Optimizing Strength Training

Periodization of resistance training -- Training principles -- Acute program variables -- Practical considerations -- Workout design -- Assessment -- Training tips and tools -- Case studies.

Looks at how muscles function, provides tests to determine the ability to do weight-training exercises, and includes exercise to improve muscle function and strength.

If you're looking for better fitness or better sports performance, success starts with Strength Basics. This easy-to-understand guide explains resistance-training fundamentals and shows you how to design a strength-training program using common types of equipment and body-weight exercises. Written for beginning and less experienced strength trainers who want to make sure they're on the right track, the book provides practical, how-to advice for safe and effective workouts to do at home or at the gym. Inside you'll find 66 exercises to make you stronger, plus 16 ready-to-use sport-specific programs designed to meet the demands of your favorite sports activities.

Work out, enhance your muscle mass, and get amazing results. This comprehensive guide targets every muscle group for a sculpted, leaner, and healthier body. Strength Training features more than 140 exercises using both equipment and free weights. Whether you wish to hit the gym or train at home, it will quickly help you achieve your goals - a sculpted physique, stronger bones, better balance and posture, and more energy for everyday living and sport. The exercises target every part of the body and include stretches and dynamic lifts. Step by step, Strength Training tells you how to do each one safely, with detailed anatomical artworks that show precisely which muscles you are targeting. It also shows how to plan your training with "smarter" goals, and gives you beginner, intermediate and advanced programs. With information on optimizing your diet and answers to common questions, this indispensable volume puts you on the fast track for a lean and healthy body.

In training speed, the most elusive athletic quality, what really works, and what doesn't? What are the components of sprinting itself that elites do, where amateurs falter? And how can we arrange all of this in a training medium that facilitates high performance? Speed Strength is the product of hundreds of athletes trained, thousands of hours of study, dozens of expert mentors, and an open mind. If you are interested in the answer to these questions, then Speed Strength is the book that holds the answers you are looking for, and much more.Joel Smith is the host of the Just Fly Performance Podcast and a track and strength coach of 13 years. As a track coach to national champions and Olympic champions as a strength coach, Joel has seen the elements of speed inside and out. Featuring the insight of over 25 field leaders, Speed Strength touches on the most important trainable elements of sprinting in a holistic and thorough manner.

Cut workout time in half and get double the results! If you're a guy with little time to work out and pounds of fat to burn, the thought of having to spend hours in the gym lifting weights and doing cardio can be a daunting proposition. Cardio Strength Training solves both problems with simple, fast, and effective workouts that incorporate challenging, muscle-building combination moves and fat-frying cardio exercises to help you kill two birds with one stone. Built on the same principles Robert Dos Remedios uses to train Division I collegiate athletes, Cardio Strength Training provides safe and innovative workouts and nutritional advice for anyone looking to drop pounds of flab and build a functionally strong physique. Every workout is no longer than 15 minutes and is built on the same training methods outlined in the highly successful book, Men's Health Power Training.

This report overviews the work that was done in year 2 of our investigation. We completed all of the upper and total body resistance training (6 months) groups (n=17 to 21 per group) and are now examining the longitudinal data. In year 3 will work to finish the field training and endurance training groups along with completion of the normative men group. We have completed a number of acute cross-sectional studies and have made the following observations: (1) Different from prior studies in the literature with small n sizes, women can see a transient increase in testosterone in response to an acute resistance training workout, (2) A relationship between free testosterone and regional fat distribution exists in healthy women too. (3) Insulin-like growth factor response to exercise in women is related to the pre-exercise values and not related to immunoreactive growth hormone responses; (4) Post-exercise cortisol concentrations explain the immuno-suppression observed after exercise, (5) To predict abilities in repetitive lifting tasks the best predictors were 1 RM box lift and the 2 mile run time; (6) Prediction of strength from cross-sectional area of muscles can be misleading due to a high neural component not factored into many equations; (7) The relative gender difference in occupational lifting performance which requires both strength and endurance is less than in pure strength only tasks.

Aimed at strength and conditioning specialists, health and fitness professionals, personal trainers and exercise scientists, this research-based book details the physiological and biomechanical aspects of designing resistance training programmes for improved power, strength and performance in athletes.