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Hard work is a value needed to achieve success in any endeavor. However, when used alone in strength training, hard work often turns out to be counter-productive. You can train all you want, at anytime and support it with your preferred diet but this is simply not an effective way to train. Being smart about training is not optional but rather essential for success. Strength training is based on scientific knowledge and should be approached systematically. Equip yourself with the knowledge that you can use to train more effectively and efficiently by reading these tips:

Exercise Sequence – The first thing you need to know is that you cannot just do whatever exercise you want in a training session. A training session should follow a proper sequence or order of exercise. Always warm up before your exercise routine focusing on your core muscle groups. Warming up increases blood circulation and prepares your body for your exercise routine. Start with bench presses, deadlifts and squats as suggested by James Stoppani, author of the book “Encyclopedia of Muscle & Strength”. Then do exercises that focus on major muscle groups before focusing on smaller muscle groups. Just remember to work your way from your large to small muscle groups.

Keep an eye on resistance – Muscular strength will only develop if resistance is applied. To get the most out of your training, you would need to spend majority of your training time exerting 85 to 95 percent of your strength. It is important to assess what your current strength is so that you can make a point of reference on your current resistance threshold. This point of reference will then be used to set your targets for each training session. You can then log your resistance through this. You will need to update your point of reference as you develop and at the same time slowly increase resistance to get the most out of each training session.

Training volume – the amount of sets you complete in each session will help you gauge and monitor your fitness level, and also help you determine if you’re pushing yourself hard enough. If you’re training for strength, you’ll usually want to keep the amount of repetitions fairly low and increase resistance instead. If you’re training for endurance, you’ll want to lower resistance and increase repetitions. Make sure you understand the difference between these two types of exercises so you really are pushing yourself to your fullest potential and getting the results you want from your workout.

Diet and nutrition – Your diet can either support or harm your training. Eating a correct mixture of proteins and carbohydrates before training will give you the fuel you need to perform at your peak. Taking in lean proteins after a solid workout helps build and repair muscles. It is best to seek the advice of a sports nutritionist so that a diet can be made to suit your needs. If you do not have the resources for this, just read up on eating and nutrition for performance. There are a lot of books, magazines and even online articles that dwell on this subject.