What is the simplest way to gain strength? One pound at a time. Keep on doing that over and over again and you will continue to make progress for a long, long time. However, it will only work on three conditions:
- You must be patient enough to add just one pound at a time to each exercise.
- You must start with an amount of weight and reps that are fairly comfortable to lift when adding one pound. If you start out too heavy and try to add onto weights that you are struggling to lift, it won’t work.
- You must add one pound at a rate that allows the workouts to remain comfortable. If you add a pound to often, the workouts will get harder and harder, and you will eventually stop making progress.
If you get greedy, and you’ve been brain washed to believe that you can develop super human strength within a few months, this program won’t work. Patience and consistency plus more patience and consistency are what make any effective program work.
Most people can gain strength quickly at first, followed by slower gains, followed by no gains. If you are at the point where you are experiencing slow gains or no gains, then you have nothing to lose by taking the one pound strength gain challenge.
Gain a Pound of Strength x 100
If you can gain one pound of strength per week for a given exercise, then you will be fifty pounds stronger within a year and 100 pounds stronger in two years. Even if you only add one pound every two or three weeks, your lifts will increase somewhere between seventeen to twenty six pounds within a year. Add these gains up over several years and you will be much stronger.
Make it as simple for yourself to gain strength as possible. You can gain a pound of strength, and once you have done that, you can gain another pound of strength. The process can be repeated again and again. Correct training makes it easy to gain. I’m not saying it’s easy to gain fast, but it is easy to keep on gaining little by little if you do it right.
In the next article, I will address how to train at an effort level that makes it possible to keep on adding on a pound to your lifts for a long, long time. Best of training to you.