Weight Training for Strength Over Muscular Endurance

Are You Weight Training for Strength or Muscular Endurance?

What are the demands of your sport? What you will read here is a portion of my response in a forum discussion on the best weight training protocol for an off-season wrestler. What was discussed can apply to any athlete that participates in a sport that demands strength and power over muscular endurance. That could mean boxing, mogul and downhill skiing, football, combat sports, speed skating, sprinting and others.

It centered on my disagreement with the theory that low weight/high rep weight lifting is a feasible training program for a wrestler. What you will learn is that your weight training program should be geared towards enhancing the demands of your chosen sport, whatever it is.

Some have argued over labeling sports as either aerobic or anaerobic. At Vew-Do, we think this distinction is valid for determining the non-skill portion of training. Everybody knows that skill progression in any given sport or physical activity is achieved through drilling, practicing or competing in that sport. The underlying physical conditioning of that sport is almost automatic due to participation. Can you guess why this is a problem?

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Weight training is different. You can even say weight training is not a performance enabler, but a performance enhancer. Muscular strength is the most trainable aspect of endurance. Your muscles do all the work. When you get stronger, the intensity of performance increases.

Steady state or (aerobic) sports like running, cycling, soccer etc. require muscular endurance and have a different weight training protocol than a wrestler, boxer or mogul skier. These sports require extreme, short term bursts of strength and power during competitive participation. The strength training for these sports should be done using the anaerobic energy pathway with low reps and heavy weight. The added benefit of this type of strength training is that it will also support increases in cardiovascular (aerobic) function.

Don't forget to take a minute and look at the strength training/benefit allocation chart at the bottom of this page. It outlines the different weight training variables and the associated benefits or results. Scroll down to see my response:

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First, training for muscular endurance never has and never will be the way to gain strength. Unless you've found a way to change the laws of Mother Nature, a high rep low weight muscle endurance weight training routine will not get you any appreciable strength increases… You may even become weaker, as this type of training can cause a decrease in muscle mass.

Here's an example: Distance runners train for, and have muscular endurance, not strength. Sprinters train for, and have strength, speed and power. Both are track athletes, but no one would mistake a distance runner for a sprinter in performance or physique. The NFL recruits sprinters, not distance runners. Muscular endurance is not strength…Period.

Now, you are correct in that weight training using high rep low weight *12-15+ reps* will increase muscular endurance and allow you to use those muscles longer. The problem is that you're not a soccer player, distance runner, cross-country skier or a swimmer, those are aerobic sports. You're a wrestler and wrestling is an anaerobic sport.

To understand what I'm talking about you need to know the difference between the aerobic and anaerobic energy systems.

The "aerobic system" is a pathway that creates energy using a combination of fat, glycogen "carbs" and oxygen. The "anaerobic system," when recruited, creates energy "without oxygen" using fat, glycogen, creatine stored in the muscles and lactic acid. During intense activity, once the local supply of glycogen in the muscles is used up, anaerobic activity can continue by using a combination of lactic acid and glycogen stored in the liver and fed to the muscles via the bloodstream.

All anaerobic activity ceases when the lactic threshold is met. That's the point where the continuous muscle contractions restrict the blood supply to the muscles. At that point your body can no longer process and use the lactic acid from the muscles, the acid builds up, your muscles begin to burn, fatigue increases until the muscles fail to fire, then all activity stops.

In a competitive wrestling match, your body doesn't continuously recruit those slow twitch muscle fibers that your low weight high rep aerobic workout was training you for. It wants to use the fast twitch fibers, the ones that have mitochondria cells in them and use the anaerobic system. Even with sport specific anaerobic conditioning, if you didn't train for strength, you have less of a chance of being able to move your opponent around. Remember; high intensity strength training is in itself, anaerobic training.

So what's a better weight training routine for wrestling? A routine that builds whole body strength using heavy weight and low reps using the anaerobic energy pathway? Or one that pretty much wastes all that time in the weight room training for little or no gains in strength and muscle endurance that you'll hardly ever use in a wrestling match.

Bottom line is this. Weight train for strength using heavy weight and low reps. Then continue to build up your anaerobic threshold and skill progression in the wrestling room with 1.5 hours sessions of intense wrestling, grinds, chain wrestling and sprints.

Remember; don't over-train by trying to add "aerobic" or cardio sessions. Your body only has so much energy to use in any given workout session. Re-carb and re-hydrate your fuel tanks, bust it up in practice or competition, rinse and repeat.

strength training/benefit allocation chart

By: Rick Contrata

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