Guía definitiva para conformar su entrenamiento de fuerza personalizado: qué debe tener en cuenta

The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Personalized Strength Training: What to Consider


We've said it before, when muscles pull on bones, they activate them and make them work. Bones respond by renewing themselves and this is what maintains or improves their strength. As your muscles get stronger, they can pull harder and consequently your bones respond by getting stronger as well.

The energetic movement of the body that translates into vigorous exercise, both cardiovascular endurance and strength, is responsible for activating the skeletal muscle, which, as we learned, is an endocrine organ. Among the hormones that are activated through the skeletal muscle are myosins, IL-6, IL-15, BDNF and more. All of them with very important functions for the health of your body.

But it is not only vigorous or intense exercise that activates skeletal muscle, your diet also plays an important role and, to cut a long story short, protein is the macronutrient that allows you to maintain the health and optimal functioning of your muscles.

On the other hand, keep in mind that the accumulation of glucose is toxic to the body, but it is through vigorous movement that it is eliminated from the body and this is facilitated by the consumption of the appropriate proportions of macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat and water).

  

What you should keep in mind

  • Your exercise program should be structured around rules rather than goals. A mindset focused on the idea that results are not achieved overnight, but rather that it requires a commitment to your well-being and consistency in the type of activity you choose to do. These would be the keys to making exercise part of your lifestyle in the long term.
  • Your training program, especially if you are a beginner or recovering from a sedentary period, should include neural adaptation. This means that the first month you spend getting to know the proper functioning, technique when using machines, bands, free weights and the other tools at your disposal, as well as proper breathing, before adding weight or intensity to your exercises.
  • Then you should start progressions, but this doesn't mean that you should lift more and more weight each time, but rather, I suggest cycles. This can also include variations in exercises or types of sport.
  • This is what is meant by muscle growth. This is not necessarily a huge muscle growth, and that is not so easy to achieve, anyway. It refers more to what in Spanish we call “toning up” or that the muscles appear defined; they seem to be a little bigger, but in reality it is that the muscle has displaced fat in certain deposits. So we should not be scared by the idea of ​​hypertrophy.
  • Furthermore, if your training includes an aerobic or cardiovascular resistance aspect, some conscious stretching phases and this is accompanied by a balanced diet and appropriate rest, the only risk you run is that your muscles will become toned, more than anything else.

  

Learn about the different possibilities that can make up a training program so that you can choose the one that suits your lifestyle and needs.

Regulations on objectives

It's easy to say that you want to lose weight or tone your body muscles, but we rarely consider the triggers that deviate us from our goals. An example is having the intention or saying that "I want to strengthen my legs, but I can only train one day a week." This makes it difficult to get the results you want.

It makes more sense to make a commitment to attend, and if you have to leave a little earlier or arrive a little later, at least you have complied with your attendance. This also has an influence on your training at a psychological level.

 

Neural adaptation

Neural adaptations to training refer to changes in the nervous system that will allow it to better activate the prime movers in specific movements and better coordinate the activation of all relevant muscles, resulting in greater net force in the intended direction of movement.

For people who are just starting or returning to exercise after a long period of inactivity, it is recommended that, if you train 3 times a week, you do exercises that involve all the muscles in your body and do 1, 2 or 3 sets of 20 and 15 repetitions. This will allow you to learn the correct technique and your body to adapt to the movements and start handling weight.

Neural adaptation can take about a month before you can start training in earnest.

 

Training

After neural adaptation, you decide whether you prefer to work your entire body or focus on one muscle group during the three days you train per week. Both alternatives work and are valid.

Four groups of muscle-strengthening exercises can help strengthen your bones. These include lower back exercises such as deadlifts, push-ups, pull-ups, such as rowing, and squats that involve all of the leg muscles. It is recommended that you do at least one exercise from each group.

 

Training by progressions

As you progress through the stages, the exercises will work your muscles harder and these harder exercises are known as "progressions."

The principle of progression applies when you are trying to increase strength, tone muscle and improve endurance, it is advisable to progress in weight training to avoid stagnating.

But if you're happy with training a few times a week with little variation in weight, duration, and muscles worked, there's no harm in not following the principle of progression.

Should you decide to apply the principle of progression, this is achieved by increasing the weight load, duration, frequency and intensity and you can do this in both strength and endurance training.

 

Interval training

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is characterized by short, repeated bouts of relatively intense exercise with intermittent periods of rest or low-intensity exercise.

Both HIIT and traditional strength training can improve explosive strength in the upper and lower extremities. The advantage of high-intensity interval training over traditional strength training is that, according to corroborated studies , it is an effective training protocol, which can require less time and produce a better evolution of average anaerobic power.

 

Active breaks

You do indeed need rest days between workouts, especially when you are doing progressions, such as intervals, or simply after demanding workouts.

When you start to enjoy the benefits of exercise and notice that your workouts are yielding positive results, you often feel the desire to test your bodies and sometimes push them to the limit, and that's okay, but it's also important to balance this with adequate rest and sometimes with activities that allow the body to recover without imposing physical stress that prevents its recovery.

Lighter exercises such as yoga, light cycling or simply walking can complement the main training. These light activities moderately raise the heart rate which translates into benefits such as the activation of blood flow and the repair of small tears in the muscles.

However, active rest should not be at the expense of complete rest. So it is quite possible that your body will benefit from active recovery, but complete rest is essential and irreplaceable.

 

When you come from another sport or want to add weight training to your main sport or practice . 

Strength training can enhance your quality and performance if you practice another sport and this is because it enhances muscle power, bone density, endurance and overall performance.

The important thing here is to define your goal: Strength training is a sport that can be practiced as a complement to another discipline. In combat sports, it improves the fighter's strength and speed to make him gain stability and power. By making the muscles more flexible, strength training helps prevent possible injuries. In endurance sports, it provides strength and strength.

On the other hand, a bodybuilder should not jog or run regularly, as this sport causes muscle wear. If he were to run, he should practice HIIT or high intensity interval training, where he alternates intense physical efforts with rests. It all depends on the goal he has set for himself and his priorities.

 

Some key exercises to incorporate into your strength routine

Remember that the exercises you perform can be with your body weight, with bands, pulleys and finally with weights. Initially, it is safest to structure your program with machines that provide postural support and then progress to free weights.

At the base, any weight training program should include the following exercises in order to activate all muscle groups:

 

Squats

Alternating scissors

Athletics Press

Dead weight

Chest Press

Pulley row

Shoulder Press

 

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