our muscles for.

But when it comes to training, that is where we want to use our potential to maximum, we want to use our muscles in a proper way so that they can grow and same time get that what we want: STRENGTH!

Superhuman Strength – Myth or reality

When you think of superhuman strength, what comes in mind first? Superman? Hulk? Picture of you lifting heavyweight? The problem with the first two is that they ARE myths; they don’t exist. But you lifting that weight in the bench press or from a deadlift or doing push-ups… THAT IS REAL! Whatever it is, it CAN BE achievable!

strength

Our body is made impressively, it is designed to move. Same way, it is designed to grow, in size as we grow older, but also in muscles as we train. What happens when we put our muscles to work? When you lifting weights you are doing microscopic tears in the tissue of your muscles.

Although it may sound scary, it is actually an important part of growing our muscles, hence the strength, as that triggers the healing process and also your body will try to prevent this type of damage in the future. Therefore, our muscles and strength get increased.

How to Gain Strength

So how actually to achieve that? There are many ways, but the same principles apply, which I will cover here in this section

  • Reps and sets. This must be ordered properly. Typically, you want to work until muscleweights failure, not above that, which means you will do as many sets you can make IN PERFECT FORM. No cheating, that can only result in injury. Perfect form means to do a workout you are doing the way it should be done. And the amount of reps and sets you will do depends on yourself. Let’s say you can do 30 push-ups from one time. Then you could have, for example, 4 sets of 10, 8, 7 and then 5. And those last 5 would have to be the hardest one to do. That is how you determent your sets and rep.
  • Rest period. If we are talking about the rest period between sets, then the rest period should be about 30-45 seconds, but you can take even to 1 minute if you are working with heavyweights. Also, typically, you should have 1 day rest to let your muscles recover properly.
  • Calorie surpluses. When you are working out, your body burns calories. And if you are in deficit while trying to gain strength, your body will think there is a shortage of food and will store calories in fat and use your muscles as energy, so you get downside effect. Calorie surplus should be around 300 to 500, depending on your type of training.
  • Nutrition. We could talk here a lot, so I’m gonna keep this short as possible. Proteins, low-fat food (food that contains saturated fats are considered to be “unhealthy”, a better option would be food that contains unsaturated fats), yogurt, whole grain bread with vegetable. Keep it simple and healthy. Your whole work is wasted if you go too fast food stores and order something that will not only replenish your calories but have so much fat and sugar that would take you to do two more same workouts just to burn it.
  • Supplements. This is common to use among not just bodybuilders but “regular” whey proteinpeople also as it has much-needed ingredients required to recover your body properly. Some of the good choices would be protein powder which is essential for muscle growth and provides them with amino acids, creatine which boost your performance during a workout and promote the natural growth of muscles, HMB (Beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrat) that prevents muscle protein breakdown, helps muscles to grow and speeds up recovery rate.
  • Sleep. Now, I can not point out how much this is important. 7 hours minimum is needed for our body to work normally, 8 hours should be optimal. I know that today’s lifestyle gives us less and less time to sleep, but you should aim toward this 7 or 8 hours, to give your body what it needs to recover.

What am I Doing Wrong?

struggle

Sometimes you just can’t get results, or you can’t see them. It could be if you are not following a plan or if you are not doing it right, even if you aren’t tracking your progress. How can you know does it work if you don’t track it?

Following simple guidance from what we mentioned earlier, you should be on the right track. Make a diary, write what type of workout you did, how many sets, what weight was it, what did you eat that day… All that can help you to see your results later on.

And when you see that in the first month you could make the bench press of 15kg 10 times, and in the second month 15kg 12 or 13 times or 20kg 10 times….. That is progress! That is a success! it means YOU ARE DOING GREAT!

Conclusion

Let me be perfectly open with you: in order to see results, you will need at least 6 to 8 weeks of training to see first results. In order to get a body that you want, we are talking years.

People magically want results in the first month, but let me tell you: if you want to learn to play guitar, or a piano, how much time you think you would get to be good at it? 1 week? 1 month? 6 months? Well maybe in 6 months you would be good at it, depending on the effort you put into it. And how much time would it take to get it mastered? 1 year? 2 years?

See, people understand that to learn some skill, it takes time. But when it comes to working out, when it comes to seeing results, they want it to be instant. It doesn’t work that way…

go up and never stop

And don’t get discouraged if your progress is slow or your body is not as in the picture of some bodybuilding magazine. Remember, you are doing it for yourself! That is not your everyday occupation, you aren’t devoting 10 hours per day in the gym for 6 or 7 days per week.

You want your body to be great? Take time, make goals, work on them, and I can 100% guaranty you, you will get results properly!

As always, I would love to hear from you. Share your opinion, though about this. Did you like it, did you find something helpful? I value every comment and I hope I have encouraged you in getting there where you want it: to gain strength and improve your body.

You can also send me a message at dalibor@best4yourbody.com and I will personally answer all of your questions.

Dalibor.

 

 

14 thoughts on “How to Gain Strength – Improve Your Body

    1. Hey Glen,
      Thank you for your reply. I am glad you agree with form while performing workout as it is very important to to all of workout properly.

      Regards,
      Dalibor.

  1. I have to agree with you that our bodies are so impressive. We have the ability to sculpt them in the way that we want, but as you have said, results do not happen overnight. So we must remain dedicated. I wasn’t aware that the muscles tear each time we exert them and this is how they grow. Very interesting.
    Thanks for sharing.

  2. I like what you said about form. Too often I see people, both young and old, utilize abysmal form and they think it’ll help them grow. Quite the opposite. I also like that you said to keep both nutrition and supplementation basic. Far too much emphasis on nutritional programs, especially the keto diet. While I’m not against these programs, they overcomplicate things. Ditto for supplements. You hit a home run when you stated protein, creatine, and HMB. I second that notion.

  3. Nice post covering the basics!

    I listened to a podcast recently with Peter Diamandis and Dan Sullivan where they talked about the importance of muscle mass and strength for improved longevity (lifespan). I’m so glad I started going to the gym about 5 years ago.

    I’ve been working on having better form lately, including just going slower on some of my “size” reps in general (light weights for aesthetics rather than strength).

    I don’t fully agree with low-fat foods; fat has been unfairly demonized when sugar is the real problem. Peanut butter is one of my staple foods and has served me well.

    Agreed, supplements are mostly overrated. I’ve tried creatine a few times but it didn’t make much of a difference.

    It certainly takes a long time. But it’s one of those maintenance things that simply must be done every day or multiple times a week for your whole life, so people might as well embrace it. πŸ™‚ The increased self esteem and health is certainly worth it.

    Thanks for the reminders!
    Ben

    1. Hey there Ben,
      Thank you for your comment. I am so glad you go to gym, and wow, 5 years already? Very impressive! Well done!

      When I mentioned low fat foods, I was having in mind saturated fat in particular. Of course fats are required as they provide our body with energy. I do apologize if I miss lead. As a matter of fact, thank you for pointing that out as I will correct that right away πŸ™‚
      Keep being active and enjoy your life!

      Best wishes,
      Dalibor.

  4. I agree you have to understand that success can’t be expected in 1 month. As a competitive bowler, building body strength, especially in my legs, is something I try to work on. I think you’ve given great information for people think about.

  5. Hi Dalibor, brilliant post! I like the fact that you are being very truthful about exactly what it takes to grow muscle and get the body you desire. It’s hard work and requires dedication to exercise and good nutrition. And you do need both of those things in order to be successful and see results.

    Yes, the body is so amazing when it comes to muscle building. I do stints in and out of the gym sporadically as I do lots of other different exercise too, but I do notice how fast I gain muscle mass when I do gym work as opposed to any other exercise, especially if I up my protein.

    Keep up the great work on your website πŸ™‚

    1. Hey Stefanie,
      thank you for your honest comment.

      I agree proper nutrition is essential for gaining OR losing wight, same way. What most people tend to forget or overlook is exactly their food. But with proper plan, fantastic things can be achieved πŸ™‚

      Best wishes,
      Dalibor.

  6. What a nice post you wrote! I really enjoyed reading it and I could not be silent about your post so I decided to leave my comment here and say Thank You! For sharing this quality post with others.
    Actually this is exactly the information that I was looking for about body improvement and when I landed to your website and read this post, it answered all my questions in details.
    So I’m happy that you decided to write about this topic and share it with people. It’s very useful and can definitely be used as a great source for how to gain strength.

    I will come back to your website again for sure and I’m looking forward to read your new posts.)

    Thanks!

    1. Hello Ali,
      thank you so much for your wonderful reply. It really is refreshing to see that my work have meaning to someone.
      I do try to provide quality content and best information to all my readers.

      Best wishes,
      Dalibor

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