Can strength training increase strength?

Of course you can in most cases, but the premise is that you have to follow the effective logic of strength training. I have seen too many people in the gym who really do not practice correctly and whose strength remains unchanged or even declines after half a year of practice.

If you have seen a novice who has just started working out, you will know that at first, the 20kg bench press on the empty bar shook like a bamboo pole in the wind. After two weeks, you can steadily press 30kg. In fact, the muscle circumference has not changed much at this stage. It all relies on strength training to stimulate the nerve recruitment ability. Before, your brain only mobilized 30% of the pectoral muscle fibers to work. After training, it can call on 60% of the muscle fibers to work together, and the strength increases naturally and quickly. After you have passed the novice stage, your strength will increase again through the actual growth of muscle dimensions and the improvement of tendon and bone strength. This process is slow, but as long as the method is correct, it will basically move upward steadily.

However, in the past two years, different voices have emerged, saying that some people who have practiced strength training for several years have "dead muscles" and no strength. They are actually the kind of people who only train in fixed trajectory equipment every day. I used to know a young man who could squat up to 120 kilograms on the Smith Stand. Last time he moved a 40 kilogram TV cabinet, his waist jerked as soon as he lifted it. To put it bluntly, the Smith Stand helped him meet the need for core stability. The strength he developed was only suitable for the fixed orbital force generation mode. When it is put into scenes in life that require core control, balance and coordination, it will naturally not work. This is the core reason why many people think that strength training is useless. In fact, it is not that the training is useless, but that the training direction is biased.

A more common situation is that many people claim to be doing "strength training", but in fact they use light weights that they can easily do 20 times each time. They rest for ten minutes by checking their mobile phones between sets. The training volume and stimulation intensity have not reached the threshold of "progressive overload". The body has long adapted to this intensity. Of course, there is no need to build more strength to deal with it. It is really normal for a year of training not to increase strength.

To put it bluntly, strength training itself is currently proven to be the most efficient way to improve the strength of the whole body, but whether it can achieve the final effect depends entirely on whether you will give your body an "upgrade task" - gradually increase the weight, make the action pattern as close as possible to the actual force exertion scene, and keep up with eating, sleeping and recovery. It is difficult not to increase your strength.