Strength Basics - Brian Cook and Gordon Stewart

Strength Basics

by Brian Cook and Gordon Stewart

NEW, 216 pages

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About Strength Basics

About The Authors

Coauthors Brian Cook and Gordon Stewart combine more than 40 years' experience in the health and fitness field. They have taught athletes, instructors, and participants the theory and techniques of resistance training and designed countless individualized programs. They also are the coauthors of Get Strong: A Sensible Guide to Strength Training for Fitness.

Brian Cook has a bachelor of science degree in human performance. He has extensive experience coordinating employee fitness programs and developing and managing private fitness clubs in British Columbia, Ontario, and in Singapore. As a consultant, Cook has trained staff in the fields of fitness, sport training, and rehabilitation. He is the senior kinesiologist at a large and progressive physiotherapy and rehabilitation clinic.

Cook has competed in a variety of sports, from track and field to flatwater canoe racing. An avid cyclist who lives in Burlington, Ontario, he enjoys a regular resistance-training program, and has returned to canoeing as a masters paddler.

Gordon Stewart has a master of science degree in kinesiology and more than 20 years' experience in fitness program management and consulting. Stewart specializes in health communications, serving a wide range of clients from his home base in Victoria, British Columbia. He is the author of several books, including Active Living: The Miracle Medicine for a Long and Healthy Life and Every Body's Fitness Book.

A former decathlete, Stewart competed internationally for Canada in the 1970s. Along with resistance training, Stewart enjoys rowing and running to stay fit.

Reviews of this Book

"A very good introduction to resistance training, the book's practical pointers help dispel many myths. I found the various modes of resistance training and the suggested routines for various sports excellent."
Vern Gambetta, President
Gambetta Sports Training Systems
Chicago White Sox

"Strength Basics is timely and reader friendly; it will be an invaluable tool for professionals to use with their clients. The authors are excellent, well-recognized, and respected practitioners in the field. They relay information with clarity and dispel many of the misconceptions on the subject. A highly motivating book."
Sue Hills
Executive Director
British Columbia Alliance for Health and Fitness

About Strength Training

Strength training is the use of resistance to muscular contraction to build the strength, anaerobic endurance, and size of skeletal muscles. There are many different methods of strength training, the most common being the use of gravity or elastic/hydraulic forces to oppose muscle contraction. See the resistance training article for information about elastic/hydraulic training, but note that the terms "strength training" and "resistance training" are often used interchangeably.

When properly performed, strength training can provide significant functional benefits and improvement in overall health and well-being, including increased bone, muscle, tendon and ligament strength and toughness, improved joint function, reduced potential for injury, increased bone density, a temporary increase in metabolism, improved cardiac function, and elevated HDL (good) cholesterol. Training commonly uses the technique of progressively increasing the force output of the muscle through incremental increases of weight, elastic tension or other resistance, and uses a variety of exercises and types of equipment to target specific muscle groups. Strength training is primarily an anaerobic activity, although some proponents have adapted it to provide the benefits of aerobic exercise through circuit training.

Strength training differs from bodybuilding, weightlifting, powerlifting, and strongman, which are sports rather than forms of exercise, although training for them is inherently interconnected with strength training, as it is for shotput, discus, and Highland games. Many other sports use strength training as part of their training regimen, notably football, rugby, lacrosse, basketball, hockey, and track and field

The basic principles of strength training involve a manipulation of the number of repetitions (reps), sets, tempo, exercises and force to cause desired changes in strength, endurance, size or shape by overloading of a group of muscles. The specific combinations of reps, sets, exercises, resistance and force depend on the purpose of the individual performing the exercise: sets with fewer reps can be performed using more force, but have a reduced impact on endurance.

Strength training also requires the use of 'good form', performing the movements with the appropriate muscle group(s), and not transferring the weight to different body parts in order to move greater weight/resistance (called 'cheating'). Typically failure to use good form during a training set can result in injury or an inability to meet training goals - since the desired muscle group is not challenged sufficiently, the threshold of overload is never reached and the muscle does not gain in strength. There are cases when cheating is beneficial, as is the case where weaker groups become the weak link in the chain and the target muscles are never fully exercised as a result.

The benefits of strength training include increased muscle, tendon and ligament strength, bone density, flexibility, tone, metabolic rate and postural support.

Strength Basics