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What is strength training and how long does it take to strengthen a muscle?

By Dr April Patterson

22/07/2019

What is strength training?

Strength is defined as the ability to develop maximal force in a single voluntary muscle contraction.

Strength can be broken down into:

• Relative strength (such a doing a push up, where your ability to successfully perform such a movement is directly related to your strength as a proportion of your body weight), and
• Absolute strength (lifting a parked car).

Relative and absolute strength are important to consider when strength training. For example, are you focusing on your mobility, such as being able to stand up out of a chair (relative strength) or working towards being a power lifter (absolute strength)?

Whilst recovering from an injury, you want to focus on improving your relative strength and getting back to your pre-injury abilities.

Increases in strength are achieved through a principle called ‘progressive overload’ where a muscle is strengthened over time by incrementally increasing the weight and or load (repetitions) of a training session. Therefore, it is important to make your strength sessions harder over time instead of doing the same exercises with the same load over and over again.

In order to gain strength, it is best practice to aim for 3-4 sets and 8-12 reps of each exercise with approximately 3 minutes of rest in-between sets. The last repetition should be to exhaustion. 3 – 4 exercises per muscle is all that’s needed during one session.

Strength training should be performed 3 - 4 times a week maximum to allow for muscle healing in-between sessions.

How long does it take to strengthen a muscle?

Evidently following injury, it will take around 6 weeks to rehabilitate a muscle injury (depending on severity). Weakness leads to muscle imbalance which cascades into poor biomechanics and further injury, therefore, it is important to work hard to achieve pre-injury strength!

Do you need some help with your strength program?

Visit Physical Edge Healthcare for an individualised strength program targeting your goals, whether you are currently rehabilitating an injury or not.