If you want to maximize your quality of life, physical function, or athletic performance, you need to be strength training.
Regardless of your age, athletic background, sport of choice or health status, everyone can benefit from improving their strength. Yes, even you.
Strength is defined as the ability to produce force against an external resistance. Force production is how humans interact with our environment; every physical movement we make is a production of force - the greater potential force you can produce, the more effectively you can engage with your environment.
If you want to improve your strength, you have to train it - that requires regular progressive increases in force production. This is most effectively accomplished by adding load to an exercise. In short, to get strong, you have to lift heavy things.
It's common among fitness professionals to begin clients on high volume, low intensity (load) exercises to develop work capacity and motor control, before programming a short strength block and moving on to a power/speed/sport-specific training cycle.
Programming in this way does not take advantage of the client's potential strength gains, especially as a novice trainee; We think it is largely a waste of time.
Our approach is to get clients strong first, and let the other adaptations (motor control, endurance, power, aerobic capacity, etc.) develop as a side effect. Strength improves all other aspects of fitness, while the individual components do not effectively develop strength.
Remember, nobody has ever complained about being too strong!

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