The Most Important Thing You Can Do To Build Strength

TITLE: The Most Important Thing You Can Do To Build Strength CHANNEL: Institute of Human Anatomy DATE: 2026-04-26 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Us humans sometimes get a little bit obsessed with these incredible structures that you can see on the cadaavver called skeletal muscles. Skeletal muscle tissue is one of the most adaptable tissues in the human body. And we love to take advantage of those adaptations by making the muscles bigger and stronger. But what actually makes someone stronger? Is it just bigger muscles with more size and mass? Or is there something else going on beneath the surface that contributes to strength? Because if you look around, you’ll see people with modestly sized muscles lifting incredible amounts of weight, while others with much larger muscles may not be quite as strong as you’d expect. So, what’s the difference? Well, we’ve got a lot of anatomically awesome information to cover today because we’re going to break down what strength actually is and how you can get significantly stronger with or without increasing muscular size. We’ll also discuss how strength compares to the other muscular adaptations like muscular endurance and hypertrophy and why strength might be the most important adaptation for your overall health, fitness, and longevity. And of course, give you some different strength training protocols that you can incorporate into your exercise routine. And some of these protocols might actually surprise you a little bit. It’s going to be a myological one. So, let’s jump into this anatomical and physiological awesomeness. So before we talk about how to improve strength and all the many benefits that come with those improvements, let’s make sure that we actually have a clear definition of what strength is and even how it compares to some of the other muscular adaptations. At its simplest, strength is your body’s ability to produce force. So in other words, how much force can a given muscle or muscle group produce during a contraction? And this is typically measured with weights, like testing someone’s one rep max. So, with the quads, you could do it by seeing how much someone could squat one time. Granted, there are other muscles involved in the squat, but the point is the simplest way to see how much force a given muscle or muscle group can produce and therefore measure strength is to do some sort of max repetition movement. Now, it’s important to note the differences between strength and some of the other muscular adaptations like muscular endurance and hypertrophy because you will train a bit differently based on whether your main goal is endurance, hypertrophy, or strength. So, let’s quickly go over some of these main differences. Muscular endurance is the ability of the muscle to sustain a much lower amount of force or lower intensity contractions over time. So, if we keep using the quads as an example here, think holding certain positions for an extended period of time like a chair pose in yoga or repetitive lower intensity contractions like the quads contracting over and over again during a half marathon. Those are expressions of muscular endurance. Hypertrophy on the other hand refers to an increase in the size of your muscles. So if these muscle fibers that make up the quadriceps increase in size that will increase the size of the whole muscle and that’s hypertrophy. Now often hypertrophy also comes with increases in strength and sometimes even people working on muscular endurance can get some hypertrophy. So there is some crossover in these adaptations and that’s why I like to think of these adaptations as moving along a spectrum of contraction intensity. Over here on the left we have muscular endurance. This would be the lowest intensity of contractions. And you can see I’ve drawn this arrow down here to show us this spectrum of contraction intensity. But again, the exercises that would stimulate muscular endurance would be things like body weight exercises held for extended periods of time like planks or chair pose or done with high repetitions such as repetitively contracting the leg muscles with running or cycling or even done with light weights of about 30 to 60% of your one rep max done for 15 to 20 plus repetitions. And all of us have a pretty good idea that the people that spend a lot of time stimulating or working on muscular endurance don’t really come out looking like old school Arnold Schwarzenegger because this type of training doesn’t stimulate a lot of muscular size. But let’s say you started pushing the intensity of the muscular contraction up. Like maybe with your running you started doing more hill climbs or some power hiking on steep trails or with your squats you started adding some weights so that you started pushing towards or maybe even past 60% of your one rep max. Well then you start pushing towards this mid intensity of muscle contractions and you will start to stimulate hypertrophy. And this is why if you compare say the thigh of a road runner to a trail runner that does a lot of vert, you could see that the trail runner’s thighs may be larger than say like that of the road runner. That’s again because you’re pushing into this higher level of contraction intensity. And so you can see there’s this transition zone between muscular endurance and hypertrophy where you can get a little bit of both endurance and hypertrophy. However, if you purely want to push for hypertrophy and that’s your main goal, you’re going to further increase the intensity of the contraction. And with the load, you would want to be at about 60 to 80% of your one rep max, which would mean you’d only be able to do about 8 to 12 repetitions. And for hypertrophy, you also want to maintain that high volume, which would come with multiple sets and multiple training sessions throughout the week. Now, as I already mentioned, a bigger muscle is often a stronger muscle. For example, bodybuilders are quite strong because some of that size increase comes from the building of new contractile proteins within the muscle fibers. And with more of those contractile proteins, the muscle fiber can generate more force. However, some of the size increase that comes from hypertrophy training is actually from increased fluid content in the muscle fibers as well as increases in glycogen stores. And both of those don’t actually translate to producing more force. They more so help the muscle maintain the rep ranges and recovery between sets. But again, don’t translate directly to one rep max strength. But let’s say you started pushing the intensity of the muscular contraction up even further and start focusing on loads closer to 80% of your one rep max and a rep range of six to eight. Then you start crossing over into strength. And similar to what we talked about with the transition zone of muscular endurance and hypertrophy, you now start to get into this transition zone between hypertrophy and strength where you can start getting a little bit of both. However, if you want to focus purely on strength and that’s your main goal, you’re going to increase the intensity of the contraction even further with loads of 80 to 100% of your one rep max with rep ranges of 1 to six repetitions. And this is where you will develop pure strength. And some of the adaptations that occur with pure strength training don’t actually increase the size of the muscle. So we need to talk about why that is as well as discuss some other important training concepts that are very important to building strength and why strength training can be one of the best things you can do for your health, fitness, and even longevity. But before I do that, I want to clarify two things. The first is something that I’ve been referencing repeatedly, and that is the intensity of the contraction. With these adaptations, we’ve learned that muscular endurance has the lowest intensity contractions. Hypertrophy is in the mid-range of contraction intensity and strength requires the highest intensity contractions. This sometimes leads people to believe that strength training is the hardest type of exercises out of the three. But that is not necessarily the case. When we talk about the intensity of the contraction in this context, we are talking about how much force each muscle contraction is producing. And we’ve described that as a percentage of a person’s one rep max. Lifting something that’s 30% of your one rep max is going to be a lower intensity contraction than a load that is 90% of your one rep max. And yes, that one repetition of 90% is going to be harder than one repetition of 30%. However, that’s only one variable of a workout. And so therefore, this does not necessarily translate to how difficult the overall workout is going to be. Running a half marathon or a marathon, which lives in the muscular endurance world, isn’t what somebody would call a walk in the park. Yes, each contraction of the leg muscles is a lower intensity, but you’re doing it over and over and over again for many miles. Hypertrophy training actually takes a ton of discipline, a ton of volume, and a lot of overall hard work. So just because they live in a lower percentage of contraction intensity does not mean training for endurance or hypertrophy is easier than strength training. Like I personally think my strength training days are easier than my weekend long trail run. For me, the long run is more fatiguing and mentally taxing than my strength days. So the point is there are a lot of variables that play into how hard an overall workout is and a lot of subjective variability from person to person. And the other thing I want to clarify is that if we had someone who was completely untrained, having this person start any type of muscular work is going to give improvements in all three areas to varying degrees. the person would get those wonderful newbie gains, but once those newbie gains have peaked, you’ll mostly continue to progress in the adaptation that you’re stimulating based on the training variables that we’ve talked about, which we’ll put this chart on screen to summarize the percentages of one rep max and the reps in order to best maximize each one of these adaptations. And with all this talk of improving strength, it’s not really a secret that creatine can play a major role in that process because creatine helps your muscle fibers regenerate ATP very quickly, thereby making your workouts more effective. But producing that energy is only one part of the equation. Because in order for that energy to be used effectively, your cells also need to be properly hydrated and balanced, which is where electrolytes come into play. And so, let me introduce you to Creat’s new creatine plus electrolyte mix. This is a daily stick pack that combines 5 grams of creatine monohydrate with electrolytes like sodium, potassium, and magnesium along with torine, which plays a role in things like cellular hydration and nervous system function. And the idea here is that creatine helps support your cell’s ability to produce energy. Electrolytes help maintain fluid balance and nerve signaling. And torine helps support the overall cellular environment those systems depend on. 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That link will also be in the description. Thanks again to crate for sponsoring today’s video. And now let’s get back to strength. So now let’s come back to one of our three unanswered questions. How do you get stronger without increasing muscular size? Now, we have already established that muscular size definitely does play a role in strength because the contractile proteins found in the muscle fibers that are responsible for producing force take up space. And so, if you add more of them, you will create more force, but you will also add size. However, you will often see that powerlifters don’t have as much muscle size as bodybuilders, yet they are still often able to lift more weight. So where is this extra strength coming from if it isn’t coming from adding more size? Well, this is where the nervous system plays a major role. When you decide to contract a muscle, a signal is initiated in the motor cortex of your brain. Located in the motor cortex are neurons called upper motor neurons. These upper motor neurons will take this signal from the motor cortex down the spinal cord where they will synapse with a lower motor neuron. This lower motor neuron will then leave the spinal cord by traveling through a nerve and will eventually synapse with multiple muscle fibers. Sometimes a lower motor neuron will synapse with as little as six to 10 muscle fibers all the way up to thousands of muscle fibers. But regardless of how many muscle fibers a lower motor neuron synapses with, once that signal reaches those muscle fibers, all of the muscle fibers that that lower motor neuron synapses with will contract. And FYI, the technical name for a syninnapse between a motor neuron and a muscle fiber is called the neuromuscular junction. And what we just described at the end of that pathway was a motor unit. A motor unit is the lower motor neuron and all the muscle fibers it controls. And I mentioned that you can have very small motor units of one motor neuron controlling six to 10 muscle fibers all the way up to very large motor units of a motor neuron controlling thousands of muscle fibers. And as a fun FYI, those smallest motor units containing only six to 10 muscle fibers are for very fine motor control and are found in the muscles that move your eye. Whereas the larger motor units that contain thousands of muscle fibers are found in large muscles that need to produce more force. And there are multiple motor units found within each muscle. And this is a very important concept because you don’t automatically use all of your available muscle fibers every time you contract a muscle. Instead, your body recruits motor units based on the demand of the task. So for lower intensity movements like a bench press of only 30% of your one rep max, your body will recruit a smaller number of motor units. But as the demand for force increases, like if you continue to add more weight to the bar, your body begins to recruit more and more motor units. And this process is called motor unit recruitment. And this helps us to understand how you can get stronger without an increase in muscular size. If you were to take an untrained individual and hook them up to devices that can estimate motor unit recruitment and you told this individual to contract a certain muscle or muscle group as hard as they could, you would see that even though they are thinking they are contracting with full force, there would be multiple motor units that they haven’t recruited. Studies have shown that untrained individuals can only voluntarily recruit about 70 to 85% of their motor units on demand depending on the muscle and the individual. And you might wonder why that is. And part of it has to do with your nervous system having some trust issues. It doesn’t trust you to not hurt yourself if you had full voluntary control of 100% of your motor units whenever you wanted. Essentially, your nervous system is protecting your soft tissues from damage. And this is a form of neuromuscular inhibition. However, let’s say that same untrained individual started performing resistance training, especially pure strength training. One of the main adaptations that occurs is that the person will start to be able to voluntarily recruit more motor units. Almost like you’re gaining the trust of your nervous system. And instead of recruiting 70 to 80% of the motor units, with consistent strength training, this person may start to be able to recruit 90% or more of their motor units voluntarily. Not only does the body get better at recruiting more motor units with strength training, the nervous system also starts to recruit them more quickly, as well as increases how frequently those motor units fire. Plus, the nervous system gets better and more efficient at coordinating the contraction of the muscles. And all of this allows you to produce more force without increasing the size of the muscle. So now let’s come back to why strength training is so important and beneficial. Yes, of course, you’re getting stronger and that generally just makes people feel better about life. Also, the types of exercises that are often used in a well ststructured strength training program tend to not only translate really well to things like sports, but also to the functionality of everyday life, such as lifting and moving heavy objects in your house, better balance, and easily getting up from a seated position or from off the floor. Now, that last one may not sound that important to all you young individuals out there, but balance and being able to easily lift your own body up from different positions is extremely important to maintain as we reach our elderly years. Because I’ve definitely had elderly patients have a very difficult time getting up out of a chair, let alone getting themselves up off the floor. But I’ve also had other elderly patients that have continued to do strength training, and they pop right up. And so this is where we of course get to talk about why strength training is so beneficial for aging and longevity. The first muscle fibers to atrophy as we age are the fast twitch muscle fibers. And a big reason for that is because we are less likely to use those fast twitch muscle fibers as we get older, especially if we neglect strength training. And so of course we need to go a little bit more deeply into the physiological reason as to why those fast twitch fibers are the first to atrophy as we age. One thing that we haven’t mentioned yet about the motor units that we just learned about is that they are fiber specific. Meaning that each motor unit tends to only contain one fiber type. You may have heard of fast twitch muscle fibers and slow twitch muscle fibers. And as the names imply, the fast twitch fibers contract with more velocity and produce more force, but they fatigue quickly. Whereas the slow twitch muscle fibers contract with less velocity and produce less force, but they are very resistant to fatigue. You could think of them as your endurance fibers. And each muscle throughout the human body will have a varying percentage of each fiber type. Now, technically, there are some further classifications on fiber types beyond just simply slow twitch and fast twitch. And we’ve actually done a different video where we go into all those details. So, to spare us from going too far into the fiber type weeds, I’ll just link that other video at the end. And for today’s video, it will be enough to say that each motor unit will only contain either fast twitch muscle fibers or slow twitch muscle fibers. You don’t really find a mixture of fibers within the same unit. And what is also very important here is that your body recruits the motor units containing the slow twitch fibers first. So if we use the pec major as an example here, let’s say we start doing a bench press of only 20% of our one rep max. The first motor units to be recruited to move that lighter load of 20% will be the motor units that only contain the slow twitch fibers. And as we continue to add more weight, we will continue to recruit more of those slow twitch units until we’ve recruited all of them. And then we will start to recruit the higher threshold motor units that contain the fast twitch muscle fibers. You usually don’t start recruiting the fast twitch motor units until you get to about 60 to 70% of your one rep max and will continue to recruit more as you continue to increase the load. Recruiting the vast majority of them when you get to that 80 to 100% of your one rep max, which is that percentage range where we are doing pure strength training. So even if as you age you’re still very active with cardiovascular activities and you are very active around your house doing chores and yard work. Yes, you could have very good muscular endurance and cardiovascular health, but you are not going to stimulate those fast twitch fibers during activities of daily living or through most endurance exercise. And so they tend to atrophy. So obviously what we’re getting at here is that it would be quite beneficial to incorporate strength work into your weekly exercise routine. And so then the next question becomes, what’s the best way to do it? Well, we already covered some key principles such as 80 to 100% of your one rep max and reps ranging from 1 to six. But one thing that actually surprises many people is that you don’t need a high amount of volume to improve strength. Meaning, you don’t need tons of sets or multiple sessions throughout the week. You can actually maintain strength and get moderate improvements in strength with one strength training session per week. Data shows that as little as about three to six hard sets per muscle group per week can be enough to maintain strength and produce modest improvements. Now, I’m not necessarily saying that you should do the bare minimum to maintain strength. However, this gives you a baseline to work with, and I’ve worked with pe plenty of people where strength in certain muscle groups isn’t their biggest priority. And I’ve even experimented with this myself. A few years ago, I got into Spartan obstacle course races and a huge component of that is trail running. And that took a lot of my time each week. So for about six months, I only did one day a week for my lower body, which included a squat or some sort of squat variation and some kind of pulling deadlift variation. Sometimes I’d add a few quick accessory exercises at the end. But for the main lifts, I did three to four sets for each and my strength still went up. So the point is when you may have other exercise goals and limited time, this low number of sets required to maintain and even improve strength is pretty easy to incorporate into a weekly routine without adding a huge amount of time or detracting from those other goals. But if you do have more time and building strength is one of your main goals, pushing up to six to 10 hard working sets per muscle group each week can build even more strength and build it more quickly. So, finally, let’s go over a few different workout splits that you could incorporate into your weekly routine. First, you could do the once a week strength day, but you would be doing both upper and lower body during this day. One effective way to do this would be to pick four main compound lifts, two upper and two lower, both including a push and a pull. This could include a bench press or some variation of it, and then something like pull-ups. And you could add weight to the pull-ups if you can already do a lot of them with your own body weight. The lower body would include some sort of squat variation and then a deadlift variation. Now, I also would throw in a few accessory lifts if you have time towards the end of the workout. Maybe a single leg exercise like Bulgarian split squats. And I’d also throw in some calf work. But these accessory lifts don’t have to be quite as intense as the main lifts because again, these are accessory lifts. So, you could do a couple of sets of six to 10 reps. Now, one caveat to doing this once a week strength day is that you have to be consistent with this. If you’re one of those that keeps missing strength days here and there, before you know it, you’ve only got two strength days completed in a month. Yes, I would technically say that’s better than nothing. But because you’re only scheduling strength training once a week, you really need to make sure you lock in those days. Otherwise, your progress and maintenance will be quite limited. If you have more time, you could do two strength days and split them up into upper and lower body days and possibly even add a few more sets and lifts. like I might add a shoulder press to the upper body as well as another pulling variation like rows. On the lower body day, I would really make sure that I do get those single leg exercises in on top of the squat and deadlift variations and also throw in something like hamstring curls and or glute work like hip thrusts. But one of my favorite workout splits is the every other day approach. And this is a workout split that I often recommend to people that just want to have a workout routine that checks multiple boxes for their health, fitness, and longevity. They aren’t necessarily into a specific sport and they aren’t really looking to run any races like a marathon. Although I think with this workout split, someone could still go participate in a weekend 10k and even a half marathon in some cases without much of a problem as well as play some sports recreationally. So this routine is a combination of cardio and strength training. Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays are the strength days, whereas Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturdays are the cardio days, or you could flip-flop the cardio and the strength days. But during the first week, Monday would be upper body, Wednesday would be lower body, and Friday you’d go back to upper body. Then the next week, Monday would be lower body, Wednesday would be upper body, and Friday would be lower body. So one week you get two upper body days and one lower body day. And the next week you get two lower body days and one upper body day. And then you repeat this two-eek routine. For the cardio, we usually do steady state at a zone two intensity on Tuesday and Thursday for about 45 to 60 minutes. And then Saturday is the hard cardio day with highintensity 4x4 intervals. And we have a workout chart that goes into more details of this every other day approach down in the description. So you can click on that link and download it if you want to. Now, there are so many variations and exercise plans beyond what we’ve discussed that are also very effective. There are all sorts of nuances and tweaks that you can apply based upon your specific situation and your goals. But by far and away, one of the most important things that you can do regardless of the exact plan is to maintain consistency with not only strength training, but also your cardiovascular training. And I hope that today’s information can at least give you a baseline to start with, as well as some really cool anatomical and physiological knowledge to help you understand why and how these adaptations occur. So, thank you for watching today’s video, and we’ll see you in the next one.