Specific strength qualities for unlocking gymnastics skills. Part 4: Strength Endurance
Being strong can solve a lot of problems.
As we age, it’s become significantly harder to build and maintain strength and lean muscle mass.
So while we're young, fit and capable, it makes sense to train for strength.
Strength and lean muscle mass give us our independence and freedom, and that’s why strength training is one of the most beneficial things we can do to increase our healthspan.
Benefits of strength training include:
Improved body composition
Increased metabolism
Improved bone mass and density
Improve heart function and decrease blood pressure
Improve sleep quality and quantity
Increase immune function
Improve mental health
Decreases the chance of injuries
Increases life expectancy
The list goes on and on.
The best way to build and maintain strength and lean muscle is to train for relative strength, functional hypertrophy and hypertrophy. These are the three specific strength qualities that I've talked about in the first three parts of this video series.
A quick reminder on the four strength qualities:
Relative Strength - All about training the neurological system to increase force production and output. I covered this in part one of this series.
Functional Hypertrophy - All about improving physical performance by gaining strength and size. I covered this in part three of this series.
Hypertrophy - All about building size. I covered this in part two of this series.
Strength Endurance - Improving aerobic fitness and muscle endurance. Today's topic.
Endurance is often thought of as the enemy of strength gains and for good reason.
Truth be told if you want to get as strong as possible or be shredded, heavy lifting and sprints are the best way to get there. Maybe a topic for another time.
The topic for today’s post is strength endurance and how we can apply this to gymnastics strength training.
If we look at the relationship between reps, percentages and training effect tables, we can see that strength endurance is best achieved at low intensities (<70%) and high volumes (13+ reps per set).
Some hypertrophy gains can be achieved with this high volume of work, but it's not as effective as the pure hypertrophy range.
In fact, consistently training for strength endurance negatively impacts muscle hypertrophy.
But, the biggest problem with training strength endurance is its negative impacts on strength. There is this "interference" phenomenon in which people who lift weights and do endurance exercises simply don’t see the strength or muscle gains they’d expect.
If you’re going to the gym each week and training hard to drop body fat, build strength and improve your overall health and performance, but you're not making progress, chances are you’re doing too much volume and not enough intensity.
It's a common thing. People fall into the trap of thinking more volume equals better results. But it’s a lie.
Endurance training blunts the development of muscle, strength, and power.
In the short-term, hypertrophy is blunted.
In the short-term maximal strength and power are blunted.
In the long term, muscle is lost if strength training is not performed or nutrition is poor.
And this is why the whole "eat less and move more" mentality is flawed.
More isn't always better. Quantity over quality doesn't deliver results when building strength and lean muscle mass.
This is a BIG deal because we often see callisthenics and body weight enthusiasts pumping out high volumes of pull-ups, push-ups, rows and more. So many wasted reps!
Why is this such a common practice?
It doesn't make sense because it's detrimental to the goal of building strength and mastering our body weight.
A lot of adults want to unlock gymnastic skills, but they lack the strength to master their body weight. They need to increase their strength, not destroy it.
High-volume strength endurance training is ineffective for building strength and lean muscle.
High-volume strength endurance training is a form of fatigue-based training. It fatigues the nervous and muscular systems, but not in a good way.
Excess fatigue reduces the volume of high-quality work we can productively do within a training session and our training week. It also increases the chance of injury, not to mention its negative impacts on our hormones, mindset and motivation.
When it comes to gymnastics training, we want exactly the opposite.
We want our training to stimulate a positive adaptation that allows our bodies to grow leaner, stronger and more powerful.
The more high-quality repetitions you can perform and recovery form, the better your progress will be.
What about training to failure?
Training to failure is typically defined as lifting a weight for a number of repetitions until you can no longer complete another repetition with good form during the concentric phase. Instead of performing only a certain number of repetitions for an exercise, you do as many repetitions of that exercise as you possibly can until your muscles are so fatigued you can’t perform another rep.
Training to failure is a popular technique in bodybuilding. Go into any weights room, and you'll find quite a few people who believe that training every set to fatigue is the best way to see results.
I get the appeal; it's about taking strength training, an already intense activity, and doing as much work as possible.
If you repeatedly reach the limits of your strength endurance, does it help or hinder your progress?
Of course not.
Again, more is not better in this case.
In part 3 of these specific strength qualities for unlocking gymnastics skills, I spoke about the different types of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibres.
The Type II fast-twitch muscle fibres have the most potential for strength and size gains. The best way to target the type II muscle fibres is with low-to-moderate volumes performed at high intensity.
Strength endurance training targets the type I slow-twitch muscle fibres.
So, if you're goals are to build strength and increase lean muscle, low-to-moderate volumes performed at high intensity are the best band for your buck.
I not saying we should never train to failure.
We can train for technical failure by increasing the intensity of the exercise (intensity is the percentage of weight lifted in comparison to your 1RM) instead of increasing the volume (the number of repetitions).
But this is also very taxing on the nervous system, so we don't try to max out the training intensity too often. Depending on the individual, we might test a 5RM, 3RM or even a 1RM once every 3-6 months.
I degrees a little here, but there is a time and place to train to failure when testing maximum strength and using heavy loads. I don't see the point in training to failure with max volume. The risk-to-reward ratio isn't in our favour, and the benefits are minimal.
Why waste valuable training time and energy on it?
When to use strength endurance?
Athletes often perform routines that require a certain level of stamina in gymnastics. Ring routines, uneven bars, parallel bars and even floor routines combine different movements into a longer routine.
Once the gymnast has mastered each movement, they can combine them into a routine.
The gymnast must have the strength capacity to perform the routine, which they must train.
But gymnasts don't train their entire routine all year round. They spend most of their training time building the strength, flexibility and skill for each individual movement that makes up the routine. As they move closer and closer to competitions, they'll start to bring the movements together and gradually build the capacity to perform the routine.
Most strength and power sports follow the same training structure. During the off-season, athletes focus on becoming as strong as possible and train at higher intensities with lower volume. As they move closer to their competition, they drop the intensity and prepare to peak on their competition date.
Athletes that require higher muscle endurance and fitness levels will often train this closer to their competition date.
Strength endurance and aerobic fitness are much easier to build than maximal strength. In 8-12 weeks, an athlete can build the strength, endurance and fitness required to perform a routine or compete in their sport, especially when they've already developed the strength and skill components.
On the other hand, maximal strength takes years to build, and we must continue to train if we want to make progress.
I often like to play with gymnastics ring routines and perform them at the end of my training session. They can be fun, and they add another challenge. But I'm not going to the next Olympics or competing in gymnastics competitions, so I don't need to train many routines.
Besides the fun factor and the challenge.
If I'm doing routines, they're typically at the end of a workout, and I'd only be doing them once per week so as not to fatigue the body too much. I need to recover between sessions and show up to my next session ready to build strength and size.
Conclusion
I’m not a fan of training strength endurance for adult gymnastic skill seekers. I see it as a waste of valuable training time that could be better spent training one of the other strength qualities.
I suggest always focusing on building the strength and flexibility that will allow you to unlock new skills.
Don't fall into the trap of pumping out pointless volumes of reps that won't help you see the results you're looking for.
Stick to training the strength qualities that will deliver the best results.
Please comment below if you’ve found this four-part series of specific strength qualities for gymnastics skills helpful.
If you’ve got any questions, don’t hesitate to ask them in the comments.
Until next time, happy training.
